Malevolent Designer News - Is Creationism's Favourite Sadist Trying a New Tack?

New highly virulent and damaging HIV variant discovered in the Netherlands | University of Oxford

Creationist mode:

It's beginning to look like, in choosing quantity over quality, the divine sadist might have boobed with the Omicron variant of its SARS-CoV-2 virus as it seems to be a relatively mild disease compared to its earlier versions. It is very much more contagious, but the resulting infection is resulting in far fewer serious illnesses and deaths. It's still a nasty, dangerous little parasite that people need to be vaccinated against, but it iss beginning to look like a virus our health services can cope with.

So, is the realisation that it isn't causing as much death and destruction behind its recently detected super-duper new more dangerous version of HIV? HIV, as Creationists fundamentalist evangelicals were never slow to claim, was their beloved pestilential deity's attempt to punish homosexuals for the sexuality it gave them and was, in its heyday, a very serious virus that killed millions of homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, apart from lesbians who rarely, if ever, become infected during homosexual sex, and left countless children orphaned. Then medical science came up with treatments like antiretroviral drugs, which allow victims to live a relatively normal life and, better still, not pass it on to sexual partners.

Now though, according to scientists from the University of Oxford, UK, there is a much more dangerous and virulent variant, which has been detected in Holland, so it looks like any intelligence responsible for the design of these parasites has given the arms race spiral another twist, as though to resurrect one of its earlier attempts at mass killing.

According to the Oxford University news release:

Before this study, the genetics of the HIV virus were known to be relevant for virulence, implying that the evolution of a new variant could change its impact on health. Discovery of the VB variant demonstrated this, providing a rare example of the risk posed by viral virulence evolution. Our findings emphasise the importance of World Health Organization guidance that individuals at risk of acquiring HIV have access to regular testing to allow early diagnosis, followed by immediate treatment. This limits the amount of time HIV can damage an individual’s immune system and jeopardise their health. It also ensures that HIV is suppressed as quickly as possible, which prevents transmission to other individuals.

Our findings emphasise the importance of World Health Organization guidance that individuals at risk of acquiring HIV have access to regular testing to allow early diagnosis, followed by immediate treatment. This limits the amount of time HIV can damage an individual’s immune system and jeopardise their health. It also ensures that HIV is suppressed as quickly as possible, which prevents transmission to other individuals.

Professor Christophe Fraser, senior author
Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Medicine
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

As the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated, new mutations in viral genetic sequences can have significant impacts on the virus’s transmissibility and the damage it causes. For many years, there have been concerns that this could arise in the HIV-1 virus, which already affects 38 million people worldwide, and has caused 33 million deaths to date (www.unaids.org). This has now been confirmed with the discovery of a new, highly virulent HIV strain in the Netherlands, in an international collaborative study with key contributions from the Dutch HIV Monitoring Foundation and led by researchers from the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute. The results are published today in Science.

Individuals infected with the new “VB variant” (for virulent subtype B) showed significant differences before antiretroviral treatment compared with individuals infected with other HIV variants:

• Individuals with the VB variant had a viral load (the level of the virus in the blood) between 3.5 and 5.5 times higher.
• In addition, the rate of CD4 cell decline (the hallmark of immune system damage by HIV) occurred twice as fast in individuals with the VB variant, placing them at risk of developing AIDS much more rapidly.
• Individuals with the VB variant also showed an increased risk of transmitting the virus to others.

Before this study, the genetics of the HIV virus were known to be relevant for virulence, implying that the evolution of a new variant could change its impact on health. Discovery of the VB variant demonstrated this, providing a rare example of the risk posed by viral virulence evolution.

Dr Chris Wymant, lead author
The Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Medicine
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Where this variant scores over the earlier versions is that it is much more transmissible and causes a more rapid destruction of the immune system. It is however, just as treatable as the earlier version provided it is detected and treatment started as quickly as possible.

The new version "is characterized by many mutations spread throughout the genome, meaning that a single genetic cause cannot be identified at this stage", and as any Creationist will tell you, multiple genetic changes all being needed for a particular outcome is a sure sign of intelligent design.

This because the probability of a large number of the 'right' mutations arising together is astronomically small, so chance alone can be ruled out, so long as you ignore the fact that, with trillions of new viruses being produced every day, the one in a billion chance combination will arise about a thousand times a day and natural selection will then ensure this chance combination will become the predominant form if no time at all, but this can be ruled out because Creationist dogma insists that evolution by natural selection doesn't happen that way. Any combination of mutations must arise as is, in a single event in a single organism, otherwise the reasoning of Creationist 'scientists' such as Michael J Behe must be flawed.

Creationist mode:

The research group's findings were published in Science a couple of days ago:

Abstract
We discovered a highly virulent variant of subtype-B HIV-1 in the Netherlands. One hundred nine individuals with this variant had a 0.54 to 0.74 log10 increase (i.e., a ~3.5-fold to 5.5-fold increase) in viral load compared with, and exhibited CD4 cell decline twice as fast as, 6604 individuals with other subtype-B strains. Without treatment, advanced HIV—CD4 cell counts below 350 cells per cubic millimeter, with long-term clinical consequences—is expected to be reached, on average, 9 months after diagnosis for individuals in their thirties with this variant. Age, sex, suspected mode of transmission, and place of birth for the aforementioned 109 individuals were typical for HIV-positive people in the Netherlands, which suggests that the increased virulence is attributable to the viral strain. Genetic sequence analysis suggests that this variant arose in the 1990s from de novo mutation, not recombination, with increased transmissibility and an unfamiliar molecular mechanism of virulence.

Wymant, Chris; Bezemer, Daniela; et al (2022)
A highly virulent variant of HIV-1 circulating in the Netherlands
Science 375 (6580); pp. 540-545; DOI: 10.1126/science.abk1688

Copyright © 2022 The Authors, Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Reproduced by kind permission under licence #5242700562733

A PDF copy of the whole paper can be read here.

You see, the problem for Creationists is that, once again, we have an example of a trait being dependent on a relatively large number of mutations, all of which need to be the right mutations for the trait to be functional. This is often waved around by Creationist gurus such as Michael J Behe, as evidence for an intelligence behind the design (his irreducibly complex argument which he used for the bacterial flagellum and anti-malarial resistance in Plasmodium). We also have the fact that HIV was greeted by fundamentalists as a 'gay plague' created by their god to punish homosexuals.

So, given those facts, they should have the honesty and integrity to accept that the logic of these arguments is that their beloved creator has now modified HIV to produce this new variant, just as they should accept that the logic of their argument also means it has modified the SARS-CoV-2 virus to produce the Omicron variant currently causing the massive wave of new infections.

The problem for Creationists is, if they argue that the process of evolution is sufficient to explain how these variants arise, so absolving their favourite deity of any responsibility for them, they also refute and reject the 'irreducibly complex' argument that the Deception Institute and its mouthpieces, creation 'scientists' [sic], rely on to fool scientifically illiterate simpletons into joining and financing their cult.

If not, they are accepting that any creative entity capable of producing these variants is a pestilential monster who invents new and better ways to increase the suffering in the world and so cannot be the allegedly caring and compassionate god of the Bible and Qur'an.

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