Griff, as he was known in high school, was a friend of mine.

In fact, late in the first half of our lives, he stood up for me physically and philosophically, for being a science geek. Truth is, John’s endorsement was the first time I was ever deemed cool for wanting to be a scientist.

It is also 10 years ago, that Griff died an engineer and a hero in the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers.

We lost touch almost twenty years before, but his kindness and generosity formed not only a cornerstone of the scientific life I have today, but resonates in the person and father I have become as well.

At a northern New Jersey Catholic high school, in a predominantly Irish town, being a gangly Polish boy from two towns over was not the formula to cultivate one’s popularity or self-preservation. Excelling and throwing the curve in biology and chemistry classes didn’t help either, nor did being a David Bowie fan in a place where Bruce Springsteen was revered. That’s probably where my nickname, “Zowie,” came from – the name of the glam rocker’s first child.

Worse, I had skipped a grade in elementary school, and being a year behind physically, was not compatible with self-defense during high school gym class.

So, it was sometime in junior year, when scoundrels had me cornered and slammed against the wall, books thrown down the hallway, that a simple gesture saved me. John, already well on his way to his adult height of 6′ 7″ or 6′ 8″, stepped in and said, “Hey, lay off of Zowie. He’s goin’ places.” And with that, the beatings stopped.

John and I were soccer fans. At that time, soccer hadn’t taken off in the States but I was a huge player and had met John at Giants Stadium where I had season tickets (Section 113, row 7, seat 26) for the relocated New York Cosmos. At just $4 a ticket, I could afford a season’s pass to see some of the greatest international soccer stars of the late 20th century: Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer, Italy’s Giorgio Chinaglia, Yugoslavia’s Vladislav Bogićević;, and, of course, Brazil’s Pelé.

John’s family were long-time Giants season ticket holders and probably got their Cosmos season tickets (three rows behind me) through some sort of promotional giveaway. I recall that John was surprised that a science dork like myself would be cool enough to come to soccer games alone – my father dropping me off outside the gates so he could go home and watch his beloved football on TV. But we Jersey boys did love soccer, even though we were at a school where American football and basketball reigned supreme. Many Saturday and Sunday afternoons were spent at the massive stadium during soccer’s American heyday of the late 1970s, when crowds would reach 50,000 – 75,000 strong.

John had a gift to make anything fun and to make anyone laugh. I recall sitting with him in a ski lodge in Amsterdam, NY, as I was recovering from frostbite during an ill-prepared class trip ski weekend. He pulled me into an imaginary board game with a napkin dispenser, where he pretended each napkin contained a message as to how to proceed during each turn.

John was a physical caricature, handsome but goofy, self-effacing but self-confident, and possessed of a clever and caustic wit, which he carried into professional life and fatherhood. No one was safe from John’s good-hearted and bombastic comedy routines.

Now, my memories of John seem half a life away, from the impromptu high school graduation party he called at my house to his pride at finishing his engineering degree and managing facilities for a million-square foot building in Manhattan. Perhaps he protected me as a kid because he knew that way deep down, he, himself, was destined to become an engineering geek. As well as the hero, protecting the lives of others in a very real way.

On the glorious fall morning of 11 Sept 2001, I was fixing coffee for my wife when the newsreader on my pager announced that a jet had struck the south tower of the World Trade Center.

I had missed my recent 20-year high school reunion and had not known that John had only months before been appointed director of operations at the WTC.

I did not learn until two weeks later that John had facilitated the escape of dozens of workers, handing out wet towels so people could breathe on their way down the stairs. In the book 102 Minutes by New York Times writers Jim Lynch and Kevin Flynn, John is immortalized in the corroborated account of the elevator rescue of 72-year-old Port Authority construction inspector, Tony Savas.

When he returned to 78, Greg Trapp saw a group of three Port Authority employees at work on the doors to the elevator where Tony Savas, a seventy-two-year-old structural inspector, was trapped. Trapp peered into the small gap and saw him, a man with thinning white hair, seemingly serene. One of the workers grabbed a metal easel, wedging the legs into the opening, trying to spread the doors from the bottom, where they seemed to have the greatest leverage. But their efforts had the opposite effect at the top of the doors, which seemed to pinch tighter.

At that moment, John Griffin, who had recently started as the trade center’s director of operations, came over to the elevator bank. At six feet, eight inches tall, Griffin had no problem reaching the top of the door to apply pressure as the others pushed from the bottom. The doors popped apart. Out came Savas, who seemed surprised to find Griffin, his new boss, involved in the rescue. Savas seemed exhilarated, possessed of a sudden burst of energy, rubbing his hands together, or so it seemed to Trapp.

“Okay,” Savas said. “What do you need me to do?”

One of the Port Authority workers shook his head. “We just got you out-you need to leave the building.”

No, Savas insisted. He wanted to help. “I’ve got a second wind.”

Both men perished soon after in the tower’s collapse.

John’s wife, June, the former June Maarleveld and sweetheart of the class behind us, was quoted in New York Times, Portraits of Grief:

“He was at the back of about 30 people they were evacuating,” his wife, June Griffin, related from the accounts of survivors. “He had been in fires before — he should have gotten out.”

Mrs. Griffin speculated that her husband, instead of running for the exits, headed for the fire control center, where his training as a fire safety officer would have directed him. “He was an engineer,” Mrs. Griffin said. “He must have thought, `Buildings don’t just fall down.’”

It’s unfortunate but leaving New Jersey and running on the tenure-track treadmill in a biomedical career caused me to lose track of a great many friends, and in some ways, to stop appreciating life even. Since John’s death, we’ve all found a little more time in our schedules to make time for one another. As the father of a little girl conceived in the months after the terrorist attacks, I try to respect June’s privacy and send little gifts for the girls every so often. I cannot imagine how they and nearly 3000 other families deal with the most public of tragedies that came to roost among those at the start or in the prime of their adult lives.

I finally worked up the guts to go to Ground Zero five years ago for the first time since the attacks. Despite all the bickering about what the memorial should look like, there was already some small memorial area set up in the interim. John’s name sits at the top of one column of names on placards commemorating those who died there. And I so dearly wish that I had attended our high school reunion to thank John for his friendship during my formative years.

Instead, I keep a makeshift memorial to him, constructed at my old lab, that now sits outside my office and greets me every day. I also keep some other reminders: John’s picture, a photo of the Waldwick, NJ, memorial to John and all the firefighters who perished, a personal note from June with some of the best marital advice I’ve ever received, among others.

Some great minds have said that facing death often gives people the license to finally live their lives.

I am fortunate to have been touched by a soul who needed no such reminder.

- – -

But a lot can happen in thirty minutes. Earlier, I had been looking over some 2009 UNAIDS statistics, and noting the numbers issued in the report. They are all very big, big enough certainly to require the pressing of buttons on calculators. More to the point, I learn that during my thirty minutes, approximately 70 people died from HIV/AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa. That’s 1.3 million victims each year – in Sub-Sahara Africa alone. Many of these were parents leaving orphans, and many were young children just leaving. Most troubling, however, is the fact that all of them suffered their fate with a loss of dignity.

