Antibiotic Resistance Not Evolution?

Thanks very much for the link!

HJ

I wish that the flat earth, intelligent design people would have the honesty to just come out and say, "There is no evolution -- it's all magic". (If they wished, they could do the same thing with experimental physics, chemistry, and other branches of science as well.) But, instead, they keep trying to fool themselves and others into accepting a twisted interpretation of a narrowly selected set of observations, with the goal of imposing their superstitious dogma on everyone. As hundreds of others have said, it's the opposite of scientific inquiry.

One thing is certain, the IDiots at the Discovery Institute will latch onto this and get LOTS of mileage out of it. Too bad!

"Although the mutant bacteria can survive well in the hospital environment, the change has come at a cost. The altered protein is less efficient in performing its normal function, making the bacteria less fit in an environment without antibiotics."

I am not a biochemist, but I don't understand how this is supposed to mean it's not evolving. If the bacteria is adapting to an environment that includes antibiotics, why would it matter if that adaptation wasn't necessarily very good in a different environment? Isn't that kind of like saying animals adapted to living in the air on dry land at the cost of being able to live in the water, except for a few?

I'm not competent to judge her on the biology, but the language she uses is easily recognizable as that of evolution denialists (kinds, evolution = generation of new DNA/information, etc.)

So let me see if I understand: Some bacteria have changes to their DNA (by both mutation and DNA swaps), are therefore better adapted to their environment (presence of antibiotics) and therefore become the dominant population. And this IS NOT evolution.

One would hope for better from OSU but at least they have good football teams. I would not hope for any better from someone who is an "AiG (answers in genesis)-US speaker, researcher, author and online instructor"

That last paragraph you quote from the article is insanity. Not just unsupportable, but flat-out wrong.

Purdom works for Answers in Genesis (where the story is hosted), the major young earth creationist organization in the U.S. This is what she does: use her degree to lend some "authority" to creationism. She's also not a microbiologist, though she tries to pass herself off as one, and I believe she's supposed to have a forthcoming book on it as well.

Whitney: Never fear. The phenomenon she's describing (bacteria taking up DNA from external sources) is called "recombination" or "horizontal gene transfer", and it's a common source of genetic variation in bacteria. It's also a fruitful topic in evolutionary research. (I work on a similar system myself.)

Dr. Purdom is claiming that "moving DNA around" is not true evolutionary change. But, by every accepted definition, it is evolutionary change. Like mutation, recombination is a source of genetic variation that can be inherited by descendants of the affected cell, and it can influence the survival and reproduction of those cells in some environments.

There's a page for her at Answers In Genesis (link not provided; it's easy to find) that claims she has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics, but either she doesn't understand what evolution is, or else she's deliberately trying to confuse her audience. In order to avoid making an argument from incredulity, I'll leave further conclusions up to the reader.

Oh, yeah, "molecules-to-man", "no new information is created", "variation within a bacterial kind"
Just take off the science mask and come out of the creationist closet already.

Mutation and natural selection, thought to be the driving forces of evolution, only lead to a loss of functional systems. Therefore, antibiotic resistance of bacteria is not an example of evolution in action but rather variation within a bacterial kind.