Hostility

[danny elfboy]

Since pathogens evolve we apply the theory of evolution in medicine. And this understanding we think we have of how pathogens evolve, as giving by the theory that explains it and bears its name, has undeniably helped us a lot in the field of medicine.

Only that the "evolution" (adaption) of pathogens has nothing to do with the theory of macroevolution and the formation of new species from accumulation of random mutation not it has anything to do with the social darwinism just-so stories including the one according to which everythig there's to know about humans can be tracked back to evolution and that everything there's to know about life is based on spreading genes.
The debate about evolution (which is not of religious nature and is still occuring on accademies) is not about questioning the adaptations and mutations (i.e. microevolution) but whether microevolution can lead to macroevolution and therefore whether the evolutionary premises that allowed the creation of predeterminist and absolutist hypothesis like social darwinism, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, ultra-darwinism are concrete or just so-stories to feed creepy ideologies.

As the biochemistry DeSilvestro explained:

We're told that nowadays we can see examples of genetic evolution. One example is drug resistance development in bacteria. A drug can kill most of a group of bacteria, but the few survivors are genetically resistant to the drug. These bacteria multiply and produce bacteria which have drug resistance (a trait not common in the original bacteria population). Another example is changes in the colors of the peppered moth. Different colors have predominated at different times, depending on what color best concealed moths from their predators. At one time, the predators had a hard time finding moths of a color that blended well with foliage. Later, air pollution made a different color a better camouflage. Later still, as pollution receded, the first color again became advantageous.

None of this has anything to do with developing new complex systems. The change in moth colors does not involve the development of any new traits, only changes in proportions. Natural selection works here because there are already functional traits. This says nothing about the ability of natural selection to develop a complex system "from scratch." The same is true for drug resistance, which is another fine tuning of already developed systems. To make matters worse, drug resistance development requires the killing of millions of organisms just to make one change. This rules out application to almost any animal species, especially in evolution models where only a few members of a species evolve to a new one (i.e. punctuated equilibrium models).

As far as pathogens are concerned evolution is a misnomer for the mutation process they go through which is especially irrelevant to the "macroevolution" that is what people usually mean when they speak of evolution.

Besides Louis Pasteur himself (the originator of the pathogens theory) admitted at some point in his life that his virus theory was wrong, the terrain (the endogenous environment of the organism) is what really matters. New dark field telescopy studies going on in Australia are proving this point about the flaws of the "germ theory" while so far no common drug has been formulated thanks to the knowledge of what mutation pathogens go through. The drugs doctors are prescribing and the vaccine we're using would exist even without the knowledge of pathogens mutation.

[ahinton]

...and we're off and running...uh, pianistimo, are you there?

It certainly doesn't seem as though she is - but then, let's face it, this ground has been covered already so many times...

Best,

Alistair

[prometheus]

Never heard of the theory of macroevolution. It's not mainstream science.