Why do I say this? I say this because people shouldn’t have to die from HIV/AIDS. There are good medicines out there, and they can control the disease. In fact, for those in the developed world, HIV/AIDS is now considered a chronic disorder, not a death sentence. If you are diagnosed, you are no longer forced to take a shortcut to demise. You can still have a long life, you can still be productive, and you can still live with dignity.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t an option for those who passed away. For them, the medicines were out of reach. They were simply too expensive. And from this, you come to realize a cold hard fact in this narrative: that the fate of a person living or dying from HIV/AIDS is determined by their income. This statement is fairly straightforward, with no mincing of words, or confused rhetoric. But for most, it feels fundamentally wrong, and yet, it is a simple reality of how the world works today. Why it works in this way, however, is complicated.

This, basically, is how the pharmaceutical industry works. They are inventors, and their product is medicine. Research and development costs are significant, both in terms of money and in terms of time, mostly because many of the things they invent do not work out in the end. They get patents, and are compensated and rewarded accordingly – relatively speaking, the pharmaceutical industry is rewarded very handsomely.

This is because there is a market for such things: whether we are talking about antiretroviral drugs for HIV or Viagra for life style needs, in the developed world, people want these drugs (and in some cases, need these drugs), and are willing to pay for them. They do this, because they can, often with help from health care providers and government. The supply and demand is there, and the pharmaceutical industry knows how to play this game. You, the reader in the developed world, make the market.
Because things are so handsome, the pharmaceutical industry has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They don’t want to lose any semblance of control, even if, apparently, lives are on the line. They are very good at protecting this control – their lobbying influence is very strong indeed, and they do this with zeal although sometimes by misrepresenting facts.

1. This market doesn’t count because they cannot afford the drugs.

2. This market doesn’t count because they are not part of the pharmaceutical industry’s bottom line.

Consequently, a lot of very clever people have suggested that a way to get around this challenge, this challenge of access to medicine, is to set up ways to produce generic drugs. This is essentially where outside companies can be granted the right to copy the drug and produce it at much lower costs. Just to clarify, the cost of drug production is generally a very small fraction of the final price tag. Anyway, the argument here, is that these rights would be very specific, in that generics could only be sold under strict circumstances such that the status quo is unaffected in wealthy markets. A good example of this, is to simply say that generics can only go to developing markets, can only go to places like Sub-Sahara Africa, since they already do not factor into the industry’s bottom line. Furthermore, the inventors can stipulate royalties, so that they still get compensated for opening up these markets. In fact, in the best situation, the inventors would even produce their own generics.

For a variety of reasons, the pharmaceutical industry has not been keen on this idea, and has done much to make generic production as laborious and slow as possible. Ideally, they would be a willing participant in discussions with generic producers, and bargain fair terms so that these cheaper drugs can be made. Unfortunately, this rarely happens and when it does, it tends to be on an older palette of medicines, things out of date for rich people like us, which may be less effective for a variety of reasons (side effects, efficacy, convenience).

Because the pharmaceutical industry generally does not want to play, the notion of “compulsory licenses” has been pushed to the forefront. I’ve written about these in the past, and they deserve a repeat mention.

To illustrate this, here are some hypothetical (and not so hypothetical examples):

1. You are a company that recently received your patent, so that now your drug is being sold for $1500 instead of the previous $10 pricetag.

2. Your country has experienced a series of anthrax scares. The company that holds the patent for the most effective drug against infection from the offending bacterium, sees an opportunity, and decides to jack up the price.

3. Someone has declared war on your country. To defend yourself, you would like to utilize a particular product. Unfortunately, it is under a cost prohibitive patent and therefore out of reach.

4. There is an impending nuclear power plant meltdown, and there is technology that would be incredibly useful to mitigate radiation contamination and poisoning. However, your resources are already stretched because of the utterly horrific effects of a 9.0 Richter Scale earthquake, and this technology is too expensive at the scale that is required in such an emergency.

5. There are markets where your life saving drug is not being sold because no-one can afford them anyway. However, the drug (which could be a matter of life and death for millions) could be made at a cost (i.e. a generic) that makes it accessible in these markets, but if and only if, the patent over them is adjusted.

Here is the point. In all of the above cases, you would like to live in a civil society where the government can step in and forcibly change the patent, because in every case, there is an element of morality involved. And guess what – governments can do this and they do! It’s called a “compulsory license,” and they exist for this very purpose.

In fact, even the WTO is on board with this idea. They recognize that in some circumstances, such as those pertaining to global health, there needs to be an understanding that using such compulsory licenses is both necessary and an obligation. In fact, if you have a hankering for the legalese that outlines this for patents over essential medicines, you need only look up info on the Doha Declaration.

Unfortunately, there is some serious push back from the Canadian pharmaceutical industry. They lobby government and do so with counter arguments that have already been addressed by this expert peer review, such that many have been calling the pharmaceutical industry unethical: that their reasons for fighting are based on misinformation. Most of their arguments appeal to those that value ownership, that their properties, inventions, and monopolies are in danger because of careless policy, but that could not be farther from the truth. They simply don’t want to lose any semblance of control. Despite these tweaks being carefully scripted to protect their business interests, the pharmaceutical industry still regards them as a starting point to a “possible” loss of control. Because of this excessive anxiety, they fight and they fight and they fight. For those interested in endings, this one is severe: Bill C-393 was killed.

Sometimes, they fight in other ways. In the case of Free Trade Agreements between the European Union and India, one of the battles over generic drugs concerns the issue of “data exclusivity.” This is a technical term that essentially says that even if a patent is not holding things back, a company still can halt the process. Here, a bulletin recently released by Doctors Without Borders describes it well:

Data exclusivity (DE) is a backdoor way for multinational pharmaceutical companies to get a monopoly and charge high drug prices, even when their drug has been found to not deserve a patent, or the patent has expired – DE would apply to all drugs.

If India accepts DE, the agency in charge of approving medicines for use in the country would not be allowed to register a generic version of a medicine for a period of time – usually 5 to 10 years. To register a generic, producers rely on the clinical trial data provided by the originator company to show the drug is safe and effective. All the generic has to prove is that it is identical to the originator product. But if DE were in place, the originator company’s clinical trial data would be protected by ‘exclusivity’ and generic producers would therefore have to submit their own safety & efficacy data to register the generic medicines. This would oblige them to repeat clinical trials—something that would take years and be incredibly expensive, not to mention unethical, as it would involve withholding a drug that has already proven to be effective from some of the participants in the trial.

And so things drag, time passes, and minutes, days, and years are wasted. To call this delay an act procrastination sounds too contrite. I can certainly think of stronger words.

