"when the fossil record should exhibit nothing but transitional fossils."
Well, to be technical, all fossils are, to some degree, transitional, because they creatures are all dead now.
Fossils are snapshots. By the nature, it's like getting some frames of a movie.
Except there are multiple copies of the same snapshot, like the seven Archaeopteryx fossils, which makes these fossils ambiguous evidence for evolution, at best.
Therefore, no Evo should be against 'birth defects'.
It's merely the big E trying to function and Man trying to put a STOP to him..........