Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
As the mass media winds down its celebration of the centenary of the infamous Scopes Trial, it is important to remember that Clarence Darrow, his scientific consultants, and their cheerleaders in the mass media enthusiastically supported the thesis of the textbook Civic Biology that the human race could be improved by only allowing the “more fit” to reproduce and by prohibiting the “less fit” members of society from procreating. These darlings of the mainstream media disregarded the Creator’s prohibition against the marriage of close relatives in the Law of Moses—by which time genetic mutations had built up in the human genome so that partners in such marriages would be likely to carry the same genetic defects and pass them on to their offspring. Instead, the evolutionists focused on removing the “less fit” through compulsory sterilization while encouraging the “more fit” to reproduce without regard to their degree of relationship. Not surprisingly, recent research has shown that Darwin’s own descendants suffered from the negative effects of the cousin-marriages of their ancestors. Indeed, they fell prey to the same delusion that has overtaken so much of the Catholic intellectual elite in our day, that God did not create a perfect world for us in the beginning but used hundreds of millions of years of death, deformity and disease to evolve the first human beings. This, in turn, has led to the perverse Teilhardian notion that modern science needs to improve on evolving human nature by manipulating man’s genetics, thus simultaneously denying man’s original perfection while arrogantly experimenting with the divine design of man’s physical body to achieve human perfection in the future, with foreseeably catastrophic consequences.
As an anonymous author explains in his masterful critique of progressive creationism, Worthy of Belief:
The sad [story] begins . . . with Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton. It is Galton who deserves the most ‘credit’ for propagating eugenics theory as an absolute scientific conclusion. Galton published his articles on eugenics just six years after Darwin’s Origin of Species. The premise of the theory is “that the human race can be gradually improved and social ills simultaneously eliminated through a program of selective procreation.” Eugenic science promised societal improvement by encouraging procreation of the “fit” over the “unfit;” and by preventing, through use of force, those deemed undesirable from ever giving birth to the “unfit.” Galton pioneered the technique of “equating high levels of ‘fitness’ with inclusion in ‘who’s who’ directories,” for which he drew “a parallel to breeding methods used with animals.” That model continued to be used in scientific research for nearly a century. Those touting eugenics urged the government to allow reproduction only by those possessing desirable qualities of body and intellect, insisting this would produce better specimens and more productive subjects for the state. For example, Galton proclaimed that: if talented men were mated with talented women, of the same mental and physical characteristics as themselves, generation after generation, we might produce a highly bred human race, with no more tendency to revert to meaner ancestral types than is shown by our long-established breeds of racehorses and foxhounds.
To really “cleanse the race” of undesirable genes, and thus weed-out the “socially inadequate defectives,” required forced sterilization. The stated goal was to rid society of “idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness [and] epilepsy.” Doctors, of course, typically represent the most respected members of science. And the physicians who accepted eugenics emphasized it as “genetic science.” Those physicians, in turn, convinced legislatures that eugenics was far more than just valid science, and that implementing eugenic goals was critical for the good of the state and public health. They ignited fervor among lawmakers to curb “unchecked procreations among the ‘socially inadequate.’” Galton’s eugenics theory raged right alongside the theories of Lyell and Darwin for much of the 20th century. The famous Scopes “Monkey Trial” epitomized the battle of science versus Creationism, and it was fought in the arena of law. Although the nation was captivated by it, few knew that this fight also included the teaching of eugenics. What Tennessee sought to prohibit John Scopes from teaching was the “explicitly eugenics-favoring biology textbook” by George Hunter, A Civic Biology. One passage in this book concerned the socially undesirables, i.e., those targeted by eugenicists, and instructed Tennessee’s students that:
If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.
