Saturday, September 4, 2010

Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite

A growing concern we read about today is the rise of bed bug incidents and everyone is freaking out. I was mulling over these bugs and how they must have evolved. They only come out at night and feed on human blood. Their interaction with humans evolved in such a way that they are the great at staying alive and continuing to breed. Humans are quite clever. Any bugs that would have come out in the day light would be immediately killed, so those who tendency would be to hid during that time would successfully breed. Also, the size of them would remain small because humans could see the bigger ones and kill them. How intellectually satisfying evolution and natural selection is! It just makes sense. This principal of natural selection can be applied to all living things. Humans even became more clever and developed pesticides, such as DDT and which could find these little buggers 24 by 7. However, some evolved resistance to this pesticide. Humans found out that DDT had some serious bad affects so they stopped using it. Now the bed bugs are coming back because the old methods and finding them and physically killing them keeps the survivors small and only coming out at night. I would expect some pesticide company is trying to come up with a new version of DDT because it will be lucrative, but it will need to attack these bugs who have evolved resistance to DDT in a new way.  This is the whole basis for antibiotics. Humans have to continue to develop new stains because bacteria continues to adapt and evolve with what is in their environment. How predictable evolution is and how brilliant Darwin was. He truly was a great man and gave us a wonderful tool that truly helped mankind.

Then on the other side you have the evolution-haters, the fundies of the monotheistic religions. What has been their plan on saving humans from disease and pests? Pray, brother, pray. When science was not around or at best voodoo that is all humans could do. Now is the time to realize that this is of no value for helping mankind. Christians mock fundie Muslims who put their women in burkas and yet they stop science cold. Science has proven its value. Fundamental monotheistic religions have had their time and come up very short. When will they open their eyes?

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