The fear with avian flu is that it will mutate into a form transmissible from human to human through aerosol means (i.e., coughing and sneezing). Epidemiologists believe that with the breadth avian flu has already achieved, this mutation is just a matter of time and probably not much time.
Health officials are confident a vaccine for aerosol-transmissible avian flu can be developed, but until the aerosol-transmissible strain emerges, we won’t have enough information to develop the vaccine. Once the strain emerges, there will be a global race between infection and inoculation; officials worry we won’t be able to make enough doses of vaccine before people start keeling over in the streets.
Why worry? Mutation is part of the process of evolution. A CBS News poll taken in October shows only 45 percent of Americans believe in evolution. If over half the country doesn’t believe in evolution, I suppose they won’t want the avian flu vaccine, because accepting the vaccine would be tantamount to admitting Charles Darwin was right. If (when?) avian flu mutates to aerosol transmission, these folks will probably have to conclude that an intelligent designer wanted it that way, so they should still reject the vaccine and accept their fate as yet another product of intelligent design.
Poor old Mr. Darwin has gotten yet another roughing up lately between the court case in Dover, Pennsylvania and the Kansas Board of Education. This is not the first go-round for the educators of Kansas. In 1999, the board of education removed evolution from the state’s science curriculum. At that time, the debate was “evolution vs. creationism,” and much of America hooted and jeered at Kansas for being so backward.
Six years later, the debate is back but this time you don’t hear the word “creationism.” You hear about “opening debate over flaws in the theory of evolution” and “alternative theories,” like “intelligent design.” Clearly, someone’s been running focus groups and pools of their own and have learned that Americans think teaching creationism is unscientific and doesn’t belong in classrooms, but “flaws in the evolutionary theory” and alternative theories get some traction.
On the radio program “Open Source” last week, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board said it’s obvious to her that what’s happening is that religious Americans are trying to force their beliefs into public school curricula. While Ms. Rabinowitz and, I think, many religious people believe it, I’m not so sure.
I think evolution is the new abortion. If Samuel Alito is confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court, there is a considerable chance that the conservative majority will overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision permitting abortion. Such a victory would be a tragedy for the Republican Party, because it would take from it a 30-year-old wedge issue the GOP has used get many citizens to vote against their economic self-interest.
Like the abortion issue, the evolution v. intelligent design debate allows white, Christian conservatives – the bulk of America – feel like they are, in fact, a persecuted minority. Challenging evolution in science class is such a backward notion that Democrats are bound to resist it, which reinforces the religious right’s claim that Democrats hate God and are trying to brainwash kids with the “religion of secular humanism.” As a lagniappe, the debate conditions conservatives to distrust science in favor of received wisdom from opinion leaders like Pat Robertson.
Unlike the abortion debate, intelligent design is a phony issue, designed to be a nucleus around which politics of identity can be constructed. Is the design intelligent? It’s not wise, but it is shrewd.
Intelligent design proponents insist that this time it’s not about creationism, but open debate in education, so they’ve created spectacles like the Dover trial, which may wind up costing the school district a million dollars. Are taxpayers willing to spend that kind of cash to merely plumb “flaws” in Darwin’s theory? Are we willing to devote similar energy and money to other educational debates, like the teaching of phonics or the metric system?
What’s remarkable about intelligent design is that it is both intellectually – and spiritually – superficial. From a purely spiritual aspect, evolution, in which the unmoved mover ignites a cascade of infinite variety and resilience seems much more elegant – and divine – than some notion of God as a tinker at a workbench now turning out a swan and now a platypus. If we could all have a religious discussion and a science discussion and not conflate the two, I think we’d find a surprising amount of common ground. Instead, we allow ourselves to be first manipulated and then divided by people whose real agenda is to make monkeys of us all.
The New Abortion
The fear with avian flu is that it will mutate into a form transmissible from human to human through aerosol means (i.e., coughing and sneezing). Epidemiologists believe that with the breadth avian flu has already achieved, this mutation is just a matter of time and probably not much time.
Health officials are confident a vaccine for aerosol-transmissible avian flu can be developed, but until the aerosol-transmissible strain emerges, we won’t have enough information to develop the vaccine. Once the strain emerges, there will be a global race between infection and inoculation; officials worry we won’t be able to make enough doses of vaccine before people start keeling over in the streets.
Why worry? Mutation is part of the process of evolution. A CBS News poll taken in October shows only 45 percent of Americans believe in evolution. If over half the country doesn’t believe in evolution, I suppose they won’t want the avian flu vaccine, because accepting the vaccine would be tantamount to admitting Charles Darwin was right. If (when?) avian flu mutates to aerosol transmission, these folks will probably have to conclude that an intelligent designer wanted it that way, so they should still reject the vaccine and accept their fate as yet another product of intelligent design.
Poor old Mr. Darwin has gotten yet another roughing up lately between the court case in Dover, Pennsylvania and the Kansas Board of Education. This is not the first go-round for the educators of Kansas. In 1999, the board of education removed evolution from the state’s science curriculum. At that time, the debate was “evolution vs. creationism,” and much of America hooted and jeered at Kansas for being so backward.
Six years later, the debate is back but this time you don’t hear the word “creationism.” You hear about “opening debate over flaws in the theory of evolution” and “alternative theories,” like “intelligent design.” Clearly, someone’s been running focus groups and pools of their own and have learned that Americans think teaching creationism is unscientific and doesn’t belong in classrooms, but “flaws in the evolutionary theory” and alternative theories get some traction.
On the radio program “Open Source” last week, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board said it’s obvious to her that what’s happening is that religious Americans are trying to force their beliefs into public school curricula. While Ms. Rabinowitz and, I think, many religious people believe it, I’m not so sure.
I think evolution is the new abortion. If Samuel Alito is confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court, there is a considerable chance that the conservative majority will overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision permitting abortion. Such a victory would be a tragedy for the Republican Party, because it would take from it a 30-year-old wedge issue the GOP has used get many citizens to vote against their economic self-interest.
Like the abortion issue, the evolution v. intelligent design debate allows white, Christian conservatives – the bulk of America – feel like they are, in fact, a persecuted minority. Challenging evolution in science class is such a backward notion that Democrats are bound to resist it, which reinforces the religious right’s claim that Democrats hate God and are trying to brainwash kids with the “religion of secular humanism.” As a lagniappe, the debate conditions conservatives to distrust science in favor of received wisdom from opinion leaders like Pat Robertson.
Unlike the abortion debate, intelligent design is a phony issue, designed to be a nucleus around which politics of identity can be constructed. Is the design intelligent? It’s not wise, but it is shrewd.
Intelligent design proponents insist that this time it’s not about creationism, but open debate in education, so they’ve created spectacles like the Dover trial, which may wind up costing the school district a million dollars. Are taxpayers willing to spend that kind of cash to merely plumb “flaws” in Darwin’s theory? Are we willing to devote similar energy and money to other educational debates, like the teaching of phonics or the metric system?
What’s remarkable about intelligent design is that it is both intellectually – and spiritually – superficial. From a purely spiritual aspect, evolution, in which the unmoved mover ignites a cascade of infinite variety and resilience seems much more elegant – and divine – than some notion of God as a tinker at a workbench now turning out a swan and now a platypus. If we could all have a religious discussion and a science discussion and not conflate the two, I think we’d find a surprising amount of common ground. Instead, we allow ourselves to be first manipulated and then divided by people whose real agenda is to make monkeys of us all.
© Mark Floegel, 2005