WE ARE ALL DESIGNISTS NOW:

It's a common misconception that evolution is a matter of faith, because it happens too slowly to observe. Here's the way one reader sees it: "I don't see any fish walking around, nor do I see any other creature in mid-evolving mode. . . . Simply stated, both creationism and evolution should be taught as competing theories; both are not provable, and both cannot be duplicated in a lab."

But evolution does happen in the lab, in real time, and it's bad news for us because such rapid evolution allows organisms that can kill us by evading drugs, vaccines, and our own immune systems.

Viral evolution is in the news because scientists reportedly created a new strain of bird flu (H5N1) that's highly contagious, prompting a government advisory board to request that scientific journals not publish the details.

As I quizzed Penn bioterrorism expert Harvey Rubin about the situation, he continued to talk about evolution and "fitness" of flu viruses. Indeed, he said, the whole point of creating a newer, scarier H5N1 was to help anticipate the virus' future evolution.

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