More evidence that antibiotic resistance is nothing new

An item in Answers in Genesis http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2012/04/28/news-to-note-04282012 provides further confirmation that antibiotic resistance is not new. It has as far as all the evidence tells been present in the bacterial genome since ancient times, and although it has been spread by natural selection and plasmid transfer, is not due to new genetic sequences emerging. This is important, since the development of antimicrobial resistance is often cited as evidence of spontaneous development of the kind of new, specific and useful genetic information that is necessary to fuel molecules to man evolution. It is no such thing. The spread of antibiotic resistance is due to a change in the FREQUENCY but not the NATURE of the genes. No new information, no new genes, no evolution.

The following was copied with some shortening from the Answers in Genesis item linked above.

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"Deep in Lechuguilla Cave, a large isolated cave within Carlsbad Cavern National Park in New Mexico, researchers have collected bacteria demonstrating resistance to at least 14 different antibiotics. With no possibility of human contamination, long cut off even from the possibility of water penetration from outside the cave, these bacteria have never been exposed to man-made antibiotics.

McMaster University’s Gerry Wright and University of Akron professor Hazel Barton’s team found many strains of bacteria that are harmless to humans but resistant to many antibiotics. One carried in its genome the blueprint for resistance to a modern antibiotic-of-last-resort. All the bacteria harboured some antibiotic resistance, and practically every class of modern antibiotics was represented in the resistance genes of some bacteria in the cave. These ancient resistance genes could show up in dangerous bacteria and, through natural selection, become a major problem.

“Our study shows that antibiotic resistance is hard-wired into bacteria,” Wright says.

 “Most practitioners believe that bacteria acquire antibiotic resistance in the clinic,” Wright says. “As doctors prescribe antibiotics, they select for members of the community that are resistant to these drugs. Over time, these organisms spread and eventually the bacteria that commonly cause these infections are all resistant. In extreme cases these organisms are resistant to seven or more drugs and are untreatable using traditional treatment. . . . The actual source of much of this resistance is harmless bacteria that live in the environment.”


Many microorganisms horizontally transfer genetic information among themselves. Thus, harmless bacteria, such as those deep in Carlsbad, could provide pathogenic bacteria with the genetic information to resist medicine’s best weapons. That bacteria already possessed information for antibiotic resistance long before the modern pharmaceutical industry began producing wonder drugs was demonstrated in 1988 when explorers frozen since 1845 were found to harbour resistant bacteria in their colons. The present research team last year proved antibiotic resistance frozen in Ice Age permafrost was carried in ancient bacterial genomes.

Nevertheless, antibiotic resistance has become one of the most popular “proofs” of evolution as evolutionary promoters fail to distinguish between the selection of pre-existing information and the production of new genetic material. "

The “growing understanding that antibiotic resistance is natural” is a confirmation of the role of natural selection acting on microbes that horizontally transfer information. None of this research supports any sort of molecules-to-man evolutionary concepts or even the “deep time” implied in the phrase “long evolutionary past.”

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Once again, the evidence cited so confidently as support of molecules to man evolution is shown to be trivial and overblown at best, often on proper scrutiny to be if anything evidence against 'the theory'. This hard new evidence confirms that naturally occuring antibiotic resistance long pre-dated the first human use of antibiotics. More supposed evidence for evolution blown out of the water. Not that this evidence will change the Darwinists' minds, for molecules to man evolution is an act of faith for them.

I expect the impartial BBC will report this important science story which removes yet another prop from the rickety structure of the so-called evidence for Evolution, and it will be incorporated into school teaching on Evolution. Or not as the case may be.