Whatever Happened to "Survival of the Fittest"?

     I recently came across an article in National Geographic about science's new-found capability to genetically engineer animals long-extinct, like mammoths, sabre-tooth tigers and the like. However, as one might expect, people are at odds over our right to "play God" with extinct species.

Herbert Spencer, the man who actually
coined the term "survival of the fittest".

     Everyone knows Charles Darwin's (arguably) controversial theory of natural selection where advantageous genetic traits are passed down through the generations and those with more useful traits thrive while those without will fail to endure.
     What I find more interesting is how "survival of the fittest", the phrase coined not by Darwin, but his colleague, Herbert Spencer, is apparently no longer relevant in the real world. With every new tidbit of medical ingenuity, we deny nature's attempts to thin the herd. The elderly live longer, the sick heal and so on, to no real end.
     I think we've also played God in much more subtle ways that seem to escape these people, and I'm a little miffed that as soon as it involves something cool (who doesn't like mammoths?) people immediately jump in and act like we haven't been fiddling with the natural order of things since we figured out we could. I may risk sounding like a tool, but I honestly think that if the unfit were being thinned from the majority, there would be a lot less stupid people.

Apparently there aren't any non-political cartoons
about stupid people. This fits the bill well enough

     As it is, whenever an idiot does something they shouldn't, they're rushed to a hospital, given free treatment and sent on their way without so much as a stern word.
     Contrarily, there's an obvious moral obligation to help a person where we can, and I've seen my fair share of free trips to a hospital. Everyone deserves to live right? Is our determination to do what's right eventually going to overpower the natural balance of things? Today, the world deals with overpopulation because we don't let people die. Forests are being cut down to make room for these people, and greenhouse gases are belched into the atmosphere from every corner of the Earth so we can produce enough stuff for everyone based on our determination to give everyone their fair share. But what is a person's fair share?

"[Medicine is] a collection of uncertain prescriptions the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind."  -Napoleon Bonaparte