Posted on 11/11/2005 4:47:36 PM PST by Wolfstar
Each year in the United States, about 150,000 babies are born with birth defects ranging from mild to life threatening. While progress has been made in the detection and treatment of birth defects, they remain the leading cause of death in the first year of life. Birth defects are often the result of genetic and environmental factors, but the causes of well over half of all birth defects are currently unknown.
Following is a partial list of birth defects:
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Achondroplasia/Dwarfism |
Hemochromatosis |
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Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency |
Huntington's Disease |
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Anencephaly |
Hydrocephalus |
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Arnold-Chiari Malformation |
Klinefelter's Syndrome |
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Ataxia Telangiectasia |
Leukodystrophies |
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Blood coagulation disorders/Hemophilia |
Marfan Syndrome |
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Brain malformations/genetic brain disorders |
Metabolic disorders |
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Canavan Disease |
Muscular Dystrophy |
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Cancer: Neonatal, newborn, infant and childhood |
Neural tube defects/Spina Bifida |
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Cerebral Palsy |
Neurofibromatosis |
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Cleft lip and palate |
Niemann-Pick Disease |
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Club foot/club hand |
Osteogenesis Imperfecta (brittle bone disease) |
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Congenital heart disease |
Phenylketonuria |
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Conjoined twins |
Prader-Willi Syndrome |
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Cystic Fibrosis |
Progeria (advanced aging in children) |
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Down Syndrome |
Sickle Cell Anemia |
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Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome |
Spinal Muscular Atrophy |
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Eye, ear and speech defects |
Tay-Sachs Disease |
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Fragile X Syndrome |
Tuberous Sclerosis |
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Gaucher's Disease |
Turner's Syndrome |
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Genital and urinary tract defects |
Wilson's Disease |
Some birth/genetic defects, such as near-sightedness, are mild and do not affect the person's ability to lead a normal life. Others are so severe that the person has no chance to even live. Efficiency and economy are part of intelligently designed systems. If the "design" of human systems is so intelligent, why do tragic inefficiencies such as the following occur at all? Warning, the linked photos are graphic medical images, and are very, very sad.
Conjoined twins, i.e., monozygous twinning in which there is fusion of the twins. The popular term is "Siamese" twins. This happens when identical twin embryos become fused together during the very early stages of development. Conjoined twins occur in an estimated one in 200,000 births, with approximately half being stillborn. Here are links to three photos of severely conjoined twins:
Photo 2: essentially one torso between two babies
Neural tube defects are are one of the more common congenital anomalies. Such defects result from improper embryonic neural tube closure. The most minimal defect is called spina bifida, with failure of the vertebral body to completely form, but the defect is not open. Open neural tube defects with lack of a skin covering, can include a meningocele, in which meninges protrude through the defect. Here is a link to a severe neural tube defect.
Defects of the head/brain: In the linked photo a large encephalocele that merges with the scalp above is protruding from the back of the head. The encephalocele extends down to partially cover a rachischisis on the back. This baby also has a retroflexed head from iniencephaly.
The form of neural tube defect in the next linked photo is known as exencephaly. The cranial vault is not completely present, but a brain is present because it was not completely exposed to amniotic fluid. Such an event is very rare. It may be part of craniofacial clefts associated with the limb-body wall complex, which results from early amnion disruption.
Congenital and pediatric neoplasms: One type that can occur is a teratoma. The next linked photo shows a large nasopharyngeal teratoma that is protruding from the oral cavity.
Tumors: In the next linked photo there is a large mass involving the left upper arm and left chest of the baby. This congenital neoplasm turned out to be a lymphangioma. This baby and the one in Photo 9 were essentially riddled with cancer before birth and shortly afterwards.
Next is a gross neuroblastoma arising in the right adrenal gland. It is the most common pediatric malignancy in infancy, and 75% of cases are diagnosed in children less than 4 years old. These tumors most often present as an abdominal or mediastinal mass.
Wolfstar, are you confusing Creation Science with Intelligent Design? They are not the same thing, though CS uses ID ideas in its arguments. ID operates under fairly strict scientific standards, and does not mix religion with science. If you are asking why do bad things happen to good people, ID can't answer that.
