Re: [asa] Medicine and Evolution

In my opinion, and it should probably count for something here, you are overreacting Rich, no question about it.

First of all, your original post mentioned that Egnor said that darwinism was of no use in PRACTICING medicine.  As a practicing physician I can attest to the truth of this.  However, that is not the same thing as saying that there is no role of understanding Darwinism in the field of medicine.

As Egnor alluded to, and which you seemed to have ignored, medicine is a very broad field, and involves physicians, microbiologists, etc. etc.  What Egnor was referring to, I believe, when he was talking about the practice of medicine, is the direct interaction between a physician and a patient to diagnose and treat illness.  This excludes research into mechanisms of disease, viral and antibiotic resistance, etc. etc.

Second, I am not convinced that understanding the mechanism of evolution is necessary in these other areas either.  Of course a lot of medical research is biological in nature, and biologists are almost exclusively darwinists.  But, I am not convinced that someone necessarily needs to be in agreement with darwinism to do basic research in medicine. 

I am not in anyway an ID proponent, much less a creationist, but I think that Egnor's claims are not unreasonable, even though I disagree with his point of view. 

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 9:05 AM, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

I think you're overreacting Rich.  He expressly states his special definition of "Darwinism":  "Darwinism, understood as the view that "chance and necessity" explains all biological complexity, plays no role."  You might critique him on this definition game -- obviously, duh, the study of disease resistance isn't an effort to "explain all biological complexity" -- but I don't see any suggestion here that we should stop studying who viruses mutate.

No, I'm not. If anything I am under-reacting. The context of the quote is a reaction to the firestorm caused by his response an essay contest entitled "Why Would I Want my Doctor to Have Studied Evolution" Egnor says it's completely unnecessary.

In fact, I think it's safe to say that the only contribution evolution has made to modern medicine is to take it down the horrific road of eugenics, which brought forced sterilization and bodily harm to many thousands of Americans in the early 1900s. That's a contribution which has brought shame—not advance—to the medical field.

So 'Why would I want my doctor to have studied evolution?' I wouldn't. Evolutionary biology isn't important to modern medicine. That answer won't win the 'Alliance for Science' prize. It's just the truth. 

We are not worried about explaining biological complexity here. We are concerned about developing a vaccine and the techniques in the paper (random Monte Carlo simulations, phylogenetic trees) are the warp and woof of evolutionary biology. But, because of the bugaboo that evolution appears  undesigned Egnor tells doctors not to study evolutionary biology. The emboldened part of the statement above I have no problem with. No science ever explains all of anything.  But, that should be a motivation to study evolutionary biology even more and to fill in the gaps like the paper I quoted does. But, if in order to keep the ID "dream" alive future doctors fail to learn evolutionary biology then I have a huge problem with it. It's true he doesn't say do not study how viruses mutate but he does eliminate important background knowledge in order for doctors to effectively do so.

Rich Blinne
Member ASA