Why do so many liberals who look down on fundies for denying evolution

[hedgehog]

fail to understand that the rapid spread of newly mutated viruses is an illustration of evolution in action?

Most people have some resistance to most flu strains because they've been exposed and their immune systems trained to fight those viruses. The H1N1 flu virus is different enough from other flu viruses that most people's immune systems won't stop it. Thus, when government officials suggest that a lot of people are likely to get sick this fall and winter, they aren't shilling for Big Pharma, they're using basic science to anticipate the most likely scenario.

Don't confuse this with the 1976 swine flu fiasco. President Ford was informed that two soldiers had swine flu. The CDC wasn't concerned, just keeping an eye on things. It was Ford's political advisers who ramped up the response, not his scientific advisers.

What we have here are documented cases of a new virus appearing all over the world. Health agencies world wide are taking steps to respond to this. Even if the virus doesn't mutate further and most cases are mild, a lot of people are likely to get sick. You can argue over whether vaccines are good or bad, but to suggest that the worry over H1N1 is nothing but mass hysteria is in the same category as explaining how Noah got the dinosaurs on the Ark.

[havocmom]

1. Why do fundies who breed livestock not believe in evolution?

They actively work to evolve their stock.

I understand that viruses evolve. Hell, I can't keep from getting sick anymore.

[hedgehog]

6. Why do the same people who understand that bacteria develop

resistance to antibiotics refuse to believe viruses mutate?

We have had different Presidents lie to us for political purposes, but that doesn't mean that every government warning is politically motivated.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Well I concluded a while ago that anti science thinking is an American trait

not just a fundy one.

Care for some popcorn? I expect the usual crew soon... flinging the usual poo.

Good post by the way.

[undeterred]

3. Noah used propofol on the dinosaurs

and picked them up with cranes to load them onto the Ark.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. that picture always makes me laugh

it is just wrong... and so Flinstones.

[TokenQueer]

7. Jesus healed the Sleestak.

[Brother Buzz]

53. Cranes? We use helicopters to relocate the pesky Brachiosaurus.

They become a real nuisance in late fall when they discover and devour the budding illicit marijuana plots in the hills, then wander down and rampage through the local farmers markets. They've grown extremely fond of the baked goods!

[nadinbrzezinski]

59. LOL, can you blame them? They got a serious case of the MUNCHIES

:-)

[Trajan]

5. You open by talking about the Liberal view of the 'Fundy' view of Evolution ....

And then proceed to speak about Ford's view and his advisor's view of Swine Flu ....

I am not very sure what you want to talk about .... It (your statement) seems too scattershot to rally a cogent and compact response ...

In the end: I don't really give a fuck what Fundies think .... About Evolution, H1N1 Influenza, or Ford's advisors ...

[Canuckistanian]

8. It makes sense to me

There are a lot of people on DU who deny that H1N1 is any kind of problem.

But the OP is suggesting that it's only a matter of simple evolution that we SHOULD worry about a pandemic.

[timeforpeace]

10. Even if it's just hysteria (we're what, a year in?), it makes national health care more appealing

to the frightened masses so we need to go for it, either way. Only the gummint can save us from the swiners flu of 2008, now the dreaded swine flu of 2009, soon to be the about-to-mutate swine flu of 2010.

[Canuckistanian]

28. Our own govt. headed off SARS

Health Canada was credited with quick action in fending off the spread of SARS.

And I partially credit that to the fact that the people aren't afraid of going to their doctors (and getting charged).

Irrational fear is your worst enemy in a serious pandemic.

[hedgehog]

30. Some hold up SARS as an example of a false alarm, but I think

it represents a shining example of governments working together to prevent the spread of disease. In fact, when I did a little research tonight, I was shocked at what a near miss SARS was.

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. Actually I credit Healh Canada

and the draconian measures in the East.

The near miss was because protocols worked, and at least Health Canada had a top down review after the fact since they did have some serious problems that were close calls... Toronto Gen not fully isolation comes to mind...

I don't live in Canada, but I had access to CBC, which also deserves part of the credit. Their coverage was top notch.

By the way, this may not shock you, but the coverage and explanations of Hinnie flu in Mexico have been much better than here too.

[hedgehog]

34. Hmmm.... I wonder how much of Health Cananda's efforts were

related to the Canadian health insurance system. Is it possible that electronic health records made data gathering easier?

[nadinbrzezinski]

37. Actually the electrionic records were a consequence of this

from what I remember. Some places had it in place, but not all.

If you can watch CBC, they are just THAT GOOD, especially when they have a problem like this one.

It is not the OH MY FUCKING GOD WE ARE GONNA DIE, but rather a factual reporting... going into facts, figures and recommendations, and calls for people to remain calm.