Much of the evidence that supports Darwinian Evolution is controversial. Such as: the use of discredited experiments, the use of fake pictures, the use of “story telling” to support claims of so-called “missing links” in the fossil record, circular arguments regarding the similarity of vertebrate limbs to support claims of common ancestry, the use of staged photos of moths resting on tree trunks to demonstrate the efficacy of natural selection when biologists have known since the 1980's that moths don’t rest on tree trunks, and on and on and on.
The fossil record itself contradicts gradualism
as it reflects sharp and sudden bursts of increased complexity as witnessed by the Cambrian explosion and the origin of life itself.
The academic world has more or less consigned ID to an intellectual black hole, making pariahs of ID professors, keeping them out of prestigious scientific journals, preventing them from discussing ID at scientific conventions, or worse yet, appearing in science textbooks.
No contradiction is permitted of the official dogma that Darwinian evolution is adequate to explain all phenomena and that teleological or design conceptions of nature are invalid.
Is this objective science or intellectual oppression?
No, I don't claim any expertise in this field. I just find the amount of time and energy that people spend railing against it to be quite remarkable and far more than a "rational person" would reasonably expend on a harmless belief some other person might hold. Just as you wish the understand the logic of intelligent design, I have tried to understand the emotion of those who oppose it. From outside this debate, it seems almost fear induced, and way out of proportion. Can you tell me what it is these people fear?
Death could be the ultimate birth defect, although in a universe such as ours, unrestricted life might be considered a cancer.
At this point it would only be fair of me to identify myself as an evangelical christian. Although I am not an educated person, I do have an interest in ID because over the years all of the arguments in this area have been based on large biological structures such a eyes etc. ID makes it impossible to posit macro solutions to the problem by reducing the scope of the question to the smallest units.
It is easy enough to cite primitive eyes when trying to explain a complex eye, but it is far more difficult to cite primitive molecular systems and processes when trying to explain irreducibly complex molecular systems and processes.
Nice to meet you xzins.
As they may, and as they should. Their taxes pay for the public schools, too. Again, it does not make sense to separate theology and science just because a few people say it must be so. Public schools ought not be a place of indoctrination, but open to free inquiry. It is not at all contrary to reason to think that, where there are demonstrations of consistent order in the universe, intelligent design may be behind them. It is not at all unreasonable to consider that God may be scientifically accessible. Science and education are not in the business of declaring what they cannot do.
I'd like to go fishing with you some day.
What does that mean?
Hi, TB. I, too, am an evangelical Christian. I appreciate the emphasis on the incredible complexity of micro-organisms. It's not like I could drop an electric cord in my dirty dishwater and create an amoeba.
I doubt these images, as horrible as they are, really shake anyone's beliefs in God or Intelligent Design. These cases you show are exceptions, not the rule.
All I can say is that if this is the best you can do it is pretty sad.
I was responding to the "exceptions, not the rule" statement. That they're exceptions makes it all better, I suppose. As long as you're not one of the exceptions.
Birth defects are not by design, they are defects in the building process.
What's makes you think they're not by design; how do you know?
Anything a human can design can be built improperly. A complex computer can have a hardware "glitch" in the manufacturing. A single car out of many can have been built wrong though the design is sound.
All true, but beside the point. Unless you're asserting that humans were designed by humans.
I have never heard a genetic specialist say that birth defects were from "bad design".
So?
It almost always happened because of some external environmental issue or because there were certain recessive genetic traits that ended up showing up.
The jury is still out on the effects of "external environmental issues," but "recessive genetic traits" are part of the design by definition, aren't they?
Given how complex human life forms are it is amazing it doesn't happen more often...
Why?
What evidence would you accept?
And if the evidence is presented, then what standard of proof would be sufficient to convince you that it is a viable theory? Must it be proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Must it be clear and convincing? Must it be sufficient to produce probable cause?
"Evolution-only" has not met any of those evidenciary standards. While the scientific evidence suggests that the creation has been endowed with a built in mechanism for change, there is no evidence that the mechanism was not designed and there is no evidence that the mechanism itself was generated by the random movement and combination of atoms and molecules. This, of course, begs the question of where the atoms themselves came from and why the atoms themselves would contain within them the intelligence to generate life and then build an incredibly complex mechanism for the regeneration of that life.
The mere fact that there are defects in the umpteenth generation of specifically desgined organisms is evidence that the tendency of the evolutionary process is toward increased randomness rather than increased order. But I digress.