The Scopes trial was in 1925. As early as 1907, Indiana had already adopted eugenics laws. It was the first state to do so. The preamble to Indiana’s law decreed that “[h]eredity plays a most important part in the transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility.” Eventually, many other states would follow Indiana’s lead. And those states, through their eugenics laws, imposed forced sterilization upon persons that state doctors diagnosed as undesirable, prohibited those persons from marriage, confined them to state institutions, or barred them from the country. President Theodore Roosevelt declared that “society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.” Future president Woodrow Wilson, while he was governor of New Jersey, signed its forced sterilization act into law. Virginia joined the pack when it passed “The Racial Integrity Act” in 1924, which declared that: “the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted . . . by the sterilization of mental defectives.” The law empowered physicians to sterilize all persons either diagnosed as defective or whom the state identified as undesirable. Under the law, a patient could appeal the doctors’ decision to a circuit court.
It would be tempting to believe that our civil leaders recoiled from the horrors of the Nazi eugenics program after the Nuremberg Trials and abandoned the “elimination of the less fit” by force. But that, of course, is not the case. The focus of attention of Western leaders has merely shifted from preventing the “less fit” from having children to preventing the “less fit” from being born. Selective abortion of children with known or suspected genetic defects has become so common that Downs Syndrome children have ceased to exist in many countries, and the IVF industry has led to the abomination of hundreds of millions of innocent children being warehoused in laboratories, awaiting implantation in the womb of a stranger. And, as biologist Pamela Acker and others have demonstrated, all of this “genetic cleansing” has not produced one single bit of “new” functional biological information.
Can a Struggle for Existence Drive Genetic Innovation?
One of the first scientists to join the advisory council of the Kolbe Center was Dr. Maciej Giertych, an expert in genetics with a doctorate in dendrology. Dr. Giertych made an outstanding contribution to our first international symposium on Rome in 2002 with a presentation on genetics which demonstrated that mutations do not add new functional biological information to the genome of any kind of organism and can, at best, confer a short-term advantage on an organism at the cost of a reduction in overall fitness. As he explained in a summary of his presentation, now available in its entirety on the Kolbe website:
Throughout Europe evolution is taught in schools as a biological fact. The main evidence for this presented in school textbooks is based on the assertion that formation of races is an example of a small step in evolution. This is profoundly wrong. Races form as a consequence of genetic drift, selection and isolation. Genetic drift results from the accidental loss of some genetic variation in small populations due to inbreeding. Selection depends on the elimination from a population of all forms not adapted to the particular environment. With this elimination also some gene variants (alleles) get lost. For natural races to be identifiable they have to remain isolated from the main body of the population. The same is true in breeding, where the breeder reproduces the race formation procedure only applying selection pressures of his own choice and selecting for rather than against specific features. Macroevolution requires increase of genetic variants, thus race formation which depends on their reduction is a process in the opposite direction, comparable to extinctions.
Positive mutations, as a mechanism leading to new functions or organs, are an undemonstrated postulate. We can demonstrate many neutral and negative mutations, but no positive ones. The claim that the appearance of resistance to man-made chemicals (herbicides, fungicides, antibiotics etc) is evidence of positive mutations is questioned on the ground that it belongs to the multitude of defense mechanisms (like healing or acquiring immunity) defending existing life functions of an organism and not creating new ones.
In combination with the work of Dr. John Sanford and Pamela Acker on genetic entropy, Dr. Giertych’s work has demonstrated that the biosphere is characterized not by evolution from a less-ordered to a more highly-ordered state through competition, natural selection, and survival of the fittest, but by devolution from an original state of perfection as a result of a “bondage to decay,” just as the Word of God, as understood in the Church from the beginning, teaches in both the Old and New Testaments. This indisputable conclusion ought to be shouted from the rooftops by all Catholics, since it follows that all of the marvelous design in nature was created by God in the beginning and is not the result of any natural process! In short, cutting-edge genetics has merely confirmed what St. Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans almost two thousand years ago:
For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also, and divinity (Romans 1:20).
