We all know people who have suffered with cancer. It’s a major affliction of our modern world and many scientists are studying it closely to find a cure. Karl Krueger is one such scientist who has spent much of his career in cancer research. Today, host Casey Luskin speaks with Krueger about his work and what cancer can teach us about the limits of Darwinian processes.
In his tenure at the National Cancer Institute, Krueger had a front-row seat to cancer research progress. After reviewing countless research projects and mountains of data, Krueger learned that cancer doesn’t create new features at the molecular leveI, it degrades them. For example, some scientists look at the increased activity of tumor promoter processes in cancerous regions and think that an evolutionary process is at work producing novel function and changes. But this activity is actually generated through the breaking of inhibitor mechanisms.
A Hallmark of Darwinian Evolution
Breakage of aboriginal design is a hallmark of Darwinian processes. In his book Darwin Devolves, biochemist Michael Behe revealed that Darwinian evolutionary processes tend to break features at a much faster rate than they build them. Behe argued that Darwinism actually works by a process of devolution — damaging cells in DNA in order to create something new at the lowest biological levels. “A process that so easily tears down sophisticated machinery is not one which will build complex, functional systems,” he writes.
In his conversation with Dr. Luskin, Dr. Krueger also explains what led him to become a skeptic of Darwinian evolution and why he thinks intelligent design can better explain the behavior and effects of cancer. Krueger’s hope is that these insights can help us better understand the disease and may lead to more fruitful methods of searching for a cure.
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Dig Deeper
Read Dr. Krueger’s recent published papers on the limits of Darwinian processes from his cancer research: