> Glenn R. Morton wrote:
>
> > Bill, exactly why is antibiotic resistance not beneficial to a
> bacterium?
>
> Antibotic resistance is not a mutation, as is commonly assumed by many.
>
> "What about trying for four related mutations? 10^28. All of a sudden
> the earth isn't big enough to hold enough organisms to make that very
> likely. And we're only talking about four mutations. It would take many
> more than that to change a fish into a philosopher, or even a fish into
> a frog.
>
> It was at this level (just four related mutations) that microbiologists
> gave up on the idea that mutations could explain why some bacteria were
> resistant to four different antibiotics at the same time. The odds
> against the mutation explanation were simply too great, so they began to
> look for another mechanism - and they found it. First of all, using
> cultures that are routinely kept for long periods of time, they found
> out that bacteria were resistant to antibiotics, even before the
> antibiotics were "invented." Genetic variability was "built right into"
> the bacteria. Did the nonresistant varieties get resistant by
> mutation? No. Resistant forms were already present. Bacteria have
> little rings of DNA that they trade around among themselves, and they
> passed on their resistance to antibiotics in that way. It wasn't
> mutation at all - just ordinary recombination and variation within
> kind." from _Creation - The Facts of Life_, by Gary Parker, pp 63-64.
>
>
Sorry, Mr. Parker really doesn't know what he is talking about.
They are mutations; check with any microbiologist. Mr. Parker doesn't
mention chromosomal resistance, either. Ask the microbiologist about them
and about the Luria fluctuation experiment, too.
What is sad is that Mr. Parker's writing is taken as the "gospel
truth."