Giant Bacteria over half a millimeter long (visible to the naked eye) living in the gut of surgeonfish is found to have over 300 times more DNA (1 trillion base pairs) than humans (3 billion base pairs). I believe this is now the largest known amount of DNA in a single cell having knocked aside the previous record holder amoeba dubia at ~200 times more DNA than humans.
One of New York’s foremost brain surgeons, Dr. Michael Egnor, has repeatedly pointed out why Darwinism is irrelevant to modern medicine. See: Why would I want my doctor to have studied evolution?.
And it turns out, Michael Egnor’s claims are being supported by an uncomfortable admission by Catriona J. MacCallum, the Senior Editor at PLoS Biology. In the recent editorial Does Medicine without Evolution Make Sense? MacCallum writes:
Charles Darwin, perhaps medicine’s most famous dropout, provided the impetus for a subject that figures so rarely in medical education. Indeed, even the iconic textbook example of evolution “antibiotic resistance” is rarely described as “evolution” in relevant papers published in medical journals. Despite potentially valid reasons for this oversight (e.g., that authors of papers in medical journals would regard the term as too general), it propagates into the popular press when those papers are reported on, feeding the wider perception of evolution’s irrelevance in general, and to medicine in particular
Darwinists claim how important Darwinism is to science, but MacCallum’s editorial makes an embarrassing admission of Darwinism’s irrelevance to medicine. She also reports on the protests from medical students who find themselves forced to study Darwinism for no good reason. In reading the excerpt below, ask yourself, “why is it that a campaign has to be waged to teach Darwinism in science classes.” Do we need campaigns to teach the theory of gravitation or the periodic table?:
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Columbia Medical Professor John Marshall made the case for scientific acceptance of Intelligent Design last night before 100 or so guests, and found himself taking fire from his peers for his view. Marshall, a signer of the ‘Dissent From Darwinism’ document and vocal supporter of ID as science is once again under attack for his views, perhaps the most prominent opposer being MU Biology Professor Frank Schmidt, who says he counted “21 distortions, 15 half-truths, and 10 untruths” in Marshall’s presentation. He further asserted that what Marshall was really doing was “cloaking a narrow definition of Christianity, which (he) found personally offensive”, and that it “really hacks (him) off”. “It’s as much science as Darwinian evolution is science,” Marshall said. Read More ›
I was reading The origin of the brain lies in a worm on the evolution of the central nervous system (CNS) and found a presumption in it based on nothing more than an Argument from Incredulity about the origin of complexity. My emphasis. “Our findings were overwhelming,” says Alexandru Denes, who carried out the research in Arendt’s lab. “The molecular anatomy of the developing CNS turned out to be virtually the same in vertebrates and Platynereis. Corresponding regions give rise to neuron types with similar molecular fingerprints and these neurons also go on to form the same neural structures in annelid worm and vertebrate.” “Such a complex arrangement could not have been invented twice throughout evolution, it must be the Read More ›
About two months ago I blogged several articles on a potential cancer cure called DCA. To date there has still been no start of an FDA-approved clinical trial so it looks like the conspiracy theorists were right – DCA is a common chemical that has no profit potential for big pharma so even though it shrunk several different types of human tumors in immuno-compromised rats 75% in 3 weeks with no adverse side effects, and even though it’s been used for decades in humans in treating chronic lactic acidosis so its safety was already well characterized in humans, no one will put up the hundreds of millions of dollars to test its efficacy as a chemotherapeutic for cancer. Well, after Read More ›
Molecular Mechanisms of Antibacterial Multidrug Resistance Cell Magazine 22 March 2007 Michael N. Alekshun and Stuart B. Levy Schering-Plough Research Institute, 2015 Galloping Hill Road, Kenilworth, NJ 07033, USA Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance, Department of Molecular Biology & Microbiology and Department of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02111, USA Available online 22 March 2007 My emphasis. Treatment of infections is compromised worldwide by the emergence of bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Although classically attributed to chromosomal mutations, resistance is most commonly associated with extrachromosomal elements acquired from other bacteria in the environment. These include different types of mobile DNA segments, such as plasmids, transposons, and integrons. However, intrinsic mechanisms not commonly specified Read More ›
I asked Jonathan Wells to put together the following brief update on evo-devo.
