Page 106 - The Miracle in the Cell

THE MIRACLE IN THE CELL
form over millions of years. This means that at some stage, some
organs in the human body were not around but later evolved. In that
case, we have to assume that the pancreas, which controls the level of
sugar in the blood and the insulin it secretes, "evolved" over stages.
However, this is defective logic, because a person with neither a
pancreas nor insulin wouldn't have been able to live. Let's imagine
that millions of years ago, there were half-human beings without a
pancreas who walked the Earth. They would have eaten large
amounts of the first source of sugar they found (sugar cane, for exam-
ple), gone into a sugar coma and died on the spot. The same thing
would have happened to all others like them: They would have died
from a sugar coma, but without knowing the reason.
Let's assume that some of them stayed alive by strictly control-
ling their diets. (Though this is not really possible, because there is
sugar in practically everything we eat.) This leaves us with the fol-
lowing question: How did these "ancestors of human beings" come to
possess a pancreas and insulin?
Did one of them say one day, "You know, this sugar problem
needs to be solved! The best thing to do is place an organ underneath
the stomach that will secrete a hormone to balance the level of sugar
in our blood"? And with an extreme effort of will, did he then place a
pancreas underneath his stomach, work out the chemical structure of
insulin and teach this to his pancreas?
Or did a very successful mutation come about one day, as a result
of a flaw in the DNA of one of these half-human beings, and then sud-
denly form a perfectly functioning pancreas, producing insulin hor-
mone? But such a mutation could not have occurred because as we
explained in a previous section, mutations do not have such beneficial
effects. And even if such a situation did come about, it would still not
be enough to keep these half-humans alive. There needed to have
formed-by coincidence, of course-a mechanism somewhere in the
brain that would constantly control the level of blood sugar, command

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