Now that we have seen irrefutable evidence that competition, struggle for existence, and natural selection cannot explain the origin of a single biological organ or function, it is time to turn our attention to some examples of what cutting-edge natural science has discovered about the role of divinely orchestrated cooperation within the biosphere, both within and among diverse organisms.
The Role of Cooperation in Creation
The Institute of Creation Research has done a marvelous job of highlighting many recent discoveries that illustrate the wonderful way that Our Creator has designed all of His creatures to be interdependent and cooperative. In an article entitled “Self-Sacrificing Cells Demonstrate a Selfless Designer,” ICR research scientist Brian Thomas writes:
Scientists have discovered that a single yeast cell gene (FLO1) expresses a protein that causes individual cells to stick to one another for protection. The cells flocculate, or form clumps “consisting of thousands of cells,”1 with the outside cells sacrificing themselves to protect the inner cells from possible harmful chemicals. These organisms have an obvious programmed behavior that mimics altruism, the principle or practice of unselfish concern for the welfare of others. But could nature have programmed it unaided, and if so, how?
The FLO1 study, published in the journal Cell, proposes that the common yeast “S. cerevisiae is also a model for the evolution of cooperative behavior.” The standard and often repeated mechanism for evolution involves “functional intermediates.” In this scenario, there was supposedly a series of mutation-generated biochemicals, each with new, immediately useful applications for those yeast cells. The cells from each step in that long series should be able to exist alone, being more fit than their competitors, and thus, the extant encyclopedias-worth of biological information present in the cells developed from zero information by accident and over vast time.
Functional intermediates are not even plausible when considering man-made machines; each machine is specifically designed (whether elegant or not) to serve a definite purpose. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that these researchers found evidence that the parts comprising the yeast flocculation mechanism must all be present at one time in order for it to function, thus precluding the possibility of functional intermediates. “Investing in the production of costly Flo adhesins [“sticky” proteins] is only useful when there is a sufficient concentration of other cells to form a floc,” the scientists reported. They also found that “flocculation is regulated by… tryptophol, as well as by the primary metabolite ethanol. Together, these results reveal a complex and tightly regulated social behavior in S. cerevisiae.”
Thus, without all the parts for this “tightly regulated behavior” in place, none of it would work. To begin with, the gene FLO1 must exist. The array of cellular equipment required to transcribe and translate that gene into a precisely-folded protein must exist. Specific biochemicals must exist that tell each cell whether or not it has joined with a neighbor. Functional intermediates are not observed and are certainly difficult to imagine in sufficient detail to render them even remotely plausible. What is observed is a programmed pattern of behavior that mimics altruism in single cells.
The research is described as showing “that even the simplest organisms are capable of sophisticated social discriminations in nature.” However, what it actually shows is that even the smallest organisms are not simple. The Creator’s genius is reflected from atoms to molecules to yeast to ecosystem interdependence to earth’s uniquely life-friendly placement in the universe. And in this case, His knowledge of selfless sacrifice has been hardwired into yeast.
In another article on the ICR website, geneticist Dr. J. Tompkins offers another amazing example of cooperation among different kinds of organisms:
Researchers have just documented how plants use underground fungal networks to warn neighboring plants of impending insect attack, uniquely illustrating the complex and highly designed interconnected cooperation found in nature.
The research study—just published in the July, 2013 issue of Ecology Letters—is the first such report that confirms and reveals how plants have uniquely co-designed physiologies that internetwork with other plants using an underground fungus as an information conduit. This amazing and intricate system allows the plants to readily and effectively communicate as a community, like a natural biological internet.
Prior to this study, scientists were aware that mutually beneficial relationships existed between plants and certain fungi that colonize the soil surrounding the plants’ root systems. These beneficial soil microorganisms are called “mycorrhizal fungi” and are known to promote overall plant growth and help them cope with insect attacks, pathogens, and drought stress. In fact, scientists had been aware of the possibility that mycorrhizal fungi could enable plants growing together in close groups to signal and prime each other’s chemical defense systems in response to attacks by insects.
