I was saddened to see Dr. Dasso’s letter in The UNews. The implications of evolutionary theory to the treatment of diseases in childhood are many. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently announced that pediatricians should stop prescribing antibiotics to treat common earaches due to the evolution of resistant strains of bacteria. Intelligent Design doesn’t provide any guidance, hypothesis, nor insights into such, nor any other health public threat we are currently facing.

Intelligent Design is a pseudoscientific proposition with no scientific value or merit. It’s main proponents are not scientists working in the field of evolution, ecology, genetics, etc. In fact, the main proponents of this political movement are lawyers, business people, communication professionals, etc. The few scientists involved, like Michael Behe or Jonathan Wells, are not experts in evolutionary biology. Furthermore, they have admitted to have a distinct political motivation.

What is more aggravating, from a scientific perspective, is that the ID camp claims that what they propose is science. If that is the case, where is the data, experiments, methodology, etc. Despite the fact that the Discovery Institute (the political think tank behind ID) has poured millions of dollars during the last decade on the “science,” they have not produced anything but propaganda, a la “teach the controversy.”
ID by the numbers:

 Number of scientific papers published on ID, from Science Citation Index: 0
 Number of scientific organizations endorsing ID: 0
 Number of state scientific academies endorsing ID: 0
 Number of national scientific academies endorsing ID: 0
 Number of academic institutions endorsing ID: 0

Lack of data or knowledge in a specific case, like what Dr. Dasso cited in his letter, is not evidence in favor of ID nor against evolution. Alternatively, the amount of processes and patterns explained by evolutionary theory is overwhelming. Since the beginning of the year over 3,000 scientific papers have been published from molecular genetics to evolutionary ecology to paleontology. ?And in not a single case any scientists have to invoke ID.

Gerardo R. Camilo, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biology