“Individuals without an appendix were four times more likely to have a recurrence of Clostridium difficile, exactly as Parker’s hypothesis predicted.”
Medicine
Michael Shermer: “New research on self-control explains the link between religion and health”
The reason Shermer’s approach won’t usually work is that the people who need the help don’t even want to “will themselves to loftier purposes.”
British Muslim med students refuse to attend Darwin propaganda lectures
Hey, wait a minute: Why is Darwinism on the med school course anyway?
“Most proteins that drive disease processes are actually undruggable.”
Which is why progress will depend mainly on outsmarting the proteins with new strategies.
Study: God loves me, so I worry less …
To a religious person, guilt is an objective state, not a pathology. It’s no help to say, “You shouldn’t feel guilty …” A justifiable response from the patient would be “How the hell do you know? I’m mainly interested in what God thinks.”
He said it: Neurosurgeon on Darwinism
Darwinism is a trivial idea that has been elevated to the status of the scientific theory that governs modern biology. – Michael Egnor, Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook Also: Egnor on Why Darwinian medicine is a dead loss
Why Darwinian medicine is a dead loss
In “Darwinian Medicine and Proximate and Evolutionary Explanations,” at Evolution News & Views (June 25, 2011), neurosurgeon Mike Egnor makes a critical distinction between proximate explanations and evolutionary explanations,s they apply to medicine:
“Natural selection selects for autism” thesis revisited
Remember, autism was – one author claims – a useful adaptation in “evolutionary history”? Caroline Crocker at AITSE discusses that in the most recent newsletter, after addressing the theories of autism’s cause that are worth taking seriously: Jared is writing his first paper as a doctoral candidate and so, should be given credit for a Read More…
Tenured pundits: Modern medicine needs Darwinism
On the other hand, … modern medicine owes nothing to Darwinism. For one thing, mortality from infectious diseases in the West began declining before 1859, due in large part to public health measures such as the provision of sewage disposal systems and safe water supplies.10 It also included personal hygiene, as the story of Hungarian Read More…
Free download of Johns Hopkins medic’s book on “jumping genes”
Mobile DNA, Finding Treasure in Junk, by Haig H. Kazazian is available free for download at Barnes and Noble: In Mobile DNA, leading geneticist Haig Kazazian thoroughly reviews our current understanding of the substantial role mobile genetic elements play in genome and organism evolution and function. He offers an accessible intellectual history of mobile DNA, Read More…
Dover a half decade later: And what difference did it really make?
A friend offers observations about the Dover (Kitzmiller) decision (2005). I didn’t cover it, because everyone else did, and I was writing a book, under contract, about something else, basically. Just as well. Everyone else who cared seemed to be on the scene already, and I was otherwise occupied. Essentially, modern American culture is biased toward Read More…
‘Sceptics’ — but not about science?
I did an interview recently with the Sceptics’ Society of Birmingham (UK) on the relationship between science and religion, which may be of interest to people here. The interview was conducted over Skype, which explains some of the alien sounds, especially from my end, even though my interlocutor and I were separated by a mere Read More…
More coffee!! Your doctor needs to know what would have worked for someone’s hypothetical reconstruction of Stone Age man before she can treat you effectively …
Apparently, evolutionary biologists/psychologists (if there is any difference, I would be glad to know*) are trying to get jobs adding to the cost burden of medical schools, fronting their speculations to doctors in training, a friend advises. See this story by Daniel Cressey (“Groups say med school training must evolve,” Nature Medicine 15, 1338 (2009) Read More…