Well… if you want to get really into anthropology, there’s an argument that outsourcing our digestion (via early agriculture) actually made us a lot weaker and dumber. It was social pressure (often explicit enslavement) that forced people into the agricultural lifestyle. But that a booming population powered by cheap, reliable agriculture allowed multitudes to outperform by volume what exceptionally smart and strong but scare individuals achieved in small tribes.

More advanced forms of sterilization became necessary as populations hit certain critical levels of risk for pathogens and other hygiene problems. And so modern techniques, like vaccination and pasteurization, are really just extensions of this ten-thousand year trend towards urbanization that require health and safety precautions as a condition of our dense population centers.