Answer: Diseases

Q: If you could cure all diseases would you?

A: I am actually very excited for this post. It was maybe the most thought-provoking question that I received. In short, my answer is probably not. I realized that many people may find that cruel and disagree with it, but I will spend the rest of the time explaining why.

Firstly, I will gladly concede that there are many diseases that I would love to be able to cure for many wonderful people. How nice would it be to have the power to cure young children stricken with cancer? Or heal a terminally ill woman who is the central piece to a large family? Of course, there are endless ways we could bless the lives of others by curing certain diseases. So the question really is do the costs of diseases always out way the benefits? If so, then we certainly would cure them all, because the profits from doing so would be the differences between the benefits and the costs. However, if there is even one case where the benefits out way the costs, then we will maximize profits not by curing all diseases, but an optimum amount.

So, the question is, can we think of any diseases that might be worth keeping around? To be short, it's an empirical (meaning it must be measured) question and we can't actually answer it. We would actually need some way to quantify benefits and costs of certain diseases. However, we can generalize and think of some instances in which disease may be preferred to the cure. I know many people now would jump to the idea that the costs of increased sex might out way the benefits of curing STD's, but that is a bit hairy, so I will look for something simpler. Let's discuss the benefits of getting ill from exposure. In cold climates the cost of going into the cold unprepared rises with the chance of getting sick. However, if we could instantly cure such things, there really would be no consequence for reckless behavior. You could go into the cold, get sick, and be healed so quickly that you basically avoid the discomforts of being sick. However, the colds may act as a warning sign to greater danger, for instance, freezing to death. If we don't have the benefit of receiving small consequences, then we will be more likely to push the limits until more serious damage is done.

That may seem like a lousy argument, but I would believe that if all diseases could be cured, that we might find that we would want to keep some around in a quantity higher than zero.