Malaria parasite appears to change the host mosquito’s behavior in an adaptive way

One goal of the young science of “Darwinian medicine” is to understand how infectious microorganisms might actually manipulate the host’s behavior to facilitate the microorganisms’ own transmission. This is nothing new to evolutionists—we have several examples of larger parasites, like flukeworms or fungi, making their hosts behave in a way that helps the parasite complete […]

The perils of “balanced” reporting

by Greg Mayer Curtis Brainard, editor of The Observatory, the Columbia Journalism Review‘s online science journalism section, has a nice article up tracing the role of the news media in encouraging and spreading anti-vaccination pseudoscience, including the role of the disgraced British physician Andrew Wakefield, and the fear mongering of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (The […]

Genes should not be patented

Did you know that the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a case with wide ramifications, a case involving whether genes—human genes in this case—can be patented? (For longer analyses, see the NPR story here and the New York Times story here). At issue is the patenting by a Utah Company, Myriad Genetics, of two […]

Muslim anti-vaxers slow eradication of polio

There’s always been some religious opposition to vaccination.  When Jenner and others introduced smallpox vaccination, 18th-century churches often denounced it as a “delusion of satan” and a “violence to the law of nature”.  This opposition was, of course, based on Scripture—including the argument that Job had been inoculated by Satan!—and on the view that saving […]

Woomeisters successfully lobby National Health Service to omit critiques of homeopathy

An  article in Wednesday’s Guardian by Sarah Boseley tells a truly disgusting tale of lobbying for homeopathy. Draft guidance for the website NHS [National Health Service] Choices warning that there is no evidence that homeopathy works was suppressed by officials following lobbying by a charity set up by the Prince of Wales. Homeopathy, which involves […]

Why we can’t clone a Neanderthal—or any ancient organism

I’m not a huge fan of sci-fi, but one sci-fi movie I have seen is “Jurassic Park.” You’ll remember that the dinosaurs in that park were cloned from dinosaur blood (which contains DNA because reptiles, unlike mammals, have red blood cells with nuclei), and that blood was from the stomachs of mosquitoes that had bitten […]

Kids’ anti-vax book

Talk about poisoning the well: there’s a new book out by Stephanie Messenger called Melanie’s Marvelous Measles.  It’s an anxi-vaxer book for kids! The Amazon page describes the contents: Melanie’s Marvelous Measles was written to educate children on the benefits of having measles and how you can heal from them naturally and successfully. Often today, […]

My doctor has a book

My physician, Alex Lickerman, is a terrific doctor, one who spends a lot of time with his patients and treats the whole person rather than the disease. I’ve been enormously impressed with him. He also has a website, “Happiness in this world,” where he posts once a week, covering medical topics with psychological implications (click […]

Dershowitz claims that Germany’s ban on circumcision is anti-Semitic

There is one issue that unites Jews and Muslims: they both practice ritual circumcision of infant males, and both are opposed to the new German law that bans circumcision of infant males. Now I know this is a hot-button issue in the secular community, and, in truth, I don’t have a strong opinion—or any opinion—on […]

Harriet Hall on Darwinian medicine: it is a useless endeavor?

In one of my very first posts on this site I questioned the value of “Darwinian medicine”—that area of inquiry that tries to explain disease and the behavior of pathogens as results of natural selection.  Cold viruses, for example, are supposed to make you sneeze to facilitate their spreading, while malaria parasites make you prostrate […]