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Just one more thing I forgot to mention-- in humans, people with congenital insensitivity to pain have significantly decreased life expectancy and are prone to accidents like biting off parts of their tongues or breaking teeth.
The human intellect may be great, but without pain it can't alert you to, say, appendicitis, or any other disease whose primary symptom is pain. Since the "red flag" alert that you, Richard, mentioned, never evolved (or hasn't survived if it did), I would guess (keep in mind I'm not a biologist) that pain must be conserved in humans since there is no other mechanism available to provide warning.
Permalink Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:45:40 UTC | #844601