- – -

To get involved there are a number of places I can recommend. Firstly, an informal blog collective has been set up to discuss these issues in a more layman and easy to read manner. This blog is called “My Rights Versus Yours” and includes a cast of students and academics who are involved in various aspects of the Access to Medicine cause. We aim to have posts that deal with the various issues at stake including pieces about both the science and policy involved. This is a new blog, but we are hopeful that many will find it both useful and enjoyable to read. You can follow the blog on twitter or better yet, partake in its first Global Health Carnival. If you’re a Canadian reader, I strongly urge you to check out aidsaction.ca particularly the page which asks our candidates to endorse and support the reform of Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime. Timing is crucial here, as a Federal election looms. If nothing else, just make sure you vote.

When we summarize things we have to be careful that we don’t lose meaning or invite misinterpretation, for instance the phrase “survival of the fittest.” This was first used as a summary of natural selection, which is one of the mechanisms of evolution, but today it is mistakenly and inaccurately used to summarize the entire theory of evolution.

Based on the current usage of the words in the phrase we might be driven to think “survival of the fittest” means: Those individuals that are physically superior to other individuals will continue to live. Perhaps there is even a suggestion that the “fittest” should actively work to kill off the weak (weak being opposite of fit). Indeed people have and do use this phrase to justify the strong taking advantage of the weak, the rich taking advantage of the poor, etc.

However the phrase “survival of the fittest” was originally meant to be a concise summary of a more complicated idea. Over the more than a century and a half since the phrase was originally coined we have learned more about how nature works and today the phrase “survival of the fittest” is an out-of-date inaccurate oversimplification that no serious biologist uses in a meaningful way.

The phrase was coined by Herbert Spencer and first used in 1864. At this time, “fitness” was not referring to physical prowess but how well an organism was adapted to its present environment. For example, during a dry year individuals of plant species X that require less water to grow are “fitter” than individuals of the same species that require more water. The individuals that require less water are more likely to survive. Traits, such as water use, are heritable, so those survivors, the “fittest,” are more likely to pass their traits on to the next generation. This scenario, where individuals with traits favorable to the present environment are more likely to pass those traits to the next generation, is called natural selection.

But our study of life on Earth didn’t stop in the 19th century! As new observations are made, as our tools, technology, and techniques get better we are able to expand our understanding of how nature works. Beginning in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s observations of nature showed us that there was more to evolution than anyone had previously anticipated. This was called the Modern Evolutionary Syntheses and it married natural selection, sexual selection, etc. to population genetics. What we now know as modern genetics (genes, genomes, RNA, DNA, etc.) has allowed us to become much more precise and accurate in our understanding of evolution.

Based on this better understanding of how nature works, an interpretation of “survival of the fittest” would have to be greatly modified. Where before we used a general, nonspecific term: “traits” we can now use a very specific term: genes. And where before we equated “fitness” to how well an individual was adapted to its environment, we now know that many factors influence an individual’s ability to survive and reproduce. Therefore “fitness” is more appropriately understood as a measure of an individual’s genetic influence over the next generation. The “fittest” are those individuals who get proportionally more of their genes into the next generation than others.

Our interpretation of “survival” would have to be greatly modified as well. This would no longer refer to an individual’s life, but to the continuation of a gene from generation to generation. For example those genes that cause a male spider to linger after mating may increase the likelihood of his death at the jaws of the female, but they may increase his fitness. How? There are pros and cons of staying and running away. A pro of staying is that the calories from his body may let the female produce more eggs. A pro of leaving is that he may be able to mate with another female. If, for a particular male, being eaten results in a greater number of offspring than attempting (and probably failing) to find another receptive mate, then his genes have “survived” even though he didn’t.

Today “survival of the fittest” has all but gone extinct among the scientists. They have no use for it. Just about the only groups that do use it misunderstand what evolution is, an explanation of how nature works, and pretend the phrase is an excuse to do bad. So if you run into someone who’s misusing this quip from history to malign a beautiful and fascinating part of our universe don’t be upset. Just look them straight in the eyes and say, “And you know what, that gravity is a crock too. ‘What goes up must come down,’ my ass!”

Author’s note:
“What goes up must come down” is not an accurate summary of gravity, there is no “up” in space and the sun, moon, and stars certainly aren’t coming “down”.

Short answer:
Yes, of course it is.

Long answer:
Let’s consider the life, or rather the death, of a lobster. In nature lobsters begin very small and die a million horrible deaths in a million horrible ways. As they get older the death rate drops. We have ample evidence that lobsters do not go gentle into that good night, dying peacefully in their sleep at a ripe old age. Instead, once mature, a lobster that doesn’t go into the pot might face off with cod, flounder, an eel or two, or one of many diseases.

Considering that one of the natural deaths a lobster may face is to be torn limb from limb by an eel, getting tossed into a pot of boiling water doesn’t seem quite so gruesome. But there is a big difference between death by eel and death by human, the eel is not human. And now we have hit upon the broader question that must be answered before we can understand the short answer given above: Are humans a part of nature, or apart from nature?

We have an enormous amount of evidence that humans are a part and product of the Earth. Humans are a naturally evolved species related to all other forms of life on Earth, physically shaped by the abiotic parameters of our planet, like gravity, temperature, humidity, partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen, etc., and physiologically dependant on other forms of life for essential amino acids. We are not travelers from a supernatural realm or from a distant star forced to bide our time in a foreign land before we can travel home again. We are home.

We are natural, and what we do is natural. This is our place. The cabin in the woods is just as natural as the trees that grow around it, and those trees are just as natural as cell phone towers.

We human beings, you and me, are a natural species that evolved and lives on this Earth. We have as much right to use resources and alter the Earth as any other species. We are on an equal footing with other species, not above, below, or beside. We do not have dominion over the earth as the creationists want us to believe, we are not alien invaders that should cringe at every footfall as the hippie vegans want us to believe, and despite what the conservationists say we are no more stewards of the Earth than dung beetles.

Only when we understand that will be we begin to realize that the environmental issues we face today have less to do with what is good for humans and more to do with balancing the rights of our species with the rights of the rest of life on Earth. (For what it’s worth I favor a future with taller buildings and vast swaths of the earth blessed with benign neglect.)

So yes, it is perfectly alright and natural to boil your lobster… but then again, we did naturally evolve the capacity to think that boiling lobsters might be wrong… so maybe you shouldn’t. What do I know?

Just don’t not do it for the wrong reasons.

Culture, our ability to pass information, artifacts, and other non-genetic material from one generation to the next, operates on much smaller time scales: millennia, centuries, even decades. The larger cultural landscape consists of religion, language, governments, laws, etc. and many of these change so quickly that they have only been in their present form for hundreds or (in a few cases) thousands of years. It is the blinding speed of culture that has allowed humans to break free of the ecological niche evolution alone would have forced upon them.

One of the subsets of culture is technology, which allows us greater control and understanding of our environment and provides us with new or expanded senses. Technological change occurs on the scale of years to months and is currently outpacing culture at large. The current fad in new technologies is to make these available to a large percentage of the population (literacy, vaccines, video recorders, telephones, etc.) and suddenly many people have the ability to do things for which we have no cultural “rules”.

