Darwin Awards
“Everyone contributes to the human genome, some with their births, while others with their deaths.”
The Darwin
Awards are a humorous (and of course not serious) honor given to those people
who represent the last part of the previous quote.
The famous
Charles Darwin claimed that originally there has been a natural selection in
nature meaning that the weakest link in the chain can’t survive (for example
the slowest zebra is going to be eaten by the lions). This natural selection is
said to maintain a quality of the species since the weakest ones won’t
reproduce anymore.
But what
does this look like concerning the human race?
Thanks to
the enormous progress medicine and health care made even the weakest
people can be saved. But there are two sides to every question. On the one
hand, of course it’s a great thing that doctors can help people and more and more
diseases can be cured. On the other hand, with this progress the natural
selection is overwritten and from a biological point of view the quality of the
human genome is getting worse. However,
there are people who, though not on purpose, contribute to the evolution by
self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool.
"In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival." (Wendy Northcutt)
Wendy Northcutt
established a website in 1993 and she is the author of numerous books collecting
all the strange, funny or morbid stories about “people who have made the
supreme sacrifice to keep their genes out of our pool”. To win this posthumous
honor the “candidates” have to be dead or unable to reproduce and they have to
be capable of sound judgment (old enough and in perfect(?) mental condition). Besides,
they have to have caused their own death in a silly and unique way, which can
be proved. Otherwise, the stories are considered urban legends. This honor
became so famous that even a self-titled adventure comedy film was made in
2006.
If you’re interested in the topic and/or some of the stories:
(they might
be morbid, but (usually) not that brutal…)
