Improbable Evolution: How Life Beats the Odds

In the 1993 film Jurassic Park, the mathematician character Ian Malcolm, so scene-stealingly played by Jeff Goldblum, rants about science quite a bit, often to poor effect. His references to chaos theory are an utter hash, for example, making it sound indistinguishable from Murphy’s Law. And in the speech that summarizes the central conflict of the rampaging dinosaur plot, he insists “life finds a way”:

“If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, ah, well, there it is.”

The florid, unqualified sentiment of Malcolm’s quote probably made many biologists in the audience cringe, in keeping with what is described as the character’s “deplorable excess of personality.” (Again, thank you, Jeff Goldblum!) Malcolm’s unwavering fatalism toward biology going rogue may be shared by many opponents of genetic engineering who can never be reassured that their specific fears may be groundless. That’s most unfortunate.

Nevertheless, Ian Malcolm wasn’t entirely wrong. Time and again, organisms have shown themselves to be adept at evolving around seemingly insurmountable obstacles to their spread and survival. Evolutionary adaptation isn’t perfect and inevitable, but it allowed some ancient fish to become four-legged land dwellers, for instance, and some microorganisms to thrive in boiling hot sulfur springs and radioactive pools. Unwavering fatalism about biology going rogue, however, can also breed hysteria over genetic engineering and pandemics.

Biologists have therefore long wanted to understand better the evolutionary mechanisms that enable species to occupy previously forbidden ecological niches — and the limitations on those mechanisms. Several recent discoveries highlight the importance of that work and provide at least some of the answers.

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The Morality Pill

Writing in the New York Times, Peter Singer and Agata Sagan ask “Are We Ready for a ‘Morality Pill’?” I dunno. Why?

The infamous Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments showed that given the right circumstances, most of us act monstrously. Indeed, given pretty mundane circumstances, most of us will act pretty callously, hustling past people in urgent need in simply to avoid the hassle. But not all of us do this. Some folks do the right thing anyway, even when it’s not easy. Singer and Sagan speculate that something special must be going on in those peoples’ brains. So maybe we can figure out what that is and put it in a pill!

If continuing brain research does in fact show biochemical differences between the brains of those who help others and the brains of those who do not, could this lead to a “morality pill” — a drug that makes us more likely to help?

The answer is: no. And I think the question invites confusion. Morality is not exhausted by helping. Anyway, help do what?

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Antiretrovirals Show Huge Promise for Halting HIV Spread in Two Major Studies

Big time news on the fight against AIDS out of Rome, and it essentially boils down to this: antiretrovirals work (at least, an astoundingly high percentage of the time when they are used correctly). At the biggest forum on HIV and AIDS in the 30-year battle against the deadly epidemic (it still kills 5,000 people a day, FYI),** two breakthrough findings show that antiretrovirals (ARVs) not only battle HIV in infected persons, but can stop the disease from spreading in two important ways**: it helps prevent HIV-positive folk from transmitting the disease, and also helps prevent non-infected people from contracting it.

A handful of big-time findings were presented, but two stand out. The first major strategy under study, known as “Treatment as Prevention,” showed that when HIV-positive people were given an early start on HIV drugs, the chances of their transmitting the virus to their non-infected partners dropped by an astounding 96 percent.

The second major finding goes by the acronym PreP, for pre-exposure prophylaxis. PreP involves giving ARVs to non-infected partners of HIV-positive subjects as opposed to the infected partner. This also works with statistically significant frequency, cutting transmission by 73 percent.

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(via alea-does-stuff-sometimes)

Most people (scientists included) treat the God question separate from all these other claims. They are right to do so as long as the particular claim in question cannot—even in principle—be examined by science. But what might that include? Most religious claims are testable, such as prayer positively influencing healing. In this case, controlled experiments to date show no difference between prayed-for and not-prayed-for patients. What would compel me to believe would be something unequivocal, such as a new limb growing on an amputee. Amphibians can do it. The new science of regenerative medicine appears on the verge of being able to do it. Surely an omnipotent deity could do it.