Sexting is a grand example of the intersection of evolution, culture, and technology. Our prehistoric bodies evolved the desire (possibly need in a normal healthy person) to have sex from puberty on and not just for procreation but for recreation as well [1] (this is why sex is more fun than, say, wearing matching socks). The American sexual culture [2], heavily based on Iron Age religions (which tend to demonize sex, especially for women) and the Victorian era “Body Taboo,” has produced a culture that equates nudity with sex (our laws only barely distinguish between the two). The near instantaneous onset of the cell phone camera represents a technology that allows the “biological human” to do something that the “cultural human” abhors. The best examples come from minors sexting semi-nude photos of themselves to friends and later being charged as child pornographers.

This disjunct between rates of evolution, culture, and technology isn’t new. History shows us that our bodies are very bad at evolving to act the way culture tells us; circumcision and homosexuality being grand examples. But the modern drive to make technology available to the masses means that when human desires run counter to cultural rules (“values”, “morals”, laws, etc.) there will be a larger pressure placed on culture to change. Sexting was first reported in the mid 2000s and by 2009 laws were introduced to allow consensual sexting among minors. Presumably faster technological changes will drive faster and faster cultural changes until, someday, some aspects of our culture will be so futuristic they’ll be prehistoric.

1. See Why is Sex Fun? by Jared Diamond and The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

2. See Sex, Society and History by Vern L. Bullough

Animals in Research

Each year in the United States, approximately 20 million laboratory animals are used in biomedical sciences research. They are used to study cancer, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease, metabolic diseases such as diabetes, and even the common cold. Indeed, animal testing forms the crux of biomedical sciences, and virtually every notable landmark in the field over the last hundred years has been characterized by the use of animals. As Dr. Thomas J. Carew, the President of the Society for Neurosciences, attests, “[responsible] animal research has played a vital role in nearly every major medical advance of the last century, from heart disease to polio, and is essential for future advances as well”. Even when animals are not used to research the pathology of disease itself, they form the crux of the regulatory framework that protects humans from adverse reactions to newly found drugs and treatments. In Canada and the United States, even before reaching clinical trials, treatments must first conclusively demonstrate safety on animals first. In fitting irony, veterinary medicine depends on animal testing, too: not only are many treatments developed for humans now used on animals too, but rabies, feline leukemia, and other vaccines were developed through animal testing.

Critics, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), suggest that there are alternatives to the usage of animals in research. In certain cases, this is true. For example, cell culture has proven useful as an alternative in the production of certain kinds of antibodies and in certain skin treatment tests. But in most developed countries, and certainly in the US and Canada, scientists are already obligated to follow a set of guiding principles for the use of animals in research termed the “three R’s”: reduction, refinement, and replacement. In summary, a scientist is obligated to use non-animal methods over animal methods whenever it is possible to achieve the same scientific aim (replacement), must minimize animal pain, suffering, and/or distress (refinement), and must use the least number of animals possible within an experiment (reduction). Every established university in Canada and the US has an animal care committee that oversees the usage of the three R’s in research, and scientists are strictly reprimanded if they fail to live up to them. So while alternatives to animal research can and must continue to develop, the number of animals still used today emphasizes how important they are to biomedical sciences research. This is emphasized by the awarding of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to the pioneers of gene targeting in mice, which has allowed for the elucidation of the roles of numerous genes in development, physiology, aging, and disease.

Terrorist Attacks on Researchers

The brunt of responsibility for terrorist attacks on biomedical scientists falls on the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a leaderless resistance that claims itself analogous to the Underground Railroad. In public statements, the group claims responsibility for any direct action to further the cause of animal liberation, where all reasonable precautions are taken to safeguard human and non-human life. Still, there has nevertheless been criticism of ALF activists for either engaging in acts of violence or failing to condemn them. Before the 1990s, the majority of acts committed by ALF activists were termed by the FBI “low-level criminal activity”. In 1977, ALF took two dolphins from the University of Hawaii’s Marine Mammal Laboratory, and released them into the ocean. In 1985, 486 animals were removed from a University of California, Riverside laboratory – causing nearly $700,000 in damage and shutting down eight of the seventeen research projects active at the laboratory. But as author Rachel Monaghan notes, around 1982, there was a shift in the non-violent position of ALF. Death threats, letter bombs, and threats to contaminate food erupted in North America and Europe. In 2001, the director of an animal-testing laboratory, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), was attacked by men wielding pickaxe handles. Two researchers at the University of California, Dr. Dario Ringach and Dr. David Jentsch, have attested to the terrorism: “we have seen our cars and homes firebombed or flooded, and we have received letters packed with poisoned razors and death threats via e-mail and voicemail. [Our] families and neighbors have been terrorized by angry mobs of masked protesters who throw rocks, break windows, and chant that “you should stop or be stopped” and that they “know where you sleep at night.” Some of the attacks have been cataloged as attempted murder. Adding insult to injury, misguided animal-rights militants openly incite others to violence on the Internet, brag about the resulting crimes, and go as far as to call plots for our assassination “morally justifiable.”

Suffice it to say, animal rights groups like PETA who operate legally cannot and must not take responsibility for the kinds of attacks that victimize biomedical scientists. Moreover, each and every member of society has a voice in deciding how far biomedical scientists ought to be able to go when it comes to using animals in research. Two examples have recently surfaced where this is especially apparent. First, the field of biomedical sciences is dawning on a new age of technological capability, which begs the question: in what respects should scientists be allowed to introduce human genes or materials into animals? Britain’s Academy of Medical Sciences launched a study on November 3rd, 2009, with the goal of establishing guidelines for scientists around the world on how far society is prepared to see them go in mixing human materials with animals to discover how to combat disease. Second, the use of nonhuman primates in research possesses a unique set of ethical issues because of their cognitive and emotional capabilities. Accordingly, nonhuman primates represent fewer than 1% of all animals used in research, and are in general used only for studies which necessitate their presence, such as in studies on the elaboration of complex brain functions.

Protecting our Scientists

The violent and non-violent acts of ALF and similar direct action animal liberation groups are an affront to the rights of scientists in North America, Europe, and around the world. More needs to be done to protect the well-being and safety of individuals who contribute to biomedical sciences research. The passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in 2006 in the US, which set out to “”provide the Department of Justice the necessary authority to apprehend, prosecute, and convict individuals committing animal enterprise terror”, is a step in the right direction. Similar acts need to be passed in every developed country that conducts biomedical sciences research. But the attacks against researchers points toward a broader trend towards a public discourse on animal testing that is fraught with ambiguity, bias, and downright misperception of science. PETA aims misinformation about animal testing towards children and college students, and the entertainment industry produces movies characterizing scientists as amoral and unconcerned with the welfare of animals. To underscore this point, the Pew Research Center recently published a survey demonstrating that only 52% of the American public views animal research favorably.

