Steven Salzberg
is professor and director at the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, University of Maryland
The emergence of the new, highly virulent bird flu is just the
latest example of how the microscopic world is constantly evolving into
new forms that threaten to devastate the human population. The
seriousness of the threat was underscored yesterday by President Bush's
announcement of a new $7.1 billion national preparedness plan.
To fight off this threat, we need to understand everything we can
about the influenza virus. But even if we succeed completely in
defeating the flu today, the problem isn't going away. Not only will
flu pandemics continue, but also we never know when a new disease such
as SARS or West Nile virus will appear.
To keep ahead of these diseases, we need to continue our scientific
research, and we need to educate our citizens about what they can do
both to protect themselves and to help control the spread of disease.
The current assault on the teaching of evolution greatly undermines our
efforts to do this, now and in the future. If we stop educating our
children about science, our society runs the risk of losing many of the
wonderful advances that make our lives better.
Why has the debate about evolution reemerged? Perhaps because few
people see the obvious effects of evolution that geneticists and
evolutionary biologists see every day.
Consider the influenza virus. Like many viruses, it mutates very
fast, creating many slightly different strains that compete to see
which ones can infect their host most efficiently. Each year, we create
a new flu vaccine, which although not perfect, is very effective.
Why do we need a new vaccine every year? In a word, evolution. Each
year, the flu accumulates many mutations, and some of those mutations
allow it to avoid the vaccine. These resistant strains quickly take
over - that's what Darwin meant by phrase "natural selection" - and
become next year's flu strain. The same thing happens with bacteria,
and this is why our over-use of antibiotics - in animal feed, hand
soaps, and a growing number of other products - is hastening the
evolution of frightening new antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
What about the feared bird flu, the H5N1 strain that has jumped from
birds to humans and killed more than half the people it has infected?
Most people don't understand that H5N1 is evolving not in people, but
in birds. We don't yet know what genetic changes will turn this flu
strain into a pandemic, but we do know that it will continue to evolve.
Each time it jumps to humans, there's a chance that will be the new
pandemic strain.
Scientists in my lab and others can tell you that developing a
vaccine for the flu absolutely requires that we understand its
evolution. We can also tell you that the flu doesn't "care" if we
believe in evolution. It will keep evolving anyway, and it will kill us
if we ignore it.
A major misconception about evolution is that it is a theory of the
origin of life. It isn't. It's about the origin of species. It does not
explain how life came to be in the first place, but rather it explains
how, once life appeared, it separated into distinct forms that led to
the wonderful diversity of life on our planet. (Darwin himself believed
that the first life was put here by a divine being.)
The evidence for evolution is overwhelming and increasing every
year. Among the many astonishing things we've learned through the
sequencing of the human genome is that we share hundreds of genes with
the lowly E. coli bacterium. These genes are so essential to life that
their DNA has been preserved for two billion years, and today we can
read the evidence in our genomes.
Several polls have reported that a majority of Americans believe
that religion-based alternatives to evolution should be taught in
science classes in our schools. These polls are called evidence that
perhaps we should teach these alternative views. Reporters and
pollsters deserve much of the blame here: Science isn't like politics,
where outcomes are determined by polls. Another recent poll revealed
that less than half of the U.S. population knows that the Earth
revolves around the sun. Does this mean we should teach that the sun
revolves around the Earth? What these polls do highlight, sadly, is the
failure of science education. Of course it would be a huge mistake, and
a disservice to our children, if we used polls to decide what to teach
in school.
Let's drop the artificial debate about evolution and intelligent
design and teach our children what science really is. Let's teach them
that science requires a skeptical mind and that scientific theories
must be supported by objective facts. If we want to teach children
about scientific debates, let's pick a real debate - there are plenty
of them - rather than an artificial one. And let's equip the next
generation of scientists to bring us new cures and new technology,
rather than burying our heads in the sand.