I was responding to the "exceptions, not the rule" statement. That they're exceptions makes it all better, I suppose. As long as you're not one of the exceptions.
I am a little confused what you mean here. How does making it the exception all the better? Let me sort of repeat myself by saying that given all the babies ever conceived (not necessarily born) sometimes the building process can go wrong. It doesn't mean they were designed that way but it means that the building process went wrong. Can you clarify your statement of "That they're exceptions makes it all better"?
What's makes you think they're not by design; how do you know?
I was responding to the pictures where none of these babies lived. I do not know if they were designed to be this way or not but my guess is they were not. Do not get me wrong. I am not attempting to belittle people who do live but who are... let's say "conjoined twins" or they are born with birth defects that either make them blind, mentally retarded, or whatever. But up until recently (last 200 years) many children with severe birth defects did not live. Even "small" birth defects by today's standards would have made life difficult before modern medicine. A baby born blind in a mudhut in ancient Europe or Asia would not have lived very long would they?
So that is my only clue that these defects were not by design... because if they were they would have lived much longer.
All true, but beside the point. Unless you're asserting that humans were designed by humans.
No I am not asserting that they were designed by humans. To put it in cold... callous, industrialized terms, humans were the manufacturers, not the designers or engineers. When two humans make a baby they do not sit around and decide which nucleic acid comes first in a chain of DNA. "Gee Betsy, you sure the adenosine should go before the guanine?". Nope that doesn't happen... Humans do the building (ok... women do 99.999%). Now sometimes the manufacturing process goes wrong correct?
The jury is still out on the effects of "external environmental issues," but "recessive genetic traits" are part of the design by definition, aren't they?
When I say "external environmental issues" I don't just mean mercury in the water. It could be a large number of factors such as the stress factor on the mother. Still how can you say the jury is still out? How many medications do you read that says "Do not take if you are pregnant"? Do I have to post the millions of cases where pollution and stress caused many birth defects? With all due respect your proverbial jury has decided this a long long time ago.
You are correct about genetic recessive traits being "part of the design". But autosomal recessive disorders, where the baby has a disorder because both mother and father have the recessive gene and passes it on, can be quite fatal. Take for example the very terrible disease of Tay Sachs. There is no cure and fatal for children.
I cannot say if this is by design but for something like Tay Sachs to happen, both parents have to have it and then they have to pass it on to their children. About 1 in 30 persons of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry carries the Tay Sachs gene (see:http://www.lpch.org/DiseaseHealthInfo/HealthLibrary/genetics/recessive.html).
For a baby to get Tay Sachs both parents would need to have the recessive gene and then both would need to pass it on. Statistically it ends up as being the exception that the baby suffers from it, not the rule.
Given how complex human life forms are it is amazing it doesn't happen more often...
Why?
Because the process of creating a baby (or any life) is very, very complex. There are many, many places in the building of a baby where things can go completely wrong. Not to mention that the DNA sequence is quite long and if a mistake is made in even a small place in the sequence during replication(depending on where it is) the baby may not live.
Thanks, that's what I thought.
An interesting defense of lying.
This is not really an answer to your post but a notion that popped up while reading it. Since you seem thoughtful, maybe you'd be willing to take a crack at responding to it.
What if ID were true but our glorious selves were not the "goal" but a trivial side effect of the designer wanting to breed more and better bacteria?
Birth defect is -not- a result of the misbehavior of the person with the defect. Ever.
Do you think that an uncaring human gravid female is going to be personally upset at the pain her child suffers?
What about a sheep that eats the wrong kind of grass?
Not following you.. Take a breath, think for a minute..
And try to make some sense.. you can do it..
That is an interesting point. I am curious though by what you mean by "better" bacteria? Did you mean "better" as in bacteria that would be resistant to anti-biotics or to immune systems? If so... then there is a problem because there is only one way bacteria becomes more resistant; genetic selection through a series of generations. This is also known as "survival of the fittest", genetic adaptations to environment changes or... evolution.
And so... the Intelligent Designer would be using evolution for creating "better" bacteria. The problem is it would be proof that evolution does exist. I was under the impression that evolution and ID were mutually exclusive (am I wrong?).
I think he took your statement to mean that of the misbehavior of the person with the defect. I think you meant misbehavior of the Parent but he did not read it that way. Also you should clarify misbehavior. I assume you mean something like smoking, drugs, alcohol, etc... while pregnant correct?
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