Ultimately, scientists themselves must brave the storm of extremists and reach out to the public to explain their work, why it’s important, and how they are sticking to the strictest possible ethical guidelines. Too often, the general public is under the impression that scientists can do whatever they want with however many animals they want as long as they term it ‘research’, but this simply is not true. The current guidelines are born out of the recognition that animals do undergo discomfort, pain, and death, in biomedical sciences research, and that society does have a desire to find suitable treatments for diseases that cannot be found without the use of animal testing. Multiple levels of scrutiny, including grant reviews, university committee approvals, provincial and federal regulator inspections, and accreditation by independent organizations, go into deciding whether or not animal research ought to be conducted. But even if an individual is not directly or indirectly engaged in biomedical science research, the stake he or she has in finding cures for diseases remains the same. Do you want scientists to find cures or better treatment plans for diseases? The time to speak up is now.

He is not a scholar. His transcript is a string of numbers ranging only from the low- to mid-50s. In education it is generally understood that a student with a final grade of exactly 50% (he has several of these) has received a gift. Due to backlash from parents — “You’re going to hold him back for X%, are you kidding me?” — most schools have adopted policies that discourage close-but-no-cigar final grades. 45% is defensible it seems, but 46% is not. And so, for some teachers, 45.5% (subsequently rounded up) has become the new pass.

Even now, this is fast becoming an open secret, so that resource staff and students in the know now make spirited arguments that a 42 or 43 ought to be good enough, “just this one time”. After all, if it were just a few percent higher, it would be a “pass”. It’s only a few away from being a few away from what was traditionally considered barely satisfactory. So, what’s the problem?

The problem, my principal recently told me, is that our education system is not serving the needs of all our students. If 10% fail grade ten science the first time through, there is something wrong with either what we’re teaching or the benchmark we’re setting for success. With an even higher failure rate in grade nine mathematics, the same argument applies. Why are these early courses so much more difficult than all the subsequent courses required for a high school diploma?

Indeed, it is the math and science teachers who seem to face these political and philosophical quandaries almost exclusively. It is the math and science teachers who are constantly told that their chosen and much beloved subjects are “holding students back”.

So is the case here. And I, a humble teacher in the trenches of public science education, have been asked to justify not only my decision not to award a credit to a student who hasn’t met the necessary educational outcomes, but even the existence of a science graduation requirement in the first place. This is no longer academic, it is not an abstract question of educational philosophy; a kid’s diploma is on the line. So what do I say?

Let’s tackle the larger issue first: why should a secondary education require any general science credits? Why, indeed, are there any “core credits” in graduation requirements, rather than letting all students study only what interests them? Why are all students required to pass the same required English courses throughout most of their high school career? Why the courses in geography and history in subsequent years? Why at least one math course each year right up to grade 12? Although these are all very different subjects, the same answer applies to each of them: literacy.

Let’s dissect the word literacy. From the Latin litteratus, to be marked with letters, it has traditionally denoted the ability to read and write. What is it that makes reading so important? Because no one can know everything, but we can all have access to an almost unfathomable store of human knowledge, if only we have a library card (or maybe an Internet connection), and the ability to read. It’s no accident that, while in high school, English may receive equal time with physics or auto mechanics, for the first six years of any child’s education, reading and writing make up more than 50% of instructional time. At the elementary level, the only other single subject coming close is mathematics.

But the current understanding of literacy has expanded beyond just the ability to read text. It’s come to represent a baseline of knowledge and skills that can a) engender lifelong learning, and b) allow us to function as citizens by understanding those subjects that are most relevant to our daily lives.

Understanding of geography, both national and international history, our political system — every day millions of Canadian citizens pick up their local newspaper or switch on their evening news to see what’s happening in the world and in their own community, and how incomprehensible it would all seem, without an education in social studies.

Financial crisis or no, people worry about money: rent or mortgage payments; gas prices; their RRSPs. How in the world could one possibly function without the basic mathematical skills learned in their very last required math course? Percentages, fractions, the ability to read a graph, and yes, some basic algebra. I use these in my own investment decisions every day, and my portfolio’s stronger for it.

And just as we live in a political world, and a world of numbers and letters, so we live in a scientific world. The technology already ubiquitous in our lives notwithstanding, how many of the major global issues so prominent in the news today are not science-related? Try making a list. I expect it will be a short one. And how many of the personal decisions we face in our lives could not benefit from a scientific perspective?

I’ll answer this one for you: exactly none. Our “baloney detector”, as the late Carl Sagan described it, is one of our most important tools. When it comes to deciding whether or not to vaccinate your child against deadly childhood diseases, to purchase a new hybrid or get one of those severely marked-down SUVs, or whether to eschew your general practicioner in favour of alternative medicine, the ability to distinguish between good and bad sources of information is invaluable.

This perspective informs our intentions for these core courses. Only about 10% of students go on to university after high school, and elective courses help to prepare them for that. But core courses, though they can lead into further and more specialized study, must primarily be a satisfactory answer to the larger question: if this is the last history/science/math/English course this student ever takes, what do they absolutely have to know?

And this brings us to more practical matters: when a student doesn’t meet these basic requirements in one or more subjects, what do we do about it?

Student population varies considerably from school to school, though in frequency of student types, not in kind. Lower income neighbourhoods do tend to have higher drop-out rates and less per capita university attendance. This is an endemic social issue that I hope, perhaps over-idealistically, will be largely eliminated in my lifetime. In the meantime, however, there are adjustments.

The obvious ones are automatic: less students sign up for grade 12 physics, so less sections of the course are offered. The decision to create alternatives for students whose needs aren’t otherwise being met, however, must be a deliberate one.

One inner-city school I taught at previously had a very successful work experience program. Students in this program were at a very high-risk for dropping out and/or joining gangs. The program allowed them to find work and get through at least a modified curriculum in their core courses. Although they weren’t able to receive a provincially recognized high school diploma, the school offered their own diploma for completion of the program.

This is a compromise. It’s not to say that a high school diploma isn’t a desirable goal for everyone, only that, until our society grows all the way up, we don’t want it to be an all-or-nothing proposition.

What of my lad? My current school, situated as it is in a more affluent neighbourhood, and particularly the school’s resource department, is ill-equipped to deal with unconforming students. Parents of most students in the school are professionals, putting a strong emphasis on education at home. Post-secondary enrollment from our school is high. Drop-out rates are negligible. But sometimes students with all the economic and family advantages still struggle. The young man in question could possibly use an alternative educational plan, but the best our resource department is able to come up with, I’m afraid, is pressuring me to change his grade.

Despite all my talk about how important education is, in fostering media literacy, numeracy, and, of course, science literacy, I do understand how it feels to fail, and don’t wish him to feel bad about himself. I also realize that even if we managed to drag him over the finish line, drill him and drill him and drill him, until he was able to squeak by on each of his tests, he would end up no better-equipped to apply a scientific perspective in his daily life, and probably even less enthused about science.

My principal said to me, he’ll never, ever use chemistry, and he’s probably right. Not because it isn’t relevant, but because knowledge without the ability to recall and critically apply it may as well not be there. Further, my principal has argued, this student’s lack of appreciation for the atom is not holding him back, while his lack of a high school diploma is. Left unsaid was the obvious implication, that the best thing I can do for this kid is just give him the credit. But here I can only return a vehement “no!”

