HIV and Cancer as Evolutionary triggers

I have this idea (although it could already be a documented theory, I just have not researched). Evolution is brought on by changes in the enviroment, sometimes even by plagues or epidemics. The strongest survive. What if HIV and Cancer and other similar diseases are in fact evolutionary triggers. If so (at the risck of sounding cruel), would we not be preventing evolution by keeping people alive longer than they should be. Instead of letting the disease take its course, we prolong the person's life as long as we can. If these diseases are truly evolutionary triggers, we could very well be preventing the next subtle change to human beings.
Just a thought, and a scattered one at that.

in some ways you are right, if you consider that we evolve from everything around us, the reason so many people die of car crashes is beacause we havent evolved enough to no be hurt by it, but if you have a look at statistics more people are surviving car wrecks then dying in them, and that is the percentage!! whitch means we are evolving to car accedents, now as far as cancer and aids, well it is survival of the fitest and i think if nature is evolving us through aids then thats pretty nuts considering to evolve faster we need a higher birthrate and with the advent of STDs the birth rate is falling. Now with cancer, it is like i have said before a frm of evolution, in the way that our eating habits have evolved and the resut is us not getting B17 like we should there for opening the way to Cancer.

Le tme throw some "food for thought" in to this.....maybe its not an "evolutionary trigger"; maybe we are not "evolving", but instead, we are "adapting". Maybe, its everything around us that is evolving?

What ya think?

regards
seekerof

Good food Seekerof. But if you are insinuating that HIV and Cancer are evolving (which is evident in all the variations of cancer), I would be interested in learning what they evolved from. I think it is very possible that HIV evolved from a virus that lay dormant for quite some time, or perhaps a virus that did not infect humans (at least in a harmful manner). This would explain the sudden outbreak in the 1980s.

Quote Echo:

"would we not be preventing evolution by keeping people alive longer than they should be"

The answer is no. although some people think genetic engineering and biomedical engineering are tampering with nature, i dont think you really can tamper with nature.

I mean sure pollution and such is bad but it is the way and will of nature for us to be exactly as we are and to make the decisions regarding questions we havent yet asked.

what i meant was that if we let disease run its course on humans, that is no more natural than producing a vaccine to prevent it.

Either way the will of nature is carried out and evolution continues.

peace