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To: SirLinksalot
The time has clearly come for medicine to explicitly integrate evolutionary biology into its theoretical and practical underpinnings

I don't think that PhDs fully understand the problem, given their rather myopic single field view...in four years, medical students obtain the equivalent of a half dozen PhDs. Evolution has no clinical relevance, and there simply isn't room in the curriculum to replace medically relevant subjects with Darwinism.
15 posted on 05/03/2007 7:01:06 PM PDT by Old_Mil (Duncan Hunter in 2008! A Veteran, A Patriot, A Reagan Republican... http://www.gohunter08.com/)
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To: Old_Mil
I don't think that PhDs fully understand the problem, given their rather myopic single field view...in four years, medical students obtain the equivalent of a half dozen PhDs.

False. Ph.D.s are required to contribute something original to the existing body of knowledge in their field.

MDs are simply required to learn (by rote) as much as they can in four years. They do no research, and make no original contributions.


Evolution has no clinical relevance...

That seems not to be the case. Read the article.


...there simply isn't room in the curriculum to replace medically relevant subjects with Darwinism.

You gave yourself away with the "Darwinism" comment. That is a term favored almost entirely by anti-evolutionists. Scientists rarely use the term, but anti-evolutionists must think they can get more mileage out of using a loaded term. Must be one of their talking points.

Ever seen the term "Einsteinist" or "Newtonist"?

17 posted on 05/03/2007 7:20:16 PM PDT by Coyoteman (Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.)
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To: Old_Mil
Evolution has no clinical relevance, and there simply isn't room in the curriculum to replace medically relevant subjects with Darwinism.

I agree with you here

I think a lot of universities are shoving Darwinism down the throats of medical students.

However, Darwinism is largely irrelevant to medical schools today and perhaps even in the past.

I am not sure if Darwin has added anything valuable to our understanding medical science.

In fact, if you read the article carefully, it demonstrates exactly what is implied --- which is this --- Darwinism is useless in medicine.

Medicine has been getting along very nicely without Darwin and medical students are smart enough to see that adding Darwinism to the curriculum is a waste of time.

My read of the article tells me that the author is perhaps unwittingly admitting how Darwinism has little utility to the practice of medicine.

I find it ironical that while the author is saying Darwinism is fundamental to medical science, medical doctors in practice today find it irrelevant.

Let's mine the article for the hidden gem of a quote :

One reason that evolution doesn’t figure prominently in the medical community is that although it makes sense to have evolution taught as part of medicine, that doesn’t make it essential. As explained at a meeting on evolution and medicine I recently attended in York, United Kingdom (the Society for the Study of Human Biology and the Biosocial Society’s 2006 symposium, “Medicine and Evolution”), medicine is primarily focused on problem-solving and proximate causation . . . .

There ya go...

Medical schools have been training doctors since before Darwin was born and after that without actually REQUIRING the teaching of Darwinism.

Medical science has progressed greatly with few doctors being required to learn about Darwinism other than the basic ideas of Natural Selection plus random mutation.

Now suddenly, just because dogmatic evolutionary biology is being seriously challenged, we have people DEMANDING that medical students be forced to take it as REQUIRED instead of as an elective course.

I see little difference between this and forced indoctrination.
34 posted on 05/04/2007 8:31:11 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
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