Antibiotic resistance: The non-Darwin truth
| January 8, 2012 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, News |
In “Evolutionary Lessons From Superbugs” (Huffington Post, January 8, 2012), James Shapiro, author of Evolution: A View from the 21st Century (FT Press Science), talks about how Darwinism misled scientists who were trying to understand antibiotic resistance:
In the early days of molecular biology, bacterial geneticists applied conventional evolutionary concepts from the pre-DNA period to explain the evolution of antibiotic resistance. The theory was that mutations could alter the structure of cell components and either block entry of the drugs into the bacteria or prevent their action on cellular targets, such as the enzymes essential to cell wall synthesis. Even if the initial mutation did not confer a high degree of resistance, accumulation of several sequential changes would result in resistance to the antibiotic levels used in clinical medicine. Indeed, a wide variety of laboratory experiments confirmed this theory, and bacterial geneticists isolated the predicted mutant strains. In virtually all cases, the resistant mutants grew less well than the parental sensitive bacteria, leading to the comforting conclusion that resistant bacteria would not significantly accumulate in nature. The degree of confidence was so great that the U.S. Surgeon General in 1967 declared that “the war against infectious diseases has been won” (Fauci 2001).
There were problems both with the science and the new public health policy based on it. The Surgeon General “misunderestimated” the bacteria, which followed their own evolutionary rules and did not listen to what the scientists said they should do. Although experimentally confirmed, the mutation theory of antibiotic resistance failed to account for most cases in the real world. Resistance continued to spread among bacteria isolated in clinics around the globe. Even more ominously, different strains of pathogenic bacteria increasingly displayed resistance to more than one antibiotic at a time. Research pioneered in Japan found that multiple antibiotic resistances could be transferred simultaneously from one bacterial species to another (Watanabe 1967). The DNA agents responsible for this transfer are circular molecules that are called multidrug resistance plasmids, which can move from one cell to another (Clowes 1973; Novick 1980). Moreover, the resultant multiply resistant bacteria were not altered in their cellular structures or inhibited in their growth properties. Rather, they had acquired new biochemical activities that could destroy or inactivate the antibiotics, chemically alter their targets, or remove them from the bacterial cell (Davies 1979; Levy 1998).
Multiple antibiotic resistance clearly represented genome change and evolution of a type unimagined in the pre-DNA period. DNA molecules could be transferred “horizontally” between unrelated cells rather than inherited from ancestral cells. Moreover, horizontally transferred DNA could carry complex sets of genetic information encoding multiple distinct biochemical activities. Evolutionary leaps involving several characteristics at once could occur through horizontal DNA transfer.
We wonder how many people out there took the long walk out of research just for saying what they knew, and how many others just kept quiet.
And the dull-witted docent went on telling the public that antibiotic resistance proves that Darwin was right.
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12 Responses to Antibiotic resistance: The non-Darwin truth
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But just what can neo-Darwinism do even with the very non-Darwinian ‘natural genetic engineering’ (Shapiro’s term not mine) of HGT at its disposal:
Dr. Behe’s empirical research also agrees with the extreme difficulty encountered if scientists try to purposely (intelligently) design a protein-protein binding site:
Moreover, there is, ‘surprisingly’, found to be ‘rather low’ conservation of Domain-Domain Interactions occurring in Protein-Protein interactions:
Off topic music, verse and picture:
Yes! Shame on Darwin for not anticipating research that would take place more than a hundred years later.
And shame on researchers for drawing a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence available at the time:
And:
Those idiot Darwinists should have embraced the outlandish idea, knowing that future research would corroborate it.
It’s a good thing we have clairvoyant ID proponents who can predict every relevant future scientific discovery.
Actually ‘Darwinism’ is not even scientific in the first place:
From Shapiro’s blog:
It’s refreshing to have a scientist raising serious challenges both to ID and to mainstream science, without insulting either.
as to:
Reminds me of this recent article:
foot note:
Jon:
I agree it is refreshing. Shapiro is a good scientist. About is specific objection to ID:
Certainly, the ID argument is greatly undermined if it has to invoke supernatural intervention for the origin of each modified adaptive structure.
I would say, why supernatural?
The phrase, is so modified:
“Certainly, the ID argument is greatly undermined if it has to invoke a design intervention for the origin of each functionally complex modified adaptive structure.”
really makes little sense.
gpuccio – yes, that was my reaction, too. But at least it’s a challenege one can counter, rather than an ad hominem attack.
So that just leaves his challenge to the evolutionary science community. Shapiro himself would probably say – “I’m working on it.” Others, I suspect, if they commented at all, would say, “You’re just lacking in imagination,” with a side-swipe at him for being heterodox.
Can anyone explain how the article supports ID?
Well one way to support one’s position is by showing your opponet’s position is bogus. And it just so happens that it is mandatory for all design inferences to eliminate chance and necessity.
LOL:
Mr X: I believe that penguins can fly.
Joe: This evidence demonstrates conclusively that they can’t fly … This refutation of your position supports my own position that penguins can teleport instantly between different galaxies.
Way to take what i said, not only out-of-context, but to some absolute idiotic extreme.
So Darwin knew nothing about genetics or the mechanics of variation. Since his theory wasn’t based on the mechanics of variation, discovering new processes says nothing about Darwinian evolution.
Discovering new sources of variation say nothing about evolution unless one observes the Designer in action. Shapiro admits that variation does not have foresight or knowledge of what’s needed by a population. At most, microbes increase their rate of mutation under stress.
I’m sure everyone at UD downloaded the free Shapiro book and noticed that.