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Some scientists call for a bigger dose of evolution in doctors' educations Joon Yun, MD, began considering how evolution applies to human health a decade ago, when his first heart disease patients died. These cases disturbed Yun, then a Stanford radiology resident. But they also intrigued him. Having studied evolutionary biology in college, Yun tried fitting these medical failures into that framework. His mind wandered to the early days of humans when heart disease was a rare trigger of death. In the prehistoric era, a more likely cause of death would have been an attack by a predator. The human...

BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday. Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies. He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events. Brother Consolmagno argued that the Christian God was a...

LINCOLN - After his campaign launched thousands of telephone calls aimed at his chief rival for governor, Tom Osborne stopped the calls Tuesday and personally apologized to Gov. Dave Heineman. Osborne, who said at the beginning of the campaign he would never say a "bad word" about his opponent, said the phone calls began before he had a chance to approve the final script. Heineman charged that the calls were an attempt to mislead voters about his record on illegal immigration and gasoline prices. He asked that Osborne call back all the people who received the calls and "set the...

Immunology had an unexpected and decisive part in challenging the claims of 'Intelligent Design' proponents at the US trial on the teaching of evolution in public schools in Dover, Pennsylvania. The latest skirmish in the ongoing controversy about the teaching of evolution in US schools ended decisively on 20 December 2005, when the introduction of 'Intelligent Design' (ID) in a public school biology class was struck down by US Federal Judge John E. Jones as an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The case, 'Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District', was brought by 11 parents from Dover, Pennsylvania, represented pro...

The Citation of "Evolution in Action" as Science's 2005 Breakthrough of the Year confirms that evolution is the vibrant foundation for all biology. Its contributions to understanding infectious disease and genetics are widely recognized, but its full potential for use in medicine has yet to be realized. Some insights have immediate clinical applications, but most are fundamental, as is the case in other basic sciences. Simply put, training in evolutionary thinking can help both biomedical researchers and clinicians ask useful questions that they might not otherwise pose. Although anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and embryology are recognized as basic sciences for medicine,...

Driving home one day last December from the courthouse in Harrisburg, Pa., Judge John E. Jones III tuned in to a radio news report about 11 parents in the nearby town of Dover who had filed a lawsuit challenging their school board's decision to include intelligent design in the high school biology curriculum. "It piqued my curiosity," the judge said. Not only was the suit likely to be the nation's first full hearing on the legal merits of teaching intelligent design, but it also had been filed in the federal court in Pennsylvania where he was serving. "Any judge will...

TO read the headlines, intelligent design as a challenge to evolution seems to be building momentum. ... Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies. And if the intelligent design proponents lose the case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement's credibility. On college campuses, the movement's theorists are academic pariahs, publicly denounced by their own colleagues. Design proponents have published few papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

I’m afraid we live in loopy times. How else to account for the latest entries in America’s culture wars: science museum docents donning combat gloves against rival fundamentalist tour groups and evolution on trial in a Pennsylvania federal court. For those keeping score, so far this year it’s Monkeys: 0, Monkey Business: 82. That's 82 evolution versus creationism debates in school boards or towns nationwide—this year alone. [1] This past summer, when most Americans were distracted by thoughts of beaches and vacations or the high price of gasoline (even before the twin hits of Katrina and Rita), 2 heavy-weight political...

Intelligent design — already the planned subject of a controversial Kansas University seminar this spring — will make its way into a second KU classroom in the fall, this time labeled as a “pseudoscience.” In addition to intelligent design, the class Archaeological Myths and Realities will cover such topics as UFOs, crop circles, extrasensory perception and the ancient pyramids. John Hoopes, associate professor of anthropology, said the course focused on critical thinking and taught how to differentiate science and “pseudoscience.” Intelligent design belongs in the second category, he said, because it cannot be tested and proven false. “I think this...

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution. A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."... Mirecki said his course, limited to 120 students, would explore intelligent design as a modern American mythology. Several faculty members have volunteered to be guest lecturers, he said.

Forward By Connie Morris Dear Kansas Teahching Proffsional, As you probibally had already herd, The Kansas Bored of Edukation has recently voted to teach alternatives to the Theory of Evoluition. As I have said before publicly, Evoluion is an “age-old fairytale”, as opposed to Intellgient Design, which is based on faith, bible scripture, and other non-fairytales. We are also happy to announce that, in our finite wisdom, we have also decided to redefine the word “Science” to include the comptemplation of supernatural explanations for natural phenomenon. I am so excited! Although this will now allow Kansas Science teachers to teach...