[hedgehog]

50. Wait - a government system of health care that learns and adapts?

Surely you jest! The Republicans have told me government can't do anything right!

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. My bad, sorry for contradicting the Publcans

they know what they speak after all

:evilgrin:

But they will be the FIRST ones to call 9.11 and complaint when the cops don't get there fast enough!

[hedgehog]

17. If anything, this may be an example of Stephen Gould's

Punctuated equilibrium. (I'm not certain if the theory applies here or not). The H1N1 virus is different enough from other flu viruses that it is effectively a new virus.

[Canuckistanian]

25. Exactly my point

This new virus, originating from two different species, would be alien to our immune systems.

We've had them before, but each new alien virus brings a risk of a repeat of the Spanish Flu of the early 1900s.

It happens on a regular basis.

[hedgehog]

29. It's been pointed out to me by another poster that I may be

using the wrong terms. Is H1N1 technically a new species or a variation on an old one? Viruses are so strange that I'm not sure what the proper terms are. 40 years ago we were taught viruses reproduce asexually. But when several viruses get together and swap genes ( the dirty things!), is that asexual or sexual reproduction?

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. Asexual

[hedgehog]

36. OK, they aren't swapping fluids, but they are swapping genes.

It turns out that a lot of those microorganisms have been having orgies all along, and we never knew it!

Dang those scientists, never content to leave well enough alone, always learning something new!

[nadinbrzezinski]

39. Yep, and they just change faster than we can say

mutation...

Hell, you can find the first cases of this hinnie flu before it became person to person solid, as early as 2003 iirc in CDC records.

And now we are giving it back to the piggies... three times so far, that I have seen in the news.

[Canuckistanian]

38. Definitely asexual

Viruses don't have sexes. They're barely even life forms by the old fashioned standard definitions of life.

[hedgehog]

41. I'm pulling your chain a little on this because the more we learn about

viruses, the more we realize our tidy categories may not apply. Like you said, you get down to point of asking whether these things are alive or not. Prions are even more puzzling. If I understand prions, it's a case of a particular crystal structure reproducing.

On edit - I'm thinking that there must be a new term out there for this process. Do the two viruses swap genes or copy each other's genes? If you start out with two viruses AB and CD and end up with two viruses AC and BD, what is that called? Or do you end up with four viruses, AB, CD, AC, BD?

And people say science is boring!

[Canuckistanian]

42. Prions scare me a lttle

They're even lower on the complexity scale - individual proteins.

Hell, if a PROTEIN can kill you systematically, what's next? A rogue complex molecule? A malevolent simple compound?

[hedgehog]

44. There's some speculation that Alzheimer's could be a prion disease.

The hypothesis is that prions develop all the time, but that our immune systems spot them and destroy them. In diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's, the theory goes, what is inherited is an inability to destroy prions.

The Story of the Family that Couldn't Sleep
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6503414

[nadinbrzezinski]

46. Yes, Carbon Monoxide will kill you

and trust me, it is NOT alive in any sense of the imagination

To me Prions just added a level of complexity to the definition, and perhaps made the chain from simple molecules to life easier to breach

[hedgehog]

12. Let me try again:

1. Fundies deny the theory of evolution.

2. Some liberals laugh at them for their deliberate ignorance of science.

3. Health agencies worldwide are warning that a global pandemic of a new flu virus is happening now. This warning is based on confirmed cases compared to past observations of epidemics.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLAW00009920090611

4. This virus is spreading because it represents a major mutation from other flu viruses already in circulation.

5. This virus is causing a pandemic because it is different enough that most people have no resistance; this virus is currently very successful; it is multiplying rapidly as it spreads from person to person.
This is evolution in action.

6. Some liberals deny that there is a pandemic and claim the MSM and Big Pharma are placing too much importance on this hoping to profit on hysteria.

7. Liberals can be forgiven some skepticism because of the fallacious predictions of a Swine Flu epidemic in 1976.

8. The difference between then and now is that in 1976 the warnings of an epidemic were politically motivated. His scientific advisers warned Ford that two cases did not mean an epidemic was imminent. He ignored them and placed the entire country on alert. Today the warnings are based on monitoring that has shown this virus is indeed spreading.

9. So the question is, why are some liberals who claim to understand evolution so quick to deny an example of evolution in action?

[sharesunited]

9. Many creationists accept mutation but not to the degree that one species can turn into another.

[theoldman]

14. They don't, they evolve into a similar species.

Prehistoric cats do not become dogs as an example.

[sharesunited]

19. Well damn, son. If we all started as single-cell creatures, there's more than that went on!

[seabeyond]

11. most peoples immune system wont stop it. what. stop it in as most people will die?

they said the same with west niles. they said the same with sars

that is the answer why people are not sittin in fear

they put the fear in us with
chicken pox
menigitus
hep a
cervical cancer.

