Antibiotic resistant germs confirmed in pre-antibiotic era frozen corpses

A fully referenced item  on the Answers in Genesis web site confirms what has actually been fairly obvious all along-that the frequently repeated assertions that antibiotic resistant bacteria are evidence for evolution are, and always have been, bull. Click below for full article. The extract is clipped and hyperlinks removed but is otherwise unedited

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2011/09/10/news-to-note-09102011

Actually, antibiotic resistance is not evolving.

Bacteria from the permafrost of the Yukon Territory has been revived and coaxed to reveal its secrets. A team from McMaster University has re-discovered the phenomenon of ancient antibiotic resistance and demonstrated it in a new direct way.

Antibiotic resistance has long been a problem, especially in hospital settings where lots of antibiotics are used. Pathogens resistant to antibiotics survive and take over, causing many difficult-to-treat infections. Many claim that antibiotic resistance is the observable proof of evolution. But are bacteria really evolving?

Back in 1988, explorers frozen in 1845 were autopsied at the University of Alberta, and six strains of bacteria isolated from their colons were revived. According to microbiologist Dr. Kinga Kowalewska-Grochowska, “Three of them also happen to be resistant to antibiotics. In this case, the antibiotics clindamycin and cefoxitin, both of which were developed more than a century after the men died, were among those used.”

Now researchers have gone a step further. They have isolated bacterial DNA from Ice Age permafrost and found genes coding for resistance to several classes of antibiotics, including β-lactams, tetracycline, and glycopeptide antibiotics

Then, focusing on the genes encoding vancomycin resistance, they recreated those gene products in the lab. The three enzymes thus produced worked together to resist vancomycin in the same way as their modern counterparts. They conclude,


“Antibiotic resistance is a natural phenomenon that predates the modern selective pressure of clinical antibiotic use.”


So how did the bacteria already have suitable weapons years before their enemy was invented? Antibiotics and their antidotes are actually natural substances produced by fungi, algae, and bacteria. Dr. Gerry Wright explains, “Antibiotics are part of the natural ecology of the planet so when we think that we have developed some drug that won't be susceptible to resistance or some new thing to use in medicine, we are completely kidding ourselves. . . . Microorganisms have figured out a way of how to get around them well before we even figured out how to use them.” He adds, “Antibiotics are remarkable resources that need to be carefully husbanded.”

Some of this genetic material is in a form that can be transferred to other microorganisms. Microbiologist Dr. Stuart Levy, who has warned of profligate use of antibiotics for 30 years, explains, “What had been missed in the 1960s and 1970s was the ease with which resistance could appear,” he said.

“Bacteria share these genes like baseball cards with each other.”

So is antibiotic resistance the poster-child of evolution? No. There was a time when people thought bacteria evolve resistance because they “need” to. But—as demonstrated in this study and in the 1988 one—the variations and mutations that confer resistance are already in the genomes of some bacteria. The “resistance information” does not necessarily develop in response to the antibiotic threat. Natural selection allows resistant bacteria to survive and reproduce, replenishing the bacterial population. And those surviving bacteria are still bacteria—the same kind of bacteria they were all along.


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So there we have it. Again. If Darwinian evolution were true, plants, bacteria and animals would have had to come up with completely new gene sequences in answer to new environmental challenges. As Darwin wrote in 'Origin of Species' 'without variations, natural selection has nothing to work with'.  The above item shows, yet again, that what is called evolution is merely shuffling the pack. Cyclical change within the population due to selective pressures, yes, but with no progressive forward trajectory and NO NEW GENES BEING MADE.

When will the evolutionists stop making claims about antibiotic resistant bacteria modelling progressive evolution when they ought to realise these claims are false? Its the same as the peppered moth story, an interesting nature lesson, and a good model of selection pressure changing gene frequency in a population, but in no way demonstrating the kind of progressive forward evolution in which new genes are created by random mutation and then create new phenotypes which are selected to make different, better animals and plants. That kind of change would have had to happened millions of times for the supposed 'jumped up from a puddle' common ancestor to turn into everything else. They can't even show us a single convincing example of one species becomeing another.

I'll blog about sickle cell disease later, another big Darwinian fraud.