Dover board member's idea to render the case moot likely won't work, attorney said. By MICHELLE STARR Daily Record/Sunday News Monday's attempt by outgoing Dover Area School Board member David Napierskie to save the district from legal fees is not as simple as it sounded, said the district's attorney Richard Thompson. Napierskie asked the board to revoke the curriculum change that includes intelligent design, agree not to add it again and ask their legal representation, Thomas More Law Center, to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against them and pay $1 in damages. Napierskie said he believes the action...

HARRISBURG — After Alan Bonsell finished his testimony Monday, in which he accused two local newspaper reporters of making up the information that drove the Dover Area School District into a First Amendment lawsuit, Judge John E. Jones III demanded to see a copy of Bonsell's previous sworn statements. Steve Harvey, the plaintiffs' attorney who had cross-examined the Dover Area school board member, offered to provide a clean copy later in chambers. "I want it now if you have it," the federal judge said. At the end of the first day of the sixth week of Dover's court battle over...

HARRISBURG — It was surely one of the most anticipated moments in the history of federal jurisprudence, the appearance, finally, of former Dover Area School Board member Bill Buckingham at the Dover Panda Trial. And it did not disappoint. It was, in the truest sense of the word, unbelievable. Really. Unbelievable. At the onset of his stay on the witness stand, Buckingham raised his right hand and swore, or affirmed, to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Then, for the record, he stated his name. "William Buckingham." By the time he left the stand, six...

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A former school board member who denied advocating that creationism be taught alongside evolution in high-school biology classes changed his story Thursday after lawyers in a federal courtroom played a TV news clip that recorded him making such a comment. William Buckingham explained the discrepancy by saying that he "misspoke." Buckingham's testimony came in the fifth week of testimony in a lawsuit filed by eight families who are challenging the Dover Area School District's policy that students hear a statement about intelligent design in biology classes. Critics say intelligent design is a repackaging of the biblical view...

The irreducibly complex teeters on the verge of reduction. None of these difficulties were mentioned. Good morning, class. As you know, the local school board has decided that we must include “Intelligent Design” in high school biology, so let’s start with the work of Dr. Michael Behe, ID’s leading scientist. Dr. Behe, a professor of biochemistry, visited the U last week as a guest of the MacLaurin Institute. I spoke with him at lunch, attended his public lecture and took notes for today’s class. Dr. Behe opened his public lecture by showing two images: a mountain range and Mount Rushmore....

Defense lawyers said Dover board members didn't know the history before their vote. HARRISBURG — Intelligent design did not spring from Genesis, an expert testified Wednesday in the federal lawsuit against the Dover Area School District. Rather, its inspiration came from the Gospel of St. John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In the sixth day of the trial in U.S. Middle District Court, plaintiffs' attorneys used the testimony of Barbara Forrest, a Southeastern Louisiana University philosophy professor, to connect a series of dots regarding the history of the...

Two members applauded the burning of a depiction of evolution, Casey Brown testified. HARRISBURG — When he painted a mural depicting the ascent of man, Zach Strausbaugh had no idea that evolution was a controversial topic. "At the time, I really didn't give it a second thought," he said. "I believe in fact, and there are so many facts that support evolution." For his graduation requirement at Dover Area High School, the then-senior spent almost a semester working on the detailed 4-foot-by-16-foot painting of man evolving from his apelike ancestors. In 1998, he donated the work to his science department....

HARRISBURG — Wednesday morning, as day three of the Dover Panda Trial meandered into discussions of stoner logic and street cred, one of the lawyers for the school district, Patrick Gillen, asked Robert Pennock, a philosopher of science from Michigan State University and a serious, serious brainiac, whether the idea of "intelligent design" was a Big Ten theory. Pennock — who, I can't stress this enough, is an incredible brainiac — looked puzzled. It was clear that he had never heard of any connection between the idea of intelligent design and what some consider the best college football conference in...

Members of the national and international press gathered outside the federal courthouse in Harrisburg this morning for the start of a trial that could determine the fate of intelligent design in public school. The BBC, London Guardian and People magazine were among news agencies outside the courtroom, where the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover began at 9 a.m. Julian Borger, a Washington-based reporter for the Guardian, said the interest in the United Kingdom is in the American school system. He said people in the UK don't have the ability to vote on what is or isn't taught in school. "There...