[hedgehog]

15. No, the concern is that a lot of people will be sick for a few days.

If the H1N1 flu had the same death rate as typical flu infections, a lot more people will die this year simply because a lot more people will be sick.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. Chicken Pox used to kill many folks

in fact, a few million Native American Indians died when the Europeans showed up. There is this thing called a vaccine... why it is no longer a thread... then there are two vials in two different bio hazard facilities. IF either ever got lose... yes, tin foil, novel material, but still possible...

Meningitis used to kill a lot of people... but then there came the antibiotics. By the way it is becoming a little more aggressive, at least a couple times, due to increased resistance... aka evolution.

Hep A is a major problem that leads to liver damage and death, not a pleasant one... common in places with poor sanitation systems

Cervical cancer kills more people per year than oh the yearly flu, not to be confused with Hinnie Flu

And West Nile, they never said it would drop people left and right, but it had the potential to kill some, which it does, one method is meningitis.

:banghead:

Oh and Hinnie flu has a fairly mild actual death rate. See CDC releases.

Now if it mutates into a more deadly form it will more than just strain the medical system by the way... but nobody is saying people will fall like flies

Pandemic DOES NOT mean bring out your dead. It is a very technical definition meaning human to human transmission in two or more areas of the world.

[hedgehog]

24. BTW - who are "they"?

[saltpoint]

13. I think we get it with viruses and I think we're on target with the fundie

nutbags as well.

It really doesn't take much to send some people into hysterics. I've seen skulls explode over overbooked flights at an airport. Some people are geared to crises. Hysteria by any other name, etc.

The fundamentalists who dismiss evolution run many of the same routes as fundamentalists who oppose stem cell research, no matter who funds it. IMO it is one thing to say that these fundies are anti-Science, and I think that is a fair statement, but it may also be true that they oppose stem cell research because if it becomes institutionalized as an effective response to disease, the middle-man between humans and God becomes the scientist and not Rev. Blowhard at the Hellfire Megachurch.

It is threatening to them in every respsect and at all levels, including definitional.

[nadinbrzezinski]

51. And you just defined the conflict between secularism and religion

going back to at least Galileo.

:thumbsup:

[saltpoint]

54. They're still putting Galileo on trial, too, and it's a damned stubborn jury.

I think of the Indigo Girls' masterwork, "Galileo" :

- - -

Galileo's head was on the block
His crime was looking up the truth...

- - -



:hi:

[NNN0LHI]

16. Who here is denying that viruses mutate? If there is someone I ain't seen him. Have you?

Shit I have lived through two pandemics. Someone trying to deny that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic

The "Asian Flu", 1957–58. An H2N2 virus caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957. It caused about 2 million deaths globally.

The "Hong Kong Flu", 1968–69. An H3N2 caused about 34,000 deaths in the United States. This virus was first detected in Hong Kong in early 1968, and spread to the United States later that year. This pandemic of 1968 and 1969 killed an estimated one million people worldwide. Influenza A (H3N2) viruses still circulate today.




The problem I keep seeing crop up is everyone tries to insinuate that the current or next pandemic will be similar to the "Spanish flu", 1918–1919 pandemic:

The "Spanish flu", 1918–1919. First identified early in March 1918 in US troops training at Camp Funston, Kansas. By October 1918, it had spread to become a world-wide pandemic on all continents, and eventually infected an estimated one third of the world's population (or ≈500 million persons). Unusually deadly and virulent, it ended nearly as quickly as it began, vanishing completely within 18 months. In six months, some 50 million were dead; some estimates put the total of those killed worldwide at over twice that number. An estimated 17 million died in India, 675,000 in the United States and 200,000 in the UK. The virus was recently reconstructed by scientists at the CDC studying remains preserved by the Alaskan permafrost. They identified it as a type of H1N1 virus.


Nothing could be further from the truth. Medicine in 1918 was in its infancy back then. They were using leeches to lower fever and they were still removing bullets at the barber shop. Christ we didn't even have Penicillin in 1918 to fight off secondary infections like pneumonia which caused the majority of deaths back then.

So your question confuses me?

Don

[hedgehog]

21. There is still some concern that the virus could mutate based upon

what can be pieced together about 1918-1919. Even if the H1N1 doesn't mutate further and has the same mortality as other viruses, it is still a new virus. New virus = more people than usual sick = more people than usual dying. What I am seeing in various posts is an attitude that there is no reason for concern because the warnings are motivated solely by a profit.

[thereismore]

18. You are talking about micro-evolution. A virus can change, that's micro-evolution

A virus has never become a different virus, let alone a bacterium or something else. Therefore, evolution of a virus does not prove speciation (a single cell to a mammal). Your argument does not prove speciation. It does not mean speciation did not happen, however, it just means you have to come up with better examples than viruses turning into viruses.

