[asa] Medicine and Evolution

Ben Stein in Expelled said this:

> “When neurosurgeon Michael Egnor wrote an essay for high school
> students saying doctors didn’t need to study evolution in order to
> practice medicine, the Darwinists were quick to try and exterminate
> this new threat.”

What's the threat? Try HIV.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/105/21/7552

> The precise identification of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein (Env)
> responsible for productive clinical infection could be instrumental
> in elucidating the molecular basis of HIV-1 transmission and in
> designing effective vaccines. Here, we developed a mathematical
> model of random viral evolution and, together with phylogenetic tree
> construction, used it to analyze 3,449 complete env sequences
> derived by single genome amplification from 102 subjects with acute
> HIV-1 (clade B) infection. Viral env genes evolving from individual
> transmitted or founder viruses generally exhibited a Poisson
> distribution of mutations and star-like phylogeny, which coalesced
> to an inferred consensus sequence at or near the estimated time of
> virus transmission. Overall, 78 of 102 subjects had evidence of
> productive clinical infection by a single virus, and 24 others had
> evidence of productive clinical infection by a minimum of two to
> five viruses. Phenotypic analysis of transmitted or early founder
> Envs revealed a consistent pattern of CCR5 dependence, masking of
> coreceptor binding regions, and equivalent or modestly enhanced
> resistance to the fusion inhibitor T1249 and broadly neutralizing
> antibodies compared with Envs from chronically infected subjects.
> Low multiplicity infection and limited viral evolution preceding
> peak viremia suggest a finite window of potential vulnerability of
> HIV-1 to vaccine-elicited immune responses, although phenotypic
> properties of transmitted Envs pose a formidable defense.

Yeah, you don't need evolution for medicine. Tell high school students
they don't need to study evolution because there is absolutely no need
for an HIV vaccine. Egnor was shocked by the "viscousness" of the
attack on him for his comments. I wonder why.

Rich Blinne
Member ASA

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Received on Fri May 30 09:26:42 2008