Re: [asa] Medicine and Evolution

I am neither a biologist nor a physician, but in my opinion Rich has cause
to be alarmed. If an engineer says that he does not need knowledge of
certain aspects of science that that is fine, but when the engineer is
impying that those aspects of science are irrelevant then that is
unwarranted and dangerous.
Don

>
> 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.
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 On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 9:05 AM, David Opderbeck 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
>
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Received on Fri May 30 12:50:15 2008