Creation Station
Health and Sanctity of Life
Cleanliness Can Be Next to Sickness and The Truth About Antibiotic Resistance
On page 21 in the January 2009 issue of the evolutionist magazine Scientific American is an article titled “When Cleanliness is Next to Malignancy” about a disease called Cytomegalovirus (CMV). It turns out that 80% of the population has the virus, but only a tiny fraction of the infected population ever develops the disease. The question is why? Although research is still ongoing, one researcher believes that one reason those who actually develop the disease is because they are too clean. This belief would also help to explain the rising numbers of people with allergies in the developed countries. Researcher Charles Cobbs of the San Francisco's California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute believes that being ultraclean will result in an underdeveloped immune system opening up the body to both infections and allergies. It is known that over use of antibiotics will result in bacteria becoming immune to them. It is not much of a stretch to understand that the same thing may be true with regards to antiseptics. Just as muscle will atrophy if not used, so to an immune system may atrophy if it gets too little exposure to the environment.
One of the common distortions that evolutionists promote is the idea that antibiotic resistance in bacteria is evidence of evolution. Evolutionists maintain that antibiotic resistance in bacteria show that the bacteria are “evolving” new traits. What is really happening is that the bacteria are using the genetic potential that is already present or mutations are causing a loss of information that brings about antibiotic resistance. There have been examples of bacteria found that had been frozen for 200 years that were resistant to antibiotics that had only been developed in the last few decades. There is also the situation in which bacteria can have a mutation that imparts resistance. The analogy is that of a lock and key with the bacteria being the lock and the antibiotic being the key. The antibiotic, the key, was developed to fit into a specific bacterium, the lock. If a mutation causes a loss of information in the bacteria, the lock it can cause the antibiotic, the key, to no longer fit. The development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria is an example of genetic potential and mutations; it is not any evidence of evolutionism.