Education is important, and while I can appreciate the perspective of the soft-hearted resource teacher who doesn’t want the kid to feel bad about himself, diplomas aren’t just self-esteem boosters, they’re a certification, proof that a person has met certain standards of competence and knowledge. A person with a high school diploma should be able to claim to be an educated and informed citizen, or at least, he should have the necessary tools to become and remain an educated and informed citizen.

This kid, in the short time I knew him (just a few weeks, as I was a late-semester replacement), came to class each day and stared at the wall. No notes taken; no assignments completed. He would ask to use the washroom and then wander the halls for most of the period. What’s holding this fellow back is not my refusal to grant him a credit, but his refusal to work hard at something that doesn’t come easily.

I understand he’s done the course three times now, and he’s probably rather sick of it, so I’m probably not seeing his best work this year, but given that his best work only amounted to a 35%, I’d say I haven’t missed much. So how can I make an assertion, patently false, that he has demonstrated that minimal degree of scientific knowledge and understanding we think every high school graduate should have?

It’s probably no surprise, with a science background, that I chaff at the prospect of recording bad data. I think carefully about each answer during government phone surveys, in consideration of the statistician’s task. But it’s not just about future employers being misled about the abilities this young man may bring to bear. It’s also about his opportunity to meet a challenge legitimately.

I think this young man is capable of being a fully formed and educated citizen, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails, but perhaps not now. Maybe, as I’ve seen others do, what he needs is to enter the real world for a little while, and then, with a little more maturity and a bit more mental stamina, he can give it another go and this time finish what he starts. His unfinished graduation requirements could be the thing to bring him back to school when he has the perspective and determination to see the task through.

Or maybe, if this never comes to pass, it means that even with all traditional economic and family barriers removed, still there are some who, while capable, don’t get to be high school graduates. Maybe there will always be a few who do not strive, who achieve less than they could, who quit, and they have to live with that. It may seem harsh, but what can we do but let them?

Education is a right: the opportunity to learn, to grow, and to gain the skills needed to fully participate in the world. But the recognition of a diploma is earned. If someone chooses to be a non-participant, that is their decision. But I don’t see much gain in giving someone a piece of paper, when the very process of giving destroys any genuine value it might otherwise have had.

Don’t let’s go there. We all have our instinctual phobias and obsessions, a fear of sharp-beaked shadows, or a scarcely controllable urge to upgrade that in-home lap pool, again.

Maybe I should have paid more attention before clicking “accept,” but I can never remember whether to stream downloads sequentially or fluvially. No excuses, but I was a botany major. And anyway, anatomical transfer was not part of the core curriculum at my school. It was just assumed that you were comfortable with it, that members of a certain socioeconomic class could discern piscine from avian. What more can I say? I was a scholarship kid, and I winged it.

But hey, really, I have no regrets. I have progressed farther than my parents ever dreamed possible. Like my behaviorist says, individual evolution is not a mad dash to the finish line. It’s a process. You want to have the sense to make a lateral move, if you catch my drift.

Nobody’s happy with the status quo. We all want to become someone or something else. We are all struggling to leave the primordial ooze, but only some of us have the lungs for it–only some of us have the ambition to truly succeed, to shout out to the world, “I am part halibut and proud of it!”

I admit that I am still working on that. Problem is, after twenty-three hours at the office, going flat out the whole time, there’s only so much memory left in my limbic forebrain [hic]. It’s a strain; I won’t deny it. I start to doubt my ability to migrate anatomically. A self-defeating thought, I know, but just the type of self-defeating thought that can swell painfully, that can burn, and itch . . . and, well, you know what I mean.

We all have failings. The difference is that I’m trying not to bust a gut over it. The people who are already there will tell you it’s easy, but I know better: gene transfer and gene expression are two different things entirely. I mean, look at Dick Cheney. OK, yes, he does reveal a certain squat, predatory glee, but that is merely a superficial resemblance to an anglerfish, a trait that might inspire a playground nickname, but no more. What you see is what he’s got.

And then there are the overachievers, like my ex, Felicia. When we met, she was a nobody, hopelessly mono-specific. Now she tells everyone who’ll listen that there are only three degrees of separation between herself, personally, and a race of riverine dolphins–and a scant four to Michelle Obama.

Tell you the truth, I miss Felicia. We had this post-mammalian attraction going big-time. I mean, I really thought the relationship had legs. And then I come home one day totally parched and she says no, she’s moved on, she needs someone with vision, someone who can see eye to eye with her, another panopticon and not some binocular loser like me.

After the initial shock wore off (me, binocular?), I understood that her argument didn’t hold water. Felicia has this way of moving when she knows you’re watching, a slippery sort of grace I thought only I was susceptible to. But, as it turns out, others were watching just as closely, and one of them got a hook in her.

Ultimately, it’s a matter of belief. I believe I am becoming more adaptive every minute of every day. Sometime in the not too distant future, I will find true love, achieve neutral buoyancy, and sleep with my eyes open. Better that than to tell myself I’m destined to a life of synchronous diaphragmatic flutter and peritoneal rupture. Some beliefs are a prop, others a truss.

All lives, no matter where they are lived, have equal value. Yet access to life-saving drugs is most often limited to those who can pay for them. Also, treatments for many tropical diseases are either unavailable or are increasingly ineffective, with toxic side effects to boot. Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (ubc-uaem.org) is a student organization dedicated to fixing this broken system.

We work by changing how universities set their technology licensing priorities and their research agendas. At UBC, we’ve persuaded administration to publicly adopt a set of Global Access Principles (www.uilo.ubc.ca/global.asp) that are a first-in-Canada, courageous start to making medicines available to everyone regardless of their income. But we can do more. With the help of UBC students, we want to reach every faculty member whose research can benefit the world’s poor. We want to expand UAEM to all major research universities in Canada. We must also ensure that UBC stays true to its commitments.

I’ll talk about strategies for getting this done, give insights into the drug development process and the bizarre world of intellectual property (fun stuff!) and highlight the contributions UAEM has made at UBC – encapsulated by the story of a new drug developed right here – oral Amphotericin B. This drug will treat the disfiguring and lethal disease leishmaniasis that affects tens of millions of people around the globe, and is free of the toxic side effects of previous formulations of the drug. Oral Amp B will be developed and made available at cost to people in low and middle income countries. UBC students will see how a great idea (universities changing access to drugs through licensing agreements) combined with dedicated student activism creates real change in the world.

In the Beginning…

Many people believe that there is a conflict between science and religion when it comes to the question of how life began on Earth. While only a minority of people situate themselves squarely on one side of this debate, the topic tends to draw the attention of everyone. This is because the answer to the question of where we came from serves as the jumping off point for defining our morality and our purpose here on Earth. Quite simply, once we know what brought us into being, we know where to ask for instructions. Consequently, any explanation put forward, especially one that purports to be absolute, must be able to withstand an enormous amount of scrutiny.