A March 30 press release from the University of Bath quoted evolutionary biologist Ronald A. Jenner as saying: “Since its inception, some workers feel that evo-devo hasn’t quite lived up to its early expectations.â€Â
This is an understatement, since evo-devo has not provided an experimentally confirmed explanation of even a single case of macroevolutionary change. Yet Jenner’s sober assessment contrasts sharply with the extravagant boasting of Darwinist Sean B. Carroll: “Evo Devo reveals that macroevolution is the product of microevolution writ large… We now have a very firm grasp of how development is controlled. We can explain how tool kit proteins shape form, that tool kit genes are shared by all animals, and that differences in form arise from changing the way they are used.†(Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo, Norton 2005, pp. 291, 295)
Maybe Jenner and Carroll should talk… Read More ›
A recent disagreement about the critical importance of gut flora to animal health led me to look for research into germ-free animals. GF animals have been available for research for about 50 years and initially they lived very short lives. The decrease in longevity was eventually traced to lack of critical enzymes in their diet. In order to remain GF their food was sterilized at high temperatures (essentially autoclaved) which caused the needed enzymes to break down. Once their dietary requirements were established an unexpected result emerged – GF animals live twice as long as controls receiving the same complete diet but not housed in sterile conditions. Germ Free Animals Germ-free animals were obtained by cesarean section and maintained in Read More ›
On another UD thread there was discussion about an amazing piece of biological molecular machinery and the deficiencies of Darwinian processes to account for it. The bottom line is that Darwinists are looking in the wrong place for an explanation (random variation and natural selection), just as alchemists did when trying to figure out how to transform lead into gold (chemistry doesn’t deal with the nucleus of the atom). They both represent entirely inapplicable explanatory categories for the problems under consideration.
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This is your brain on NeoDarwinism:
In a piece at Time Online, More Spin from the Anti-Evolutionists, senior writer Michael Lemonick attacks ID, the Discovery Institute, the signatories of the Dissent From Darwin list, and Michael Egnor in particular.
Dr. Michael Egnor (a professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook, and an award-winning brain surgeon named one of New York’s best doctors by New York Magazine) is quoted: “Darwinism is a trivial idea that has been elevated to the status of the scientific theory that governs modern biology.” You can imagine the ire this comment would provoke from a Time science journalist.
The comments section is very illuminating as Dr. Egnor replies to and challenges Lemonick.
“My own PhD thesis advisor, Robert B. Woodward, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his brilliant syntheses of quinine, cholesterol, chlorophyll and many other substances. It mattered little if kilograms of starting material were required to produce milligrams of product. The point was the demonstration that humans could produce, however inefficiently, substances found in nature. Unfortunately, neither chemists nor laboratories were present on the early Earth to produce RNA.”
“The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence. He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds, tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck.”
–From Scientific American, by Robert Shapiro, professor emeritus of chemistry and senior research scientist at New York University, author or co-author of over 125 publications, primarily in the area of DNA chemistry.
Pitt Professor Contends Biological Underpinnings Of Darwinian Evolution Not Valid
“The history of organic life is undemonstrable; we cannot prove a whole lot in evolutionary biology, and our findings will always be hypothesis. There is one true evolutionary history of life, and whether we will actually ever know it is not likely. Most importantly, we have to think about questioning underlying assumptions, whether we are dealing with molecules or anything else,” says Schwartz.
Scientists Discover Parallel Codes In Genes
“These parallel codes were probably exploited during evolution to allow genes to support a wide range of signals to regulate and modify biological processes in cells.” says Shalev Itzkovitz at The Weizmann Institute of Science.