In a paper published just last year, scientists proposed the idea that this communication occurs through the release and detection of information-carrying chemicals that traverse the soil matrix through mycorrhizal networks that work like information superhighways directly connecting plants below ground.3 This is accomplished because the thread-like fungus grows underground, producing strands called mycelia that connect one set of roots to another. Now this research hypothesis has been spectacularly confirmed.
In this new study, the scientists grew multiple sets of bean plants in communal groups of five individuals. They allowed three plants in each group to access the soil that contained the underground networks of connected fungal mycelia. As a control measure, researchers kept the two remaining plants in each group separated from fungal connections in the soil. The researchers then infested one plant in each group with aphids (a piercing, sucking insect), which triggered the release of plant chemicals that repel aphids and attract wasps, one of the aphid’s predators.
Amazingly, the plants that were not under insect attack themselves, but connected to a victimized plant by the underground fungal network, began to produce a defensive chemical response in their cells. The plants not connected to the fungal network did not activate their chemical defense systems. As an extra control measure, the researchers also covered the plants with bags to rule out above-ground signaling that could possibly occur through air-borne chemical signals sensed in their leaves. Because of the carefully controlled conditions, the signals that caused this community defense response were found to be transmitted through the fungal network.
The lead researcher in the study, Dr. David Johnson, stated, “We knew that plants produce volatile chemicals when attacked, and we knew they communicate danger to each other above ground. Now we know they communicate danger through these underground fungal networks as well.”
The root systems of many types of agricultural plants studied to date—which not only include beans, but also grasses like wheat, rice, maize and barley—exhibit these types of mycorrhizal fungi interactions. Undoubtedly this amazing interconnected relationship also occurs out in nature given the fact that the plants we use in agriculture have been domesticated from the wild.
Evolutionists are hard-pressed to explain how complex, cooperative networks between completely different types of organisms such as these could have come about through Darwinian evolution—particularly when they involve dynamic biochemical networks of interaction in two separate types of organisms. Instead, this is clear evidence for intelligent design by an omnipotent and wise Creator.
In yet another article on the ICR website, Frank Sherwin describes the way that God has designed the bacteria in our gut to interact harmoniously with our brain and nervous system.
Within the past 20 years or so, dozens of papers have been written regarding the human microbiome. Microbiota inhabit a variety of niches in the human body, with the gut being the primary location. Remarkably, “The human gut has the highest known cell densities of any microbial habitat on Earth.”1 The number of microbiome cells number into the trillions for a single person.
Our relationship with our microbiome has been quite intimate from creation because the microbiota accomplishes vital tasks for us. For example, we have been designed with the bidirectional “microbiome–gut–brain axis.” This includes communication channels between our central nervous system (CNS), gut flora, GI tract and the countless signaling events that take place between them.2 Researcher Dr. Mayer, et al, went on to say,
The discovery of the size and complexity of the human microbiome has resulted in an ongoing reevaluation of many concepts of health and disease, including diseases affecting the CNS.2
It has been found that endocrine and other signals produced by the gut microbiota can affect the brain—and the brain can, in turn, impact microbial function and composition by way of endocrine secretions. These bidirectional communication channels must have an innate interface system that fully controls the harmony between us humans and the microbes we host. This is called a microbe interface system.
Scientists recently discovered that gut molecules control brain inflammation via “long-distance regulation of immune cells in the brain.”3 Tryptophan is an amino acid our bodies use to make proteins. Gut bacteria process a component (metabolite) of tryptophan that in turn passes into the CNS. These metabolites attach to a specific receptor called AHR in the brain. AHR is a transcription factor (also called a sequence-specific DNA-binding factor) expressed in special cells called astrocytes and microglia. Basically, AHR binds to the DNA (genes) that encodes a protein that improves the responsiveness of astrocytes to inflammation of the CNS. Perhaps “this pathway might support the repair of injured neural cells.”3
This symbiotic cooperation is hardly the war-like paradigm of microbe-human relations described by evolutionists and even some creationists. Research at ICR views the trillions of microbes in our microbiome as creatures designed by God to work in harmonious relationships with other organisms and body systems.
