Friday, February 16, 2007

Things That Are Really Pissing Me Off

The insistence of several publications in referring to "MSSA, a strain of MRSA".

MSSA, a term I have never heard used by medical professionals, is Methicillin Sensitive Staph Aureus. Or just Staph Aureus, really. Surely MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus) is the strain here...

It also occurs to me that the existence of MRSA where once there was only SA goes a long way to supporting the theory of evolution. Any Creationists out there, I welcome comments, etc

7 comments:

ERnursey said...

survival of the fittest.

Bo... said...

I'm a Creationist. Hmmm....let me ponder this question. Okay, I've got it. The reason there is MRSA now, where once there was just SA, is because of the adaptability of organisms--not actual evolution. For example, like how people who live in a certain country don't get diarrhea from eating the local food like a tourist would ("Montezuma's Revenge", if you will). Or: like how a person's body develops extra red blood cells when they move to a high altitude location like Bolivia. (So have I "converted" you, heh!...)

scalpel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
scalpel said...

Or how your feet get callouses when you walk barefoot.

No that wasn't a good example.

How about God created MRSA just to test our ingenuity and adaptablility? I'm not really a Creationist, but I'm trying to play along.

I don't think evolution rules out the existence of a God or vice-versa.

Alex Stoker said...

Right
Clearly I'm not going to resolve any fundamental disagreemants here. I was foolish to think so. I too believe both in God, and the theory of evolution. But i'm not a creationist. It seems to me that adaptability of traits that are then inherited IS evolution. The examples of physiological polycythaemia or adaptability to local gut flora are NOT inheritable. They depend on local conditions, whereas MRSA is resistant despite a lack of methicillin in its environment.

However, do NOT want to belittel anyone else's beliefs. Evolution is, after all, just a theory; it just happens that I believe in it.

Nathan said...

I see MSSA in lab printouts from my hospital, just to let the docs know NOT to worry.

As far as proving evolution goes, that's a discussion I dislike intensely, but for this example, I'd say nah, not really. It just proves random mutation, which no one with a brain denies. After all, MRSA is still a bacteria.

Alex Stoker said...

Indeed; it is still a bacteria, just as "Darwin's Finches" are still finches. Intra-species evolution is still evolution. I'm also sure you're right about the random mutation - I, too have a brain - but are you suggesting that every case of MRSA (which has been around since the 1950s) is random mutation. Or is it that this random mutation has become an inheritable trait..? (The latter is surely the nub of evolution, no?)

Whatever, as I said, I was facile to mention this here. If you don't believe in Evolution, this isn't going to convince you...