Page 44 - Confessions of the Evolutionists

42 CONFESSIONS OF THE EVOLUTIONISTS

James F. Crow is president of the Wisconsin University Medical

Genetics Department and an expert on radiation and mutation:
Almost every mutation is harmful, and it is the individual who pays the
price. Any human activity that tends to increase the mutation rate must
therefore raise serious health and moral problems for man. 80
A random change in the highly integrated system of chemical processes
which constitute life is certain to impair-just as a random interchange of
connections [wires] in a television set is not likely to improve the pic-
ture. 81
Frederick Seymour Hulse is professor emeritus at the University of
Arizona and a member of the National Academy of Sciences:
Mutations occur at random, not because it would be convenient to have
one. Any chance alteration in the composition and properties of a highly
complex operating system is not likely to improve its manner of opera-
tion, and most mutations are disadvantageous for this reason. There is a
delicate balance between an organism and its environment which a mu-
tation can easily upset. One could as well expect that altering the position
of the foot brake or the gas pedal at random would improve the operation
of an automobile. 82

David L. Stern is an evolutionist zoologist at the University of
Cambridge:
One of the oldest problems in evolutionary
biology remains largely unsolved. Which
mutations generate evolutionarily relevant
phenotypic variation? What kinds of mole-
cular changes do they entail? 83
The late Stephen Jay Gould was a pro-
fessor of geology and paleoanthropology at
Harvard University and the main

spokesman for evolution in the second half
th
of the 20 century:
You don't make new species by mutating
the species... A mutation is not the cause of
evolutionary change. 84
Step hen Jay Go uld