Another classic quote mine

This is another wonderful example of the sloppy scholarship of the creationists. The always pretentious Berlinski made the interesting claim that John Von Neumann, the deservedly famous mathematician, thought that Darwinian theory was ridiculous. Douglas Theobald crushes that claim. Von Neumann was clearly on the side of evolutionary theory … but of course, whether he was or wasn’t is actually irrelevant, since we don’t judge ideas in modern biology by the authority of mathematicians from 50 years ago.

Usher syndrome part IV: Clinical management and research directions

Guest Blogger Danio, one last time:

Part I
Part II
Part III

The current standard of pediatric care mandating that all newborns undergo hearing screenings has been applied successfully throughout much of the industrialized world. Early identification of hearing impairments gives valuable lead-time to parents and health care providers during which they can plan medical and educational interventions to improve the child’s development, acquisition of language skills, and general quality of life.

Up to 12% of children born with hearing loss have Usher syndrome. However, diagnosing Usher syndrome as distinct from various forms of congenital hearing impairment is often impossible until the onset of retinal degeneration years later. The considerable number and size of the genes involved makes genetic screening impractical with the current methods, unless there is a family or community history that can shorten the list of targets by implicating a particular Usher gene or subtype.

The educational and medical interventions undertaken to improve a deaf or hearing-impaired child’s cognitive and social development can vary extensively, based in part on whether the child in question is expected to lose his or her vision later in life. Thus an earlier diagnosis of Usher syndrome is an immediate and critical research goal. The most imminent hope for such a diagnostic advance lies in gene chip screening. With this technology, the patient’s DNA can be screened against a microarray of human genes known to cause deafness (and/or Usher syndrome) when mutated, and variances in the DNA sequence of any screened gene would be detected and analyzed. One such chip is already available for commercial use, and another appears to be approaching clinical availability. The rapid and affordable analysis these microarrays offer will be of tremendous benefit in the early diagnosis and management of Usher syndrome.
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In case you were wondering…

I’m still yucky icky sick and oozing slime and fluids like a mollusc, but I did go see the doctor, and she assured me that my death was not imminent but probably at some distant time years hence. I interpret that to mean that my agony will be long and interminably enduring.

We also scheduled a colonoscopy. This is probably not a good day to annoy me.

PZ’s Galápagos Adventure

Here follows a brief account of my sojourn in the Galápagos Islands, just to give you all a rough idea of what I was up to all this time. I’ve tossed in just a few pictures to illustrate what we experienced; I’m planning to dole out the rest a little bit at a time, each week. I took a lot of pictures, and I was a real piker compared to a few other people on the trip — I’m thinking that if I use mine and some of the other photographs people took, if I post one a week, I’ll be able to keep the blog going for about 3800 years.

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Compare and Contrast

I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish
Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to
show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father,
Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.

Charles Darwin

The counter to the side is ticking off the number of people who have died since you opened this webpage. The vast majority of those people are entering Hell. Christ commanded his followers to share the Gospel with those who are perishing… who have you shared with today?

The Surretts, an insufferable family of missionaries in Peru

They both seem to be saying the same thing. The difference: Darwin deplores the idea of damnation, the Surretts have made it the reason for their existence. I know which side I favor.

Protecting the Right of Conscience?

Guest Blogger Danio, sneaking a few more posts in:

Remember that execrable HHS policy document that proposes an extension of the current protections for health care workers who refuse to provide or assist in treatments that they personally find morally objectionable? I did a little back-tracking on this issue, and followed the trail of HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, who requested this regulation after a “disappointing” interaction with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. He has since been unwavering in his support of the proposal–which he claims is not about abortion OR contraception, but about conscience rights–and has a recent blog post responding to the feedback he’s received from pro-choice activists as a result of the leaked document.

Here’s the money quote:

Is the fear here that so many doctors will refuse that it will somehow make it difficult for a woman to get an abortion? That hasn’t happened, but what if it did? Wouldn’t that be an important and legitimate social statement?

