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Post details: Swine flu and evolution: Why are nearly all deaths in the developing world?

06/18/09

by Denyse O'Leary 06:53:16 am, Categories: Commentary - OpEd, 375 words

Swine flu and evolution: Why are nearly all deaths in the developing world?

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Some have claimed that swine flu is evidence of evolution. If so, it is not evidence of Darwinian evolution (natural selection acting on random mutation produces intricate structures), which is the money shot in the current system. Flu viruses swap genes, which is easy for them because it's not even clear that they are life forms (because they don't do anything other than borrow cells to reproduce). Nor do they usually become much different as a result of swapping genes.

Anyway, here is my most recent MercatorNet column on swine flu:

Now that the World Health Organization has declared swine flu (virus H1N1) a pandemic, their first since 1968's Hong Kong flu, we might consider how it emerged.

But first - Panic Alert: [nonsense avoidance]: People who are not already frail will probably be sick for about 48 hours if they get swine flu. They will not likely die. Symptoms are typical flu symptoms. When visiting anyone in frail health, please observe all sanitary precautions that medical authorities advise, especially if the frail person is in a hospital already. Shouldn't that tell us something?

So let's not panic. The main message is, in a global society, we cannot have completely different health standards on the same continent. Now letâ€™s talk about two cities -- Mexico City and Winnipeg, Canada, where the virus was first identified.

Health care differs greatly between the two. In Winnipeg, every sick person - rich or poor - just goes to "the hospital," and is examined by a nurse practitioner and/or a physician who can order lab tests and a ward bed -- in an isolation unit, if necessary. It's all tax-supported, so no one goes bankrupt using the system.

But it is all different in Mexico.

Yes, it is a tale of the difference between Canada and Mexico. Read more here.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

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