OH NONSENSE, DR. A!
At EvC Dr. A is answering the question what impact evolutionary theory has on medicine:
THIS IS NOT EVOLUTION, THIS IS NORMAL BUILT-IN VARIATION, OTHERWISE SOMETIMES IRRITATINGLY KNOWN AS "MICROEVOLUTION." MICROEVOLUTION SAYS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION!So what are these fields of science it does impact? Does it have any effect on medical sciences? Are there any other practical uses for evolution other than showing how life diversifies?Yes, it has medical uses; for example, it would be hard to study and circumvent the evolution of bacterial resistance to medicine without knowing about evolution.
Another medical application, in preventative medicine, would be the Ames test. This tests to see how mutagenic (and therefore how carcinogenic) a substance is by quantifying the amount of beneficial evolution it causes. (Remember that mutation is random, so the harmful somatic mutations the substance produces will be proportional to the beneficial germ-line mutations.)This will take some pondering later.
A third medical application is in epidemiology: finding the molecular phylogeny of a disease helps epidemiologists to reconstruct its history.I'm tired so I'll have to come back and ponder this one later too but here's a website on Molecular Phylogeny. My guess is that basically what you are talking about is genetic similarities, no need for any evolutionistic hooha in that case, in fact it would probably just complicate what would be simpler without it.
A fourth medical application is the creation of live vaccines. A virus or bacterium which has evolved to adapt to one environment is less fit for another: so, for example, a strain of polio which has been cultured in monkey kidney cells will no longer be any good at preying on human nerve cells but will still trigger an immune response. This is how the oral polio vaccine works.THIS IS ALSO "MICROEVOLUTION" OR NORMAL BUILT-IN INTRASPECIES VARIATION.
There are a number of other practical applications both within and outside medicine, but I hope that this is enough to be going on with.Oh I doubt it seriously. All the sciences have certainly absorbed the fantasy of evolution into their systems but it does nothing useful for them.
"THIS IS NOT EVOLUTION, THIS IS NORMAL BUILT-IN VARIATION, OTHERWISE SOMETIMES IRRITATINGLY KNOWN AS "MICROEVOLUTION." MICROEVOLUTION SAYS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION!"
ReplyDeleteYou can't just go around redefining the word "evolution". That normal variation is exactly what evolution is. That is ALL evolution is. There is variation, and some of the variants survive better than others, and that's natural selection. I'm sorry, but that's.. just the definition.
"THIS IS NOT EVOLUTION, THIS IS NORMAL BUILT-IN VARIATION, OTHERWISE SOMETIMES IRRITATINGLY KNOWN AS "MICROEVOLUTION." MICROEVOLUTION SAYS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION!"
ReplyDeleteYou can't just go around redefining the word "evolution". That normal variation is exactly what evolution is. That is ALL evolution is. There is variation, and some of the variants survive better than others, and that's natural selection. I'm sorry, but that's.. just the definition.
Dear Anonymous, thanks for your comment. I appreciate your being polite.
What you are saying illustrates another point I try to make here, which is that a great deal of this dispute is definitional, or to put it another way, it's "word magic" which asserts as fact something that is really contrary to reality: If you simply DEFINE evolution as normal variation then you blind yourself to what is really going on.
As I've argued over and over here, there is a NATURAL end point to normal variation that is the TRUE definition of it, beyond which no further evolution is possible. In reality. In fantasy it is assumed without warrant that the observed variations that are called "microevolution" simply continue indefinitely. They cannot. There is a natural end point which is the true boundary line that separates the Kinds, the end point brought about by the ACTUAL FACT that genetic variability must decrease as new phenotypic forms emerge, and the ACTUAL FACT that there is no such thing as the other huge piece of word magic that invents mutations to fuel the continuing changes. Mutations only interfere with normal genetic processes and there is absolutely no evidence that they do anything at all beneficial.
So, I recommend to you that you stop believing in definitional word magic and join creationists in recognizing reality.