“Social statement?” I can scarcely get my mind around the fact that he is so openly, unapologetically endorsing a policy in which pious opinion would trump secular law. Once again, though, it shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, he himself states that “The Bush Administration has consistently supported the unborn”. Ah yes, even as they indiscriminately leech the quality of life (if not the life itself) from countless other self-aware, functioning humans on the planet, each and every blastocyst they encounter is ceremoniously wrapped in a mantle of sanctimonious protection.

Somehow even more disheartening are the numerous fawning, unctuous comments on Leavitt’s recent blog entry. One wrote:

Secretary Leavitt,

It is beyond my comprehension that anyone would be offended by a health care professional who valued human life. But the tragedy is our culture has regressed to a form of barbarism unseen in centuries where progress in technology and science has poisoned our minds, hearts and souls where the intentional destruction of innocent and vulnerable human life has become more important than saving it.

Those of us living and working in a society where human life is expendable by government dictate but fail to stand up to protect and cherish life at any and all costs will live to regret it.

You are doing the right thing Secretary by allowing those of us in the health care profession live our moral and ethical consciences rather than forcing us to choose another profession.

Choose another profession like….a PETA supporter working in a meat packing plant?An auto mechanic who doesn’t support the use of fossil fuels?

Keep your eyes on this one. It has ‘lame duck’s parting shot’ written all over it.
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UPDATE: Leavitt has a new blog entry up today announcing that the proposed rule is being filed in the Federal Register. Although the final draft no longer contains the specific language broadening the definition of “abortion” to include anything from “conception” onward, it still threatens to withhold Federal money if health care organizations don’t allow their employees to exercise their rights of conscience.

What year is it, anyway?

In the reality based community, when you’ve got a problem, you call an expert with some skills and training to deal with it. In the rest of the world, you call a priest to blame evil spirits and do nothing for a small pile of money. How else to explain asking a wizened old Catholic priest to explain ‘perversions’ and STDs?

Promiscuity, as well as homosexuality and pornography, says 73 year-old Fr. Jeremy Davies, is a form of sexual perversion and can lead to demonic possession. Offering what may be an explanation for the explosion of homosexuality in recent years, Fr. Davies said, “Among the causes of homosexuality is a contagious demonic factor.”

Fr. Davies continues: “Even heterosexual promiscuity is a perversion; and intercourse, which belongs in the sanctuary of married love, can become a pathway not only for disease but also for evil spirits.”

He goes on to blame all kinds of evils on demons. Forget medical explanations: we need to treat with leeches, stat, and if that doesn’t work, an exorcism. And if that fails, there’s always the 100% successful traditional treatment: tie them to a stick and set them on fire.

To the clever dicks who think they are annoying me

One of the chores I got done this afternoon, after a much needed nap, was to go through the mail that accumulated during our long absence. Part of that job is sorting out the pile of magazines that I did not subscribe to, but that some people out there think they can sign me up for and annoy me — but which, since I did not authorize any payment, and which are usually sent to me under some sloppy permutation of my name, I simply never pay for, and eventually the publisher gets tired of sending me without recompense and the subscription fades away.

It’s a weird mix: lots of conservative political rags which get tossed into the recycling bin with barely a glance, and the rest is a mishmash of odd stuff that the sender seems to think says something about me. Out magazine I sort of understand — they want to imply that I’m gay, which they think I’d take as an insult because they do — but the yummy cover photo of Neil Patrick Harris and the nice interview inside just made me think there would be some perks to being gay. American Rider, though, is a strange choice. Am I supposed to be a leather-wearing Harley rider, too? It’s a very Tom of Finland combination, but sorry, ultimately uninteresting to me. Body+Soul is a better choice for something that would irritate, but it’s so dang silly that I can only laugh.

So I hate to say it since I am getting a giggle out of these random piles of glossy paper in my mailbox, but could you please stop wasting your time? The only people being hurt by this action are the mail carriers who have enough of a burden to haul every day, and possibly the publishers who might lose a little money on the printing (but might gain a little more ad revenue from the temporary addition to their subscriber rolls).

And planet Earth. Think of the Earth, man.