Not entirely correct
Vaccination lowers the risk but does not eliminate it
Besides those who get sick do put a cost on the health system which could have been avoided
Antibiotic resistance, evolution and public policy
- Thread starter Syne
- Start date
Not entirely correct
Vaccination lowers the risk but does not eliminate it
Besides those who get sick do put a cost on the health system which could have been avoided
Speciation is a name for a pattern in the consequences of evolutionary processes, that happens to be relevant to human taxonomy.
Antibiotic resistance is another consequence of Darwinian evolutionary processes - its relevance to human taxonomy is still being discussed, and is an interesting question if you care about taxonomy, but however the taxonomic issues are resolved the origin of antibiotic resistance in Darwinian processes will remain.
No, that was you trying to change the subject.
I do not share your difficulties with terminology. You go right ahead and use "adaptation" any way you want.
If you want to use "speciation" to describe the Darwinian evolution of antibiotic resistance in various small organisms, you have an argument with the taxonomists, not me. I don't care whether these newly capable organisms are technically new species or not.
1) Speciation is one consequence, among many, of evolutionary processes - it is among the many things explained by Darwinian Evolution, one of the broadest and and most widely applicable scientific theories we have.
2) There are several specific mechanisms involved in the evolution of antibiotic resistance. There are even some examples of adaptation, as knowledgable people use the term in discussing evolutionary processes - Baldwin effects, repurposing of prior capabilities, etc - being involved, at times. Darwinian evolutionary theory covers them all, as far as I know - it is a very useful theory.
Last edited:
Couple of points to add to my previous post
In the previous post I gave details of a video showing organisms exchanging material
As to whether this exchange produces a new species of bug I would say no
The exchange may confere antibiotic resistance to one or both
The exchange may confere other benefits such as a thicker cell wall
Where the definetion of a different species breaks down is the bugs don't breed by having sex with each other
They grow to a certain size and split themselves in half
So the ability to breed between species does not arise
Exchange of material can still occur
More than that, you have attempted to deny that it could be.
You have been attempting to defend the Creationist view held by a politically significant faction of ostensibly Christian Americans, that antibiotic resistance is somehow the result of different processes, described by different theory, than speciation.
One phase of that has you attempting to deny that antibiotic resistance was evolutionary change, a product of evolution, on the grounds that it did not involve "speciation". Part of that "argument" had you attempting to wrongfoot me, and others, as claiming that Darwinian theory necessarily involved speciation - that Darwinian theory not only described the origin of taxonomic species, but was identical with that description and had no greater scope. You wanted to claim that, but apparently you recognized the ridiculousness of such a claim, so you attempted to put it onto others.
In this approach, you follow a pattern familiar and often observed among creationists on forums such as this: bad faith in argument.
Meanwhile, as a fact of scientific research and the establishment of scientific knowledge: The origin of the species of living beings on this planet, and the origin of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, are currently described and analyzed and investigated within one and the same extraordinarily powerful theoretical framework, one theory, and its name is Darwinian Evolution. Start there.