Perspectives from Science

Scientific method – A method or procedure… consisting of systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
- The Canadian Oxford Dictionary [1]

As a model, the scientific method has served as the basis for every major scientific discovery for the last several hundred years. It is supposed to be a means of obtaining unbiased responses to answerable questions. The most validation any scientist can hope to receive from it is when its application fails to refute his ideas – no finding is infallible and anyone who suggests that it is does not understand how to apply the scientific method.

(Theory of) Evolution – A process by which different kinds of organism come into being by the differentiation and genetic mutation of earlier forms over successive generations, viewed as an explanation for their origins.
- The Canadian Oxford Dictionary [1]

As applied to the origin of life on Earth, the scientific method has brought forward the theory of evolution to explain how life has come to exist in its present form. In the 18th and early 19th century, European thinkers such as Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck began interpreting the fossil record as evidence that organisms change over time to form new types (or go extinct) and that different types may have evolved from a common ancestor [2]. Charles Darwin (grandson to Erasmus) and Alfred Russell Wallace later advanced the idea that these changes over time were due to selective pressures within the environment that favoured one type over another [3]. This theory of evolution by “natural selection” saw changes in organisms over time as a byproduct of competition between life forms.

Since then, an additional century and a half of experimentation and imagination has refined and re-vamped evolutionary theory. Concepts such as the Big Bang, continental drift, and punctuated equilibrium have allowed the understanding of the mechanisms of evolution to mature [2, 4]. The Miller-Urey experiments and subsequent work have shown how constituent components from life can emerge from primordial conditions, offering some support for the idea of abiogenesis [5, 6]. Enhanced methods of genetic analysis have led to further inquiry into evolutionary topics such as the “endosymbiotic” theory for the origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts in eukaryotes [7] and the mechanisms of speciation [8].

When examining the bigger picture, it is interesting to note that there are some who suggest that the scope of the Darwinian model is too narrow, that the idea of evolution by natural selection fails to sufficiently address the “co-evolution” of the environment and the multiple organisms within it. These same individuals also take issue with the limited commentary on the extensive evolution of chemicals that pre-dated the formation of even the earliest life [2, 9]. In the last thirty years, unifying theories taking into account these and other aspects have emerged. One example of this is the “Gaia Theory” [10]. In brief, this theory states that Gaia is “the superorganismic system of all life on Earth [that] hypothetically maintains the composition of the air and the temperature of the planet’s surface, regulating conditions for the continuance of life” and that give and take within this system leads to the evolutionary processes that we observe [2]. In a similar vein, Fritjof Capra’s “Deep Ecology” – which incorporates, amongst other things, Gaia theory, chaos theory, and systems thinking – delineates a “web of life” where all living and non-living components on Earth have changed with each other through time [11].

The above examples highlight the diversity of evolutionary research that continues today and demonstrate that there are still many unresolved questions that scientists are pursuing answers for. Contrary to what some anti-evolutionists claim, the level of disagreement between scientists on these topics is not evidence of the shaky ground upon which the idea of evolution stands. In actuality, these disagreements serve as evidence of the vibrancy of the idea and highlight how its continued malleability has allowed it to flourish and take hold.

Genesis for Dummies

The world abounds with creation stories, too many to recount here. The theme common to them all is that a divine force served as the wellspring of life on Earth. In the interests of brevity, I will discuss only the Biblical story of Creation since Catholicism and Protestantism account for a combined 80% or more of the stated religious affiliation of North American citizens [12]. In addition, because the strongest criticism of evolutionary ideas has, by numbers anyways, been levelled by Christians, it becomes necessary to offer a Genesis-based counterpoint in this debate.

Creationism – a theory attributing all matter, biological species, etc. to separate acts of creation, esp. according to a literal interpretation of Genesis, as opposed to evolution.
- The Canadian Oxford Dictionary [1]

In brief, Chapter 1 of Genesis states that God made everything from nothing in less than a week and that after that week the story of life began to unfold [13]. This is termed ex nihlo creation. On the first day, God made light and separated light and dark into day and night. He spent days two through four creating and separating water, dry land, and sky, creating fruit-bearing plants, and creating the sun, moon, and stars (the latter group brought forward so that time could be measured). On the fifth day God made life in the ocean and invented birds, encouraging them to increase their numbers. God created the creatures on dry land on the sixth day, including humans, who were told that they had been made in God’s image and that they were to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). On the seventh day, God rested.

Given that there are some who see Genesis as the blow-by-blow account of the creation of the Earth and everything in it, we can see why there are people who take issue with the theory of evolution. Evolution not only offers an account of the earliest days that is at odds with a literal interpretation of Genesis, it can also be described as undermining the Bible’s anthropocentric premise – that is, that mankind was given dominion over all living things and represents the highest form of living being.

The Sometimes Tortured Relationship between Religion and Science, Existing Creationist Factions, and the Beefs with Evolution

Looking beyond the issue at hand, it is fair to say that Christianity has had a difficult relationship with science (Note: I will, at my own peril, use the term “Christianity” to encompass both Catholics and Protestants. I do this because of the similar perspectives on science and evolution that have, at one point or another, been held by factions within these two groups). Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton were some of the more prominent individuals that were assailed by forces within Christianity [14]. Church positions on issues such as the Earth’s revolution around the sun and the laws of gravity can now be seen as wilfully ignorant, though at the time they justified the Inquisition and similar cheery events.

Because evolutionary thought did not begin to coalesce until a few centuries after the Inquisition, “common descent” proponents were able to avoid the persuasive techniques that had been previously employed by the religious hierarchy. However, from the initial Church protest against Darwin’s ideas, to the Kansas “Scopes Monkey Trial” of the 1920s, to the efforts of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement of the present, there has been a concerted effort by elements within Christianity to undermine evolutionary thinking [15].

At this point it is important to note that a continuum of creation/evolution stances has been characterized, with “Flat Earthers” being the group most adherent to a literal interpretation of the Bible and “Materialist Evolutionists” accepting a completely non-theistic explanation for the origins of life [16]. This continuum includes numerous other groups: “Young Earth Creationists” (YECs) who believe that the Earth is merely thousands of years old and that the “days” described in Genesis were actual 24 hour events; “Old Earth Creationists” (OECs) and related groups who believe that the Earth is ancient, that the “days” of Genesis were not necessarily 24 hour events (thus accounting for the Earth’s antiquity), that “microevolution” – change within an existing group – can occur, and that mankind was made by God in His image; and “Theistic Evolutionists” (TEs) who believe that the world is ancient, that God has created all life through evolution, that Genesis is an allegorical account of creation, and that God has provided a guiding hand during the process of evolution (especially when it comes to the development of man).

