21Sep 2025 by Post

Will We Care For or Kill Dementia Patients?

advance directive, Alzheimer’s disease, antibiotics, bioethics, burden, dementia, dementia patients, doula, hospice, killing, Medicine, nursing, palliative care, patients, Suffering, suicide, Thaddeus Mason Pope
I understand that people are terrified of dementia. Believe me, I get it. My mother died of Alzheimer’s. But I can’t wrap my head around the fact that advocacy for killing/suicide as the answer to the difficulties caused by the condition is becoming ubiquitous. Noted bioethicist and lawyer Thaddeus Mason Pope has written an essay, to be published in an edited volume, on this very issue. It lists eleven ways people can “avoid late-stage dementia,” and almost all involve intentionally ending life. Remember when we were told that advance medical directives are the key to not receiving life-extending treatment one does not want? They are, but that’s not good enough for Pope, because it doesn’t guarantee death: This strategy is Read More › Source
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16Sep 2024 by Post

Embrace the Chaos: How Cells Harness Disorder for Function

Alex Holehouse, AlphaFold, antibiotics, ATP synthase, biophysicists, botanis, Brownian motion, Caltech, car jacks, cell's, conformations, cytoplasm, Duke University, electrostatic conditions, eric hedin, Gabriella Heller, Intelligent Design, intrinsically disordered proteins, kinesin, Life Sciences, Maxwell’s demon, MIT, molecular machines, noncoding RNAs, nucleus, pollen grains, proteins, Robert Brown, Robert Shedinger, Scotsmen, socket wrenches, solubility, The Scientist, Washington University
In three classes of examples, cells are shown to manipulate chaotic forces toward functional purposes. Source
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02Feb 2024 by Post

Fossil Friday: New Evidence for the Human Nature of Neanderthals

anatomy, antibiotics, Australian aboriginals, behavior, Bence Viola, biospecies, body decoration, cave art, cavemen, eagle talons, Fossil Friday, gene pool, genetic admixture, glue, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, human nature, Human Origins, human uniqueness, jewelry, lordosis, mating partners, Michael Shermer, native Australians, Neanderthals, ochre, painkillers, paleontology, seafood, spinal curvature, stone circles, Svante Pääbo, Thomas Huxley, University of Toronto
What is at stake is not just some esoteric species problem in the ivory tower, but the very question of human nature and human uniqueness. Source
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25Sep 2021 by Post

The Design Connection in Biological Tracking Systems

anatomy, antibiotics, biology, CELS 2021, Conference on Engineering in Living Systems, environmental conditions, Evolution, evolvability, information, Intelligent Design, irreducibly complex systems, neo-Darwinian evolution, physiology, sensors, switches, technological innovation, timescales, tracking systems, waiting times, Zoltan Szallasi
If organisms resulted from haphazard undirected processes, their design constraints would be few and highly flexible. Source
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10Apr 2020 by Post

No, Despite Often-Heard Claims, Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria Is Not Evolution

Adam Gopnik, animal husbandry, antibiotic resistance, antibiotics, Artificial Selection, bacteria, Charles Darwin, doctors, Evolution, evolutionary biology, health, infectious diseases, Intelligent Design, Jonathan Wells, Los Angeles, medical care, medical research, Medicine, natural selection, On the Origin of Species, P.Z. Myers, plant breeding, superbug, The Myth of Darwinian Medicine (series), The New Yorker
Editor’s note: As biologist Jonathan Wells observes, “[T]he measures being taken against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic owe nothing to evolutionary theory.” Yet a persistent claim from evolutionists is that medical research would be crippled without a Darwinian framework. Evolution News presents a series of our previously published work addressing the myth of “Darwinian medicine.” Darwinian biologist and blogger P.Z. Myers wrote a post in which he lamented the fact that medical researchers rarely invoke evolution in their published research, whereas evolutionary biologists routinely invoke evolution. This is of course true. I pointed out that this is because evolutionary inferences are of no significant help to medical research. Inference to evolution is a narrative gloss on the real science in medicine. It is a point that I, along with others, have been making…
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05Apr 2020 by Post

Darwinian Biologist Notices that Evolution Is Irrelevant to Medical Research

antibiotics, creation myth, creationists, doctors, Evolution, Evolution News, fairy tales, medical research, medical researchers, Medicine, narrative gloss, P.Z. Myers, Philip Skell, research papers, The Myth of Darwinian Medicine (series), thought police
Editor’s note: As biologist Jonathan Wells observes, “[T]he measures being taken against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic owe nothing to evolutionary theory.” Yet a persistent claim from evolutionists is that medical research would be crippled without a Darwinian framework. Evolution News presents a series of our previously published work addressing the myth of “Darwinian medicine.” Darwinist P.Z. Myers is shocked that medical researchers aren’t invoking “evolution” regularly in their research papers: It’s not just creationists! It’s also MDs who avoid the “E” word. A survey of the literature found an interesting shift in usage: “The results of our survey showed a huge disparity in word use between the evolutionary biology and biomedical research literature. In research reports in journals with primarily evolutionary or genetic content, the word “evolution” was used 65.8% of…
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