RE: [asa] Medicine and Evolution

I just visited my doctor yesterday and had I read your message before I would have asked my physician what he makes out of evolutionary theory or evolution. I would be disappointed in him if he had said that evolution is relevant to his knowledge of medicine or his practice. What is relevant for patient treatment is to know enough about your genes in order to foresee some future problems. However, that knowledge does not go so far in time that it would involve notions of evolution.

 
Moorad

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of gordon brown
Sent: Sat 5/31/2008 11:09 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Medicine and Evolution

I wonder how many of you know what your personal physician believes about
evolution.

I have never tried to find out what mine believes. I just assume that all
physicians believe that viruses can mutate and that bacteria can become
resistant to antibiotics through natural selection. Even educated YECs
believe this. It has never occurred to me that it should make any
difference to me whether my doctor believes that birds are descended from
dinosaurs.

Gordon Brown (ASA member)

On Sat, 31 May 2008, Murray Hogg wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> One consideration that seems to me pertinent in discussing this issue is the
> common YEC distinction between macro- and micro-evolution.
>
> I should have thought that a medical researcher who holds to a YEC
> position could well have allowed Rich's point about the importance of
> understanding biological evolution in the context of their discipline -
> only they would argue that what is seen in the lab is variation within a
> particular "kind." I further imagine that there would be a disclaimer to
> the effect that such variation cannot be extrapolated to discussions about
> biological evolution of the broad "molecule to man" variety. And I think it
> quite obvious that they would, as always, consider this later discussion to
> be quite irrelevant to questions of specific cases of variation within
> specific "kinds."

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Received on Sat May 31 11:20:04 2008