Real scientists have been studying the 1918 flu virus and more current flu viruses in order to better understand how the viruses can jump to humans. Scientists have sequenced the DNA from the viruses, having dug up bodies from the 1918 period and isolated flu viruses from lung tissue.

Folks, this stuff is real important and is a direct result of real science, performed by generations of real scientists who were not constrained in their research by religious mandates.

If creationists had been in control of real science for the past 150 years, it’s quite likely that the vast amount of fundamental genetic research would not have been allowed due to the threat such research would hold for the Biblical story of a 6,000 year old earth. If you want to correct my hypothesis, point out the fundamental medical or scientific discoveries that have arisen from creation science research conducted by the creationist movement and their colleges and universities. I will look at what you submit, and check it out, and give it a fair hearing.

But my expectation is this: The creationist movement will not be able to point to any hard scientific discoveries (biology, chemistry, physics) that support the creationist position over the secular science position. It’s not enough to raise questions - you must point out discoveries. A new substance, a new medicine, a new principle of chemistry or physics, something, anything, that is a verifiable reproduceable scientific discovery fully explainable based on creationist principles and not fully explainable based on secular scientific principles.

“Eerie” Discoveries about Flu

“Eerie” Discoveries about Flu
Scientist Jeffery Taubenberger says studies of the virus behind a deadly 1918 epidemic boost concerns about the danger of today’s avian strains

In 1918, a devastating flu epidemic swept the world, killing more than 50 million people, including an estimated 675,000 in the U.S. The disease was deadlier than previous flu outbreaks, killing more than 2% of those infected. Some people died within hours, and many families lost at least one member.

Why was the virus so dangerous? Could such a pandemic happen again? Could the strains of avian flu now destroying poultry in Asia and spreading from Russia toward Europe turn into deadly human viruses?

CUTTING-EDGE METHODS. The urgency of those questions inspired scientists to embark on a several-year quest to unearth lung tissue from victims of the 1918 flu and to analyze the viruses’ genes. The task has been challenging. Some samples came from tissue saved from long-ago autopsies. Others came from people buried in Alaska and frozen by the permafrost.

In both types of samples, however, the amounts of virus were tiny — usually just a single copy of DNA fragments. As a result, researchers had to use cutting-edge molecular biology methods to read the genetic codes.

Now they have succeeded. In an Oct. 6 paper in Nature, scientists, led by Jeffery K. Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, report that they have read the full genetic sequence of the 1918 virus, along with the codes of scores of other influenza strains, including the avian flu.

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