Cancer Cells Follow the Philosophy of Spencer and Darwin
Not only does everything in nature declare the wisdom and goodness of God by the way that a dazzling array of different parts work together for the good of the whole, but the study of disease highlights the way that the biological agents of disease actually behave as if they had embraced the philosophy of Spencer and Darwin and sought to multiply and increase without regard to the good of the larger organism of which they are a part. Indeed, in another excellent article on the ICR website, Dr. David Demick explains how the effects of a failure to cooperate at the cellular level leads directly to the scourge of cancer which mirrors the behavior of individuals in an evolution-based secular humanist society who see themselves as products of an evolutionary struggle for survival rather than as divinely-designed marvels of creation.
The doctrine of evolution tends to magnify the competitive aspects of nature and to minimize the cooperative aspects. “Nature red in tooth and claw” is indeed the theme of many evolutionary books. However, the living world around us has many examples of cooperative or symbiotic behavior at many different levels. We need look no further than our own bodies for some of the most marvelous instances of cooperative activity in all of creation. The processes of breathing, digestion, muscular contraction and coordination, nutrient transport, and their direction by the neural and endocrine systems, have shown an amazing sophistication of cooperation through molecular biologic research. The discovery of such intricate cooperation at the cellular level should not surprise Christians, as the Bible speaks of the human body as being a symbol of the great congregation of God’s people, or the “body of Christ.”
Cancer upsets this normal state of harmonious, cooperative cellular function. For childhood growth and adult maintenance to occur, cells must divide constantly in the human body. However, cancer cells are characterized by their uncontrolled growth—they do not respond to signals to stop the division process, but instead continue on and on. In the body, cancer cells invade and kill their neighbor cells. They may cannibalize each other. They often outgrow their own blood supply, thus killing even themselves. In artificial cell culture, cancer cells will show this trait in a slightly different way, for they will grow until they pile up and suffocate each other. Normal cells in culture, on the other hand, will grow on the bottom of the bottle until they form a continuous single cell layer. Then, sensing the presence of a neighbor, they will chemically signal each other to quit replicating. Normal human cells will respect boundaries and not harm their neighbors, whereas cancer cells will aggressively invade, suffocate, and destroy their neighbors.1
Biochemical research shows other ways in which cancer cells are “bad neighbors.” For example, some cancers produce abnormal or excessive signaling chemicals (hormones or cytokines) which upset the normal chemical balance of the body. Cells of advanced cancers have altered metabolic pathways, making them voracious and inefficient users of nutrient molecules. Thus, they are chemical as well as physical competitors with normal cells.2,3 Of course, the eventual outcome of all this disordered and violent cellular behavior is death for the body, unless the cancer cells can be controlled or eliminated.
So, what is the cause of cancer? This is a question that has haunted physicians for thousands of years. Galen, the ancient Roman, noted the crablike appearance of cancerous tumors (Latin, cancer = crab) and thought that they were caused by an excess of black bile, according to the humoral disease theory of Hippocrates. The true answer began to emerge in the 1800s when the cellular nature of tumors was seen with the microscope, but it has only been in the last 20 years that a more complete answer has emerged. The discovery of “oncogenes” in the 1980s, followed by the “tumor suppressor genes” and “DNA repair genes” in the 1990s, has given us a clear picture of why cancer cells reproduce without restraint.