[hedgehog]

22. My last formal training in evolutionary theory was in 1970, so

I bow to your explanation. I think the point I'm trying to make is that the current warnings about the H1N1 spreading this winter are based ultimately in evolutionary theory. To insist over and over that the warnings are bogus seems as wrongheaded to me as suggestions that the world was created in 7 days 6000 years ago.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. Well that was a preacher by the nam of Darbee, and got it down to

the date and the hour... a day in March if I remember... more trivia than you wanted by the way I am sure.

I remember seeing a fundy trying to match this date of creation with the fact that... archeological evidence he was using to prove the bible was over 9K years old. I had to ahem. point that little factoid out.

:evilgrin:

[hedgehog]

26. Well, Darbee was just plain wrong. Bishop Usher clearly

proved the world was created Sunday 23 October 4004 BC.

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ussher.htm

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. Believe you me, they fight over that shit

:-)

And the Jesuits just stand back and scratch their heads.

[thereismore]

43. Jesuits understood that money is more important than trifles such as doctrine. nt

[hedgehog]

47. Not exactly fair to the Jesuits. They're a mixed bag, but still,

ever hear of Teilhard de Chardin?

[thereismore]

49. No, but I'll google him. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

56. One reason why I wrote that

then there is the CURRENT head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientist in his own right...

(The guy in Religiously, and a damn good one as well. They've even interviewed him in The Universe saying, that science and religion do not contractict each other and creation is an older way to understand the cosmological origin of the universe. I also knew a Jesuit back in the day, I wonder what happened to him. He was going for his PhD in microbiology at UCSD and serving the community in Tijuana... oh you should have seen the discussions of cosmology and philosophy we got into. He also said one day, "

you know the end of the US will be the radical religious right, mostly because they are letting life by."

The first and last time we went that deeply into modern politics. He compared them to the Cristeros, we were talking Mexican History.

[XemaSab]

27. Then why is there virus DNA in the middle of our genetic code?

:shrug:

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. Because we have co-evolved with these critters

look on the bright side, we are not recombinant factories, like pigs are. It is in pigs were the mixing happens.

Why most of the strains that affect humans are B strains. This one is an A= animal strain

Of course we can all go into the jokes about children being WMD factories, but that is just in jest

[hedgehog]

40. That's absolutely mind boggling. As I understand it, multicellular

organisms developed when a couple single cell types got together to split up the work. Then, different organisms snuck in when they had the chance. I think our mitochondria are descended from one such interloper. This is grossly simplified of course, but neat to think about.

[thereismore]

48. It's a nice concept. Cells coming together, etc. Here's a mindbender for you:

Why are there no two-cell organisms today? It must be terribly impractical for two cells to coexist, otherwise there would be some around. I think there are no three-cell organisms either. What is the next (after 1) number of cells that live together as an organism? I think it might a worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, that has about 900 cells (the number is known exactly). So where are the few-celled organisms and have there ever been any? I do not know, but it's fun to ask.

[hedgehog]

55. Is there any chance that cells come together and split up all the time?

Although I can't think what an amoeba and paramecium would have to offer each other..

[nadinbrzezinski]

58. Hmm this is starting to look like some readying ahead for me

alien world, alien life, different evolutionary chain, what if?

Thanks, who said science fiction is not fun?

:-)

[hedgehog]

60. Well, good night, and thanks for some new ideas.

[nadinbrzezinski]

61. Night, and thanks for a fun thread

[hedgehog]

57. Would an egg and sperm count as a two celled organism, at least

temporarily? Probably not, because the chromosomes get paired up so quickly.

[thereismore]

45. It got there much later when we existed as people. Viruses integrate their DNA

(or RNA) into human DNA on a regular basis. Some of them are called lentiviruses (HIV-1 is one of them) and the results are sometimes temporary and sometimes permanent. Sometimes they insert themselves into your gametes' DNA (sperm or egg, depending on your kind), and you pass that viral DNA on to your kids. The fact that we have viral DNA in us does not indicate that we evolved from them, necessarily.

[Saboburns]

62. I don't

Even tho I find them silly as shit.

[upi402]

63. More than half a million Thais are thought to have contracted H1N1 flu

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/22540/should-you-get-an-h1n1-flu-shot
111 dead
"This strain of influenza is striking children more than anyone, and hardly hitting the elderly at all. That is the opposite of most varieties of the flu."

I had no idea it was like this! Just pick a country and check it... wow!

[HughMoran]

64. Yeah, I'm more worried about my teenage kids than myself

...or even my parents for that matter. This flu causes a strong immune system to overreact and overwhelm it's host.

[NNN0LHI]

65. More than half a million infections and only 111 deaths?

That doesn't sound so bad to me. I will take those odds any day.

Don