and surely the Brits reengineered it to make it better
Then the vet doesn’t understand evolution. The descendants of dogs will always be dogs. Perhaps the vet should take a remedial course in cladistics. As another example, the common ancestor of dogs and humans was a mammal, and we are both still mammals. You don’t evolve out of your lineage, you stay in it.
That’s exactly what has happened with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19.
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Something obviously evolved out of their lineage for evolution to work or we would all still be franken-cells.
Except that wasn’t natural, like so many other GMO’s.
No, they didn’t. Your ancestors never change.
The common ancestor of humans and chimps was an ape, and we are both still apes.
The common ancestor of humans and dogs was a mammal, and we are both still mammals.
The common ancestor of humans and fish was a vertebrate, and we are both still vertebrates.
The common ancestor of pine trees and humans was a eukaryote, and we are both still eukaryotes.
What are you on about? Are you saying viruses don’t change in the wild? That they don’t mutate?
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I’m a family doc. The question is a good one, but a bit confusing to answer. There are many branches of medicine that use evolution to varying degrees. For a primary care doc, it’s sort of like asking if a baker needs to know how to farm wheat. I don’t need evolution from a day to day point of view, but evolution is the unifying theory of biology. Human biology makes lots more sense in its light. I believe that @glipsnort and others that work with prevention, microbiology, virology, etc deal with it directly much more than I do. Thanks.
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It is argued that common descent is necessary for understanding the human genome and identifying common DNA sequences. But as I don’t know much about genetics, I can’t make a judgement on that. Common descent certainly offers a possible explanation for certain genetic observations, but whether it is essential or not, I dunno.
But as far as I know, a YEC doctor, for example, wouldn’t not be hindered in any way for rejecting the theory that life on earth evolved from a bug.
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No one is arguing that “evolution” - as defined in biology - is useless to medicine. By “evolution” in the OP, the poster is referring to the theory that all life evolved from a common ancestor.
Please explain why it is necessary to accept the theory that all life evolved from a common ancestor to understand how “carcinogenic mutations occur” and “viruses evolve”?s Ditto for the article about arteries evolving.
I can’t see why a YEC scientist could not understand these processes.
How is that different from what I stated?
I neither said nor implied that it was. The point, understanding evolution is necessary in more than one field of medical endeavor (and not just in the classroom), still stands.
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How exactly would a story about what might have happened on earth millions of years ago help a doctor treat a disease? An example. please.
Let’s get real - why on earth would a vet would need to visualize a theorized evolution that allegedly happened millions of years ago to order to do his work?
Besides that, has a mere theory ever helped treat a disease?
The OP is not concerned with “understanding evolution”; it is asking how relevant the theory that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor is to medicine.
I didn’t know it is a “fact” that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor, which is what the poster means by “evolution”.
The OP is not concerned with “applications of evolution”, but applications of the theory that all life evolved from a common ancestor.
The title of this conversation:
Does practicing medicine require evolution to be true?
The evolution of viruses, antibiotic resistant bacteria and the median artery in humans, as three cases in point, exemplify that evolution is already fact, and is therefore true. Practicing medicine does not require evolution to be true because evolution is true. The practice of medicine therefore requires an understanding of how evolution works in the fields of oncology, virology and bacteriology at the very least, the latter two being involved in the study of epidemiology. The evolution of the median artery of course has implications in other specialties, too, surgery being a very obvious one.
And then
Other examples of human anatomy changing over time, include the prevalence of spina bifida occulta (opening of the sacral canal), abnormal connections of two or more bones in feet, increasing absence of wisdom teeth, thyroidea ima artery (branch of the aortic arch) — decreased over time, disappeared completely by the end of the 20th century) and fabella (small bone in the back of the knee joint — increased over time).
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No, I’m arguing that none of it is necessary for biology or medicine. Heredity and adaptation, along with devolution by mutation and genetic loss more than cover anything needed. The false notions of leftover body parts and genes has hampered medicine, not enhanced it, because it kept them from looking at what exactly those organs and genes do for us. This is why the modern scientists skip straight to genetic modifications. Why wait on evolution which may never happen when you can make your fish glow today?
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How do you reckon that a treatment is devised if there is no established theory giving a physiological picture of what is happening in the body and what needs to be addressed?
“A mere theory” indeed!
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You’re trying to create some kind of contention that’s not there. My answer correctly responded to the question.
It’s a rational fact. Axiomatic.
I imagine most people in just about any field can say the same about their undergraduate education. Much of what a theologian does could be done without knowing English literature, or history, psychology, or algebra, or even from the New Testament Overview course they took at Podunk University 20 years ago. But it is foundational to understanding what we’re to learn later, and understanding people and how God relates to them.
In many ways, the difference in how MDs and D.O.s are trained vs. NPs is related. NPs do a good job with straightforward cookbook medicine, and their training reflects that goals: learning protocols, set plans and so forth. In contrast, physicians are better with situations that fall outside the protocols because they have a better understanding of the disease process and can apply their experience to atypical presentations.
Understanding the basic biology behind things is a part of that process. You are right that having a knowledge of how fish developed lungs makes little difference in treating lung cancer, but knowing that organisms and tumors mutate and change over time certainly does, and may affect chemotherapy regimens. Picking s drug initially to treat an infection depends on the local resistance patterns and thus requires no knowledge of mutations and change, but knowing what to change to when that initial,choice isn’t working requires knowledge of how resistance develops, and the researcher who is looking for a new way of treating needs an even more intimate understanding or how it works. That understanding is grounded on a framework with evolution being a part of the structure.
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