Posted on 02/24/2006 1:42:41 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
Ping-a-ling!
Are you saying doctors don't know about this stuff?
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Zzzz....
Most doctors are quite familiar with evolution.
Note that the divine FSM is part plant and animal. Norris is FSM's servant, dispatching justice in the manner as he was designed to do. :-)
Note that the divine FSM is part plant and animal. Norris is FSM's servant, dispatching justice in the manner as he was designed to do. :-)
Does this mean Chuck Norris is the midget beside the mountain?
Yes. He's actually 5'10" tall but is considered a midget in contrast to the giants that roamed the earth prior to the Great Flood (Noah didn't have room for giants on his ark).
Trivia tidbit: Chuck's real first name is "Carlos."
Indeed they are. Those are the only ones I'd consider going to.
That's a fact!
Do you always have conversations with yourself?
check back to see how thread evolves
Then what was your point?
I accept evolution, but I believe it to be of minor importance to practicing physicians and scientists (except for evolutionary biologists). Far from rebutting that belief, the editorial confirms it. Consider:
Biochemistry courses cover bilirubin metabolism, but an evolutionary explanation for why bilirubin is synthesized at all is new: It is an efficient free-radical scavenger.
Evolutionary theory may explain the purpose of bilirubin synthesis; but biochemists were able to discover the pathway for bilirubin metabolism without explicit reference to evolutionary theory. That is pretty much true of all of biochemistry: the chemistry came first, the evolutionary explanation came along later.
Pharmacology emphasizes individual variation in genes encoding cytochrome P450s, but their evolutionary origins in processing dietary toxins are just being fully appreciated.
In other words, the pharmacology came first; the evolutionary explanation came later (after the real work has been done).
In physiology, fetal nutritional stress appears to flip an evolved switch that sets the body into a state that protects against starvation. When these individuals encounter modern diets, they respond with the deadly metabolic syndrome of obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.
Was metabolic syndrome predicted by evolutionary biology, then observed in individual patients? Or did it happen the other way around?
Evolution is more explanatory than predictive when it comes to biochemistry, molecular biology, and related fields.
How about the doctors that needlessly prescribe antibiotics to patients without the understanding that "super" strains of bacteria are evolving that are becoming resistant to every known antibiotic?
I don't think the authors disagree. Their point was that, if medicine took more of an evolutionary perspective, that more predictiveness would result.
(BTW, I disagree w.r.t. biochemistry. With the advent of genomics, molecular evolution is assuming more and more of a role in modern biochemistry. Bioinformatics is perhaps the hottest current subfield of biochem./mol. biol. )
Patients want antibiotics for everything these days. I think if we know about superstrains, doctors probably know too.
Of course, there is the chance that these doctors were not allowed to learn the theory of evolution in high school.
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