Michael Behe writes about a new study from PNAS in Evolution News. (H/T Think Apologetics)

Excerpt:

A recent paper in PNAS confirms a key inference I made in 2007 in The Edge of Evolution. Summers et al. conclude that “the minimum requirement for (low) [chloroquine] transport activity … is two mutations.” This is the first of three posts on the topic.

[…]A major point of the book was that if evolution has to skip even one baby step to attain a beneficial state (that is, if even one intermediate in a long and relentlessly detailed evolutionary pathway is detrimental or unhelpful), then the probability of reaching that state decreases exponentially. After discussing a medically important example (see below), I argued that the evolution of many protein interactions would fall into the skip-step category, that multi-protein complexes in the cell were beyond the reach of Darwinian evolution, and that design extended very deeply into life.

However, at the time the book’s chief, concrete example — the need for multiple, specific changes in a particular malarial protein (called PfCRT) for the development of resistance to chloroquine — was an inference, not yet an experimentally confirmed fact. It was really an excellent, obvious inference, because resistance to chloroquine arises much, much less frequently than to other drugs. For example, resistance to the antimalarial drug atovaquone develops spontaneously in every third patient, but to chloroquine only in approximately every billionth one. About PfCRT I wrote, “Since two particular amino acid changes [out of four to eight total changes] occur in almost all of these cases [of chloroquine resistance in the wild], they may both be required for the primary activity by which the protein confers resistance.” The result would be that “the likelihood of a particular [malarial] cell having the several necessary changes would be much, much less than the case [for atovaquone] where it needed to change only one amino acid. That factor seems to be the secret of why chloroquine was an effective drug for decades.” Still, the deduction hadn’t yet been nailed down in the lab.

Now it has, thanks to Summers et al. 2014. It took them years to get their results because they had to painstakingly develop a suitable test system where the malarial protein could be both effectively deployed and closely monitored for its relevant activity — the ability to pump chloroquine across a cell membrane, which rids the parasite of the drug. Using clever experimental techniques they artificially mutated the protein in all the ways that nature has, plus in ways that produced previously unseen intermediates. One of their conclusions is that a minimum of two specific mutations are indeed required for the protein to be able to transport chloroquine.

I think when we are discussing evolution, we at least have to ask the Darwnian side to bear their burden of proof. If you’re saying that mutations can lead to improvements, then we need to see examples. And the examples have to have mutations that are likely to occur.

You can listen to a recent episode of the ID the Future podcast where Casey Luskin and Michael Behe went into more details about the new discovery.

An Investors Business Daily editorial by famous surgeon and conservative, Ben Carson.

Excerpt:

Health savings accounts can be funded in a variety of different ways and give people total control of where, how and with whom they wish to spend their health care dollars. Most people will want to get the biggest bang for the buck and will independently seek out both value and quality.

That, in turn, will bring all aspects of medicine into the free-market economic model, thus automatically having an ameliorating effect on pricing transparency and quality of outcomes.

Many corporations and communities already have very positive experiences with HSAs. Those experiences could be further enhanced by allowing family members to shift the money in their accounts among themselves.

For instance, if a family member was $500 short for a procedure or test, another family member could provide the money by authorizing its deduction from his account. This provides a whole other level of flexibility to the concept of health savings.

The overwhelming majority of encounters with the medical world could be handled through this type of system, eliminating bureaucratic delays and frustration.

Under ObamaCare’s many rules, the amount of money allowed to be managed through health savings accounts is severely restricted. Perhaps that is because the crafters of this gigantic, bureaucratic monstrosity realized that a well-functioning savings system would be easy to understand, much less expensive and give people control of their own health care.

It would also eliminate two-tiered systems of health care, making every patient equally desirable from a business perspective. There should be no limit to the money that can be contributed to and managed in an account. Money unspent at year-end should simply accumulate without penalty.

If accounts are established at the time of birth, they will be even more potent, because the vast majority of people will not experience catastrophic or major medical events until well into adulthood. By that time, a great deal of money will have accumulated.

Since bridge or catastrophic insurance will not be drawn upon for routine medical expenses, its costs will plummet, very much like homeowners insurance, which costs vastly less when there is a high deductible.

Somehow over the past few decades, we as a society have wandered away from the concept of using health insurance only for major medical issues and paying for routine service ourselves. This is largely responsible for the tremendous spike in medical costs. By using HSAs, we can return to a semblance of rational thinking.

I think it’s important for us to be aware that increased government control of health care is not the only approach to reducing health care costs. In fact, my view is that health care costs have been rising precisely because the government has been so involved in controlling the health care industry.