DEFINITELY NOT PC

My comments regarding “The Coming Plague” by Laurie Garrett and its review by Fitzhugh Mullan (Nov. 6) will be highly unpopular.

Nothing is mentioned about the degradation of the human gene pool. Everyone wants to sweep that under the rug. Modern medicine keeps people alive and fertile who otherwise would not survive. It may be a wonderful thing when a hemophiliac is kept alive by medical treatment or a case of polio is prevented by vaccination. In an era when, say, 80% of a generation survives to reproduce instead of 50% of less, it does not take many generations before of the gene pool can become severely affected. I believe that the same can be said for behavioral genes where misfits are allowed to pass on their genes; but that is another story.

Microorganisms, because of their high mortality and faster turnover of generations, are being selected to do just the thing that Garrett worries about. The more “good” medicine does, the poorer the gene complement of the people that follow us. They will be more susceptible to microbial infection and other ills, especially when there are not enough doctors and effective antibiotics to treat them. Do not get me wrong. I willingly seek medical attention because it is good for me. But is it good for humans as a species?

As the population doubles, the interaction rate among people, and chance of infection, quadruples. Twice as many people bump into twice as many others. The transportation system we now have, as mentioned in the review, will speed up the infection rate even further. Ultimately, as in reactions between chemicals, there will be an equilibrium between the people as prey and the microbes as predators. All medicine and the microbes can do in the long run is to shift the equilibrium point slightly.

I will summarize only slightly tongue in cheek: Conservatives do not believe in the theory of evolution but are perfectly willing to let natural selection take place. Liberals, on the other hand, believe in the theory of evolution but take any natural selection as a personal affront.

WILLIAM BUCHMAN, LOS ANGELES