Materialism – the doctrine that nothing exists but matter and its movements and modifications.
- The Canadian Oxford Dictionary [1]

Contemporary incarnations of Creationism exist. The ID movement, mentioned above, is an umbrella group that encompasses multiple Creationist factions. Its stated goal is to drive a “wedge” between science’s “materialist philosophy” and the population of the Western world [15, 17]. According to fans of ID, establishing this “wedge” will lead to a “cultural renewal” via a return to Christian principles. ID has led members of different anti-evolution factions (such as YECs and OECs) to put aside their differences in interpretation to provide a unified front against evolution. Organizations such as the Institute for Creation Research or Answers in Genesis are the leading proponents of this movement and they continue to attempt to “debunk” evolutionary theory and re-introduce Creationist teaching into classrooms via grassroots political movements [15].

One argument brought forward by ID proponents and other Creationists is that the process of evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This law states that “no process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body” [18]. Creationists interpret this as saying that things will always progress from order to disorder here on Earth [19]. Unfortunately, the fact that the Earth is not a closed system affects the ability to make this claim, as does the fact that order has been observed coming from disorder on numerous occasions in nature [20, 21].

Another flaw in evolutionary thinking, according to Creationists, is that transitional fossils that would characterize the progression of one form to another do not exist. There are multiple flaws with this argument, including a) the fact that transitional fossils have been observed and therefore some avenues of common descent have been characterized [22], b) the idea of “punctuated equilibrium” can account for instances where there are no transitional fossils [4, 23], and c) new fossils are uncovered all the time, some of which will undoubtedly provide evidence of transition.

A third argument made by Creationists, this one often specifically targeted at the theory of evolution by natural selection, states that evolution is a tautology (that is, it has a circular definition). These claims are largely based on work from Karl Popper [24]. The Talk.Origins website summarizes the Creationist stance succinctly: “[n]atural selection is the survival of the fittest [and the] fittest are those that survive” [25]. However, many people, including Popper himself, have refuted this over-simplification on the grounds that the term “fitness” refers to more than just survival (e.g. organisms deemed “fit” are constrained by laws such as those pertaining to chemistry and genetics) and therefore the definition is not circular [26, 27].

For individuals interested in a more in depth analysis of the above arguments and additional points of contention between evolutionists and creationists, it is worth noting that there are on-line resources providing exhaustive details on all facets of the creation/evolution debate. I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to thoroughly mine this resource – to check claims vs. counter-claims, etc. – before coming to any conclusions (I would recommend the Talk.Origins website as a jumping off point for the evolutionist perspective [25] and the True.Origins website as a jumping off point for the creationist perspective [28]). In my opinion, many of the arguments put forward by Creationists rely on selective referencing, oversimplification of concepts, and outright falsehoods that are easily contradicted and I feel that careful critical examination of the literature bears this out. More than anything else, it is frustrating that evolutionists are far more willing to point to the gaps in their model than Creationists. This failure to be self-critical about the literal interpretation of Genesis undermines their position.

Cockiness (or: Overstating the Case for Evolution)

I would be remiss if I failed to point out some of the shortcomings in the evolutionist argument. Most problems with the evolutionist perspective arise because proponents make over-reaching claims about evolution. The evidence can be oversimplified or misrepresented by individuals unfamiliar with some of the nuances of the actual research and this sloppiness yields mistakes that then become fodder for Creationist attacks against evolution [29]. Ultimately someone is left to clean up the mess made by others, but this becomes a daunting task since misconceptions will persist in the literature for years [30].

Another problem for evolutionists is the tendency to dismiss elements of the Creationist model automatically, without even attempting to disprove it via the scientific method. This reactionary approach is counter-productive as it undermines the logic that is supposed to drive evolutionist thinking. And while evidence in many instances does favour the evolutionist perspective, in other instances it is difficult, at present, to make a solid claim either way. Creationist interpretations, even if they defy Occam’s razor at its dullest, should not be discounted until a) they have been tested themselves and b) a falsifiable evolutionary alternative is available. Evolutionists would be wise to note that decidedly long leaps have sometimes been made by leading scientists, one example being Francis Crick’s belief in “directed panspermia” (the belief that the building blocks of life have an extraterrestrial origin) [31]. This is not to say that Crick’s theory is incorrect – it is just to point out that our present understanding leaves that theory about as falsifiable as the Genesis story.

Fish in a Barrel – Finding Flaws in the Literal Interpretation of Genesis

I would also be remiss if I failed to subject the Genesis story to the logical scrutiny that has thus far only been applied to the theory of evolution. However, Creationist precepts, as far as we can tell in the present, are not based on observable phenomenon and are therefore unfalsifiable. Hence application of the scientific method to Genesis is impossible. Nonetheless, if the first section of the Bible is to be taken literally (as is the case, to differing extents, in both the YEC and OEC factions), numerous problems emerge. We can ask how plants (created on day three, Genesis 1:12) managed to flourish in the absence of the sun (created on day four, Genesis 1:16). Did God have an alternative means of ensuring the plants’ survival while their chloroplasts were rendered useless? If so, how come it was not mentioned? In the same vein, we can also ask how God managed to have light (created on the first day, Genesis 1:3) show up three days before the sun arrived. Moving in another direction, we can ask if Genesis tells us that God thinks incest is a good thing. The question arises because a) humanity was encouraged by God to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) and b) humanity consisted only of Adam and Eve, so any multiplying in subsequent generations would have to arise through the pairing of their children. Of course, the incest question becomes moot in light of the fact that Adam and Eve never produced any female offspring, however one is left wondering how humanity managed to continue beyond Cain, Abel, and Seth.

Contradictions and conundrums abound in Genesis and the issue for Biblical literalists then becomes this: how do you explain these contradictions without attempting to view the text through an interpretative prism? A literal take on Genesis cannot be done piecemeal as that would go against the notion that the entire Bible is God’s absolute, inflexible word. However, the gaps mentioned above can only be explained through interpretation and speculation, and once that is allowed, equal value must be attached to every other interpretation of the Bible on the creation/evolution continuum.

Something tells me that this would not be an attractive option for some.

One Last Thing (or: Can’t We All Just Get Along?)

In the final analysis, I do not believe that God and evolution have to be viewed as mutually exclusive. There is no proof that a supreme being did not guide evolution, so it makes sense that people are able to reconcile their suspicion that life developed through evolution with their belief in the human soul. The fact that science does not enter the dominion of religion and faith by tackling issues of morality also helps bridge the gap. In 1996, Pope John Paul II re-affirmed the Vatican position that evolution does not necessarily conflict with Christian beliefs [32]. I am sure that there are millions of people who read the Bible for inspiration and moral guidance who agree with the assessment of His Holiness.

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my thanks to Cathie Garnis and Emily Vucic for helping edit this report. I would also like to extend special thanks to Bradley P. Coe for his many insights into this issue and for his helpful enthusiasm throughout the writing process.

References

1. Barber K (ed.): The Canadian Oxford Dictionary: Oxford University Press; 2001.

2. Margulis L, Sagan D: Microcosmos: four billion years of evolution from our microbial ancestors. New York: Summit Books; 1986.

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(Originally published May 9th, 2005)