To summarize this research, whole banks of genes have been discovered that control the cell’s replicative machinery. Certain genes, when activated, cause cell division to occur—these are the “oncogenes,” and there appear to be about 60-70 different ones in the human genome. The oncogenes are held in check by the “tumor suppressor genes,” which shut down the replicative process. It has been shown that most cancers arise through a multistep process—multiple mutations may cause continuous activation of some oncogenes and may inactivate some of the tumor suppressor genes. While genetic analysis does show certain large-scale trends, most cancers are highly heterogeneous in their mutational profile—no single set of mutations seems to characterize most cancers. However, there is no doubt that the key word in cancer causation is “mutations,” which lead to the uncontrolled growth. A mutant cancer cell may be fairly compared to a damaged car in which the accelerator is stuck “on,” and the brakes have failed, resulting in a dangerous loss of control.4
An important textbook of medical physiology gives an interesting perspective on these mechanisms and (perhaps unwittingly) testifies to the marvelous grace of God in creating and sustaining these cellular processes:
But, what is it that causes the altered genes (of cancer cells)? When one realizes that many trillions of new cells are formed each year in the human being, this question should probably be better asked in the following form: Why is it that we do not develop literally millions or billions of mutant cancerous cells? The answer is the incredible precision with which DNA chromosomal strands are replicated in each cell before mitosis takes place and also because the “proofreading” process cuts and repairs any abnormal DNA strand before the mitotic process is allowed to proceed. Yet, despite all these precautions, probably one newly formed cell in every few million still has significant mutant characteristics.
The incredible precision of the DNA replication process has also been referred to as “replication fidelity” by secular scientists. Fidelity is the Latin word for “faithfulness.” Great is His faithfulness, indeed!
On the other hand, increasing efforts are being made to interpret all of biology through the Darwinian lens, and cancer biology is no exception. In fact, the whole process of cancerous cellular change has been viewed as a special case of Darwinian evolution.6
In many other important ways cancer cells have degenerative features. They show no gain of information, but generally show a loss or disorder of functions. This is only another example of the peculiar insistence of evolutionists of perceiving advancement where there is only variation.
Conversely, is there a creationist lens through which to view cancer biology? One may be suggested, as was previously hinted. This new knowledge may be used to extend the natural theology of the Apostle Paul, expressed through his analogy of the “body of Christ,” from the macroscopic level down to the microscopic. Indeed, this may be a more accurate view of final reality, as there are to the anatomist only several thousand macroscopically visible parts of the body. The Bible tells us that the host of the redeemed will be “a great multitude, which no man could number” (Revelation 7:9). Carrying this analogy to the cellular world of our bodies produces a graphic picture of the vast gulf between good and evil.
One needs only a slight acquaintance with the panorama of history to be dismayed by the continual succession of violence, thievery, and other forms of lawless behavior displayed by sinful humanity. The most degenerate human societies sink to ritual murder, cannibalism, and torture. These human behaviors, which have plagued the world almost from its beginning, are remarkably similar to the physiologic behaviors displayed by cancer cells. On the other hand, the Bible foretells a time when violence will be suppressed and peace will be the norm for the whole human community. “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). World peace has been sought in vain by many philosophers and utopian architects. It is ironic that each of us carries with us a daily parable, acted out at the cellular level, of the peaceful virtues that will be the future norm of the City of God. Metaphorically, the expression of those peaceful virtues in our body cells leads to a state of health. When those “virtues” are lost in a clone of cells, we have cancer. This is not to claim that cancer is always a moral problem, or that cancer suffering necessarily results from sin. Nor are individual cells capable of moral choice in their behavior. However, these phenomena create a vivid object lesson for us, as do many other aspects of God’s creation.
To conclude, the tragedy of cancer is the result of ongoing genetic deterioration in our body cells, and as such is a manifestation of the Edenic curse of decay and death. However, a close look at cancer biology can give us a deeper appreciation of the vast wisdom and goodness of God, and of the unutterable vileness of sin.
The more we learn about the biosphere, the more it becomes apparent that cooperation, not competition, is the norm in nature and that competition that seeks the diminution or destruction of competitors reflects the character of satan and does not reflect the character of our all-wise, all-loving Creator.
Through the prayers of the Holy Theotokos, may the Holy Ghost deliver us from all evil and error and guide us into all the Truth!
In Domino,
Hugh Owen
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