AN EVOLUTIONIST FAIRY TALE ABOUT THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

On 7 July 2004, the Nature magazine website carried a report titled “Immune systems evolved more than once.” The article, written by Laura Nelson, described how it had been discovered that the fish-like creatures called lampreys possessed a different immune system to that of mammals. Judging from the lamprey metabolism, which rejects skin grafts, scientists had previously calculated that these creatures possessed an immune system, but there was no hint that they made antibodies.

In studies they conducted on lampreys, Chris Amemiya, from the Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle, USA, and his team revealed that these animals do produce antibodies, but that the genes producing these are completely different to their equivalents in mammals.

In her article analysing this finding, Nelson claimed that the immune system in animals had evolved more than once, and that lampreys had evolved their own immune system. However, readers were offered no explanation in support of such claims, not a shred of scientific evidence was revealed, and the reader was merely expected to blindly believe what he or she read, in the same way that the author did. In short, it was all a complete fairy tale.

In fact, the immune system is a most complex one, and Darwinism is utterly unable to account for its origins. Indeed, the biochemist Michael Behe, who conducted a detailed scan of the relevant scientific literature on the subject, writes in his book Darwin’s Black Box:

The scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system. ... a gradualistic account of the immune system is blocked by multiple interwoven requirements. As scientists we yearn to understand how this magnificent mechanism came to be, but the complexity of the system dooms all Darwinian explanations to frustration. ¹

Nature magazine acts from a totally dogmatic perspective with regard to the alleged evolutionary origin of immune systems. As Behe’s words clearly show, there is absolutely no possibility that the random mutations on which the theory of evolution relies could produce such a system. A brief recollection of some of the features of the immune system in the human body will make this clearer.

A human being’s immune system is a system coordinated by fighting cells such as phagocytes (engulfing cells), macrophages (cleaning cells), lymphocytes (B and T cells) in a truly astonishing manner, and of a complexity that even the most advanced technology comes nowhere near approaching. Thanks to this system, the human body, surrounded by countless microscopic foes, is on guard against enemies at every moment. It is always prepared for attacks, thanks to its specially produced weapons targeted against every type of foe. The way that cells, devoid of any consciousness, carry out such complex arrangement-based coordination shows that this system was created by an Almighty and Omniscient Creator. There can be no doubt but that it is Almighty God Who created the immune system, together with all the other systems in nature. (For miracles of the immune system that refute evolution, see, THE MIRACLE OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM.)

We invite the editors of Nature to accept the fact that modern science points to intelligent design with regard to the immune system, and that the system was created by God.

1.Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, New York: Touchstone Books, 1998, pp. 138-139