All living organisms are maintained by thousands of chemical pathways, each involving a long series of complex chemical reactions. For example, the clotting of blood, which involves 20–30 steps, is absolutely vital to healing a wound. However, clotting could be fatal if it happened inside the body. Omitting one of the many steps, inserting an unwanted step, or altering the timing of a step would probably cause death. If one thing goes wrong, all the earlier marvelous steps that worked flawlessly were in vain. Evidently, these complex pathways were created as an intricate, highly integrated system.b
b . Behe, pp. 77–97.