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?:
Randolph Nesse (University of Michigan) and colleagues think otherwise [2], and have been campaigning for evolution to be recognized and taught as a basic science to all medical students (see also the Evolution and Medicine Network, http://www.evolutionandmedicine.org). It has been more than 10 years since he and George Williams published their classic book Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine [3]. Other landmark texts linking evolution to health have been written since then, with new editions on the way [4], and the research field is blossoming. Still, as Nesse mentioned at the start of the York meeting, there are only a handful of medical schools in the United States and in the United Kingdom with an evolutionary biologist listed as such on the faculty.
…
the hardest task in adding evolutionary/Darwinian medicine to medical curricula may well be soliciting support from medical students. Although Paul O’Higgins thought a comparison of the brachial plexus to the pentadactyl limb was helpful, not all his students agreed…complaints were lodged that he was forcing evolution on them
[MacCallum, by the way, was the Editor of Trends in Ecology & Evolution for more than four years, from 1999 to 2003.]
Because Darwinism is irrelevant to modern medicine, Darwinists have to use sleight of hand propaganda to justify Darwinism’s relevance to modern medicine. (see: Blythian evolution explains antibiotic resistance, not Darwinism.)
But Darwinism isn’t just irrelevant to medicine, it’s irrelevant to most anything practical. Even Jerry Coyne admits Darwinism’s lack of utility. See: if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits and “In science’s pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom”.
In contrast, the design paradigm moves forward at one of America’s most prestigious universities. In Wanted: Biologists who can speak ‘math,’ engineers fluent in genetics [1] we learn:
One-third of the engineers at MIT now work on biological problems, according to Graham C. Walker, MIT biology professor.
This demographic development has great significance to the ID movement because the design mentality is inherent to the engineering discipline. The two scientific disciplines most noted for sympathy toward ID are medicine and engineering. Individuals from these two disciplines have been actively involved in challenging Darwinism. The increasing prominence of these two disciplines bodes well for the design revolution.
Engineers, those who make a living studying the science of design are now invading biology in larger and larger numbers. The emerging discipline of Systems Biology, a design-friendly discipline which investigates biology from a design perspective, will eventually dominate the way biology is done from now on. In contrast, the discipline of Evolutionary Biology (with the exception of fine fields like Population Genetics) will possibly decline in prominence.
Also, an engineering specialty, computer science will play a major role [2]:
March 26, 2006
The Reading FileBytes and Biology
By THE NEW YORK TIMESThe impact of computer science on science as a whole was considered by a group of leading researchers, led by Stephen Emmott of Microsoft Research, who debated the future of computing in summer 2005. Their report, “Towards 2020 Science,” is at research.microsoft.com.
“We believe computer science is poised to become as fundamental to biology as mathematics has become to physics. We postulate this because there is a growing awareness among biologists that to understand cells and cellular systems requires viewing them as information processing systems, as evidenced by the fundamental
similarity between molecular machines of the living cell and
computational automata, and by the natural fit between computer process algebras and biological signaling and between computational logical circuits and regulatory systems in the cell”
These developments have been so undeniable, even Richard Dawkins, the self-appointed “Winston Churchill”[3] of atheism, had to admit:
Biology has become a sort of branch of computer science
Richard Dawkins
NOTES:
[1] (HT: Dr. Scott L. Page at KCFS for the MIT Article)
[2] (HT: stunney at telicthoughts.com for the NY Time article )
[3] Richard Dawkins likens himself to the courageous Winston Churchill who was Prime Minister of the UK during World War II. Given Dawkins’ disdain for Christianity, it’s ironic he likens himself to Churchill. Churchill committed himself and Britain to the defense of Christian civilization. When the Battle of France was over run in World War II, Churchill encouraged his nation by saying:
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to
begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.Winston Churchill