Anyone seen the movie Phenomenon, where John Travolta gets a brain tumor and becomes a magical genius? Yeah, it's a terrible movie, with a nice anti-intellectual message (the evil scientists in it wanted to eat John Travolta's brain!).

Well, Michael Egnor seems to think a magical tumor is a reasonable outcome - if evolution is true. I'm not kidding. Once again I'm astounded that the DI thinks that Egnor is some kind of genius worth being a front man for their insanity.

Cancer is a test of Darwin's theory. Cancer is real biological evolution by random mutation and natural selection, writ fast. There's no reason to invoke encyclopedia typos or tractor engines in order to understand what "chance and necessity" can do to a living system. Brain tumors are perfect little Novellian "two-cycle engines" nestled inside the skull, "random mutations" coming out the ears, and "natural selection" like there's no tomorrow (excuse the metaphors). Brain tumors are constantly generating new biological variation, and they are avatars of natural selection. They provide a tremendous spectrum of variation, from "variation jet-engines" like malignant glioblastoma multiforme to "variation tortoises" like benign pilocytic astrocytomas. Cancer wards are full of patients brimming with "two-stroke engines" of evolutionary change.

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The best real biological test of "shuffling around information, duplicating, and altering the information" is cancer. According to Dr. Novella's reasoning, brain tumors ought to be generating quite a bit of "meaningful and even useful new information." Better neuroanatomy and better neurophysiology ought to be popping up "easily." Better frontal lobes and cognition, from cancer. Better temporal lobes and memory, from cancer. Better cerebellums and coordination, from cancer. If random mutations and natural selection-Dr. Novella's "two stroke engine"-is the source of all functional integrated biological complexity, brain tumors ought to help our brains evolve in some way.

It's amazing. This guy is a brain surgeon. The complete misunderstanding of the implications of neoplastic transformation is pretty scary.

Just so people do understand what cancer says about evolution involves the tight regulation of selfishness of cells for the benefit of the organism as a whole. Cancer is the unfortunate result of transformation of a healthy cooperative cell into one that has lost the ability to cooperate with the host. Redundant mechanisms exist within a cell to prevent this behavior - apoptosis genes, DNA repair mechanisms, genes that force the cell to stop dividing in the presence of severe DNA damage etc. When these mechanisms are damaged, or overridden by the oncogenic transformation, the cell starts dividing and proliferating out of control, consuming energy, invading tissues, and trying to grow and survive all at the cost of the host. All of this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Multi-cellular organisms evolved so that cells within the organism would cooperate and work together for the common benefit of the organism as a whole. Cancer is almost like a cellular atavism - regression to the pre-multicellular state in which individual cells act selfishly for their own survival.

So, for Egnor's latest argument, I'd say this is a straw man. There is no reason that evolution that benefits a single cell over others would result in intelligence for the organism as a whole. It only ranks as a 2/5 on the denialism index (false expert, logical fallacy) it's a silly argument, and it doesn't deserve much attention. But damn if it ain't a funny one.

Labels: Discovery Institute, Michael Egnor