Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Divine Malevolence Has Just Released An E. Coli Upgrade With Added Malice

Escherichia coli

New and highly infectiousE. coli strain resistant to powerful antibiotics - University of Birmingham

Escherichia coli is a pathogenic bacterium that is loved by creationists because they have been taken in by Michael J. Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, that made him a millionaire because so many creationists bought it (though few appear to have read it) and which they love to wave around as 'proof' that the locally popular god exists.

Behe, a leading light in the Deception Institute, which was set up to try to win converts for fundamentalist, Bible literalist Christianity, by spreading disinformation about science, had argued, falsely, that the flagellum of E. coli must have been intelligently designed, since all the components need to be present for it to work (the 'irreducibly complex' fallacy) and it is too complex to have evolved in a single step because, so he claimed none of the components on their own could have given an advantage for natural selection to select for (which of course ignores genetic drift as a cause of evolution).

What Behe neglected to do was tell his readers that almost all the components of the flagellum and the proton pump that drives it, were present in a structure called the Type III Secretory system with which bacteria bind themselves to their host and kill them, and this could easily have evolved from simpler beginning over the billions of years that bacteria were evolving into their present forms.

Since its publication, Behe has been repeatedly told of the errors in it, and as a professional microbiologist, he should be aware of the growing body of research explaining how the E.coli flagellum evolved^{1,2, 3, 4, 5}, yet he refused to correct his errors in later editions and continues to promote and defend the misinformation in it, whilst pocketing the royalties from sales, in a classic case of bearing false witness.

Behe also neglected to tell his readers that flagella are common in the world of microbiology, a subject of which he purports to be an expert) and are even found in multicellular organisms in ciliated epithelia for example (cilia are simply small versions of flagella), and that they all have different structures with a different number of components, which begs the question, "Why would an intelligent designer design so many different ways of doing the same thing?"

And, being a devout Christian, Behe is prohibited from suggesting that there could be more than one intelligent [sic] designer at work because that would be a serious blasphemy that could even result in his excommunication by the Catholic Church he is devoted to, so the 'One True Designer' has to be the Christian god, by dogma.

The result is that Behe has driven his followers into a corner where they promote E. coli as the indisputable, intelligently designed organism that proves their god designed it because only their god is capable of designing living organisms, but they are then stuck with explaining why their supposedly omnibenevolent god designed an organism whose only functions appear to be to increase the suffering in the world by making us sick and making more copies of themselves, the better to do it, and gave it a wonderfully-designed flagellum to do it more effectively.

The tradition response is the double-think claim that 'The Fall' allowed 'Sin' into the world and 'Sin' is responsible for designing pathogens, not their god, who is nevertheless the only entity capable of designing E. coli with its flagellum, which 'proves' their god exists.

To make matters worse for creationists, Behe then wrote another book, The Edge of Evolution, in which he argued that resistance to antimalarial drugs in the organism that causes malaria, Plasmodium falciparum must have been intelligently designed as well, since in involves 5 proteins that all need to be present (again the 'irreducibly complex' fallacy), by calculating the probability of all five proteins arising together in a single step in a single organism, he arrived at a probability approaching zero, so concluded it must have been done with god magic. This of course ignores the fact that evolution is not a single event that occurs in a single individual but a process that occurs in the population gene pool, and there are several different routes by which this could have occurred with the results eventually occurring in the same individual by recombination during sexual reproduction in the Plasmodium falciparum, with at least some of the combinations conveying some resistance.

So, Behe has again unwittingly provided his dupes with evidence of malevolence which needs to be explained away with the intellectually dishonest tactic of double think in order to retain their superstition that evolution can't account for the appearance of design.

And now, to add to their embarrassment, microbiologists have discovered the latest version, a Carbapenem-resistant E. coli (CREC) ST410 which is becoming a major threat to patients in hospital, and which, if you believe Michael J. Behe, must have been intelligently deigned by creationism’s god for that purpose, and that purpose alone, since that is what it does. So, we have the grotesque spectacle of creationism's malevolent deity producing an upgrade on its original design to keep it ahead of medical science and continue making people sick.

The team which identified this latest version, included scientists from the Institute of Microbiology and Infection, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China, the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. and The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. They have published their findings, open access in Nature Communications and described their research in a brief Birmingham University news release:

A new type ofE. coli that is both highly infectious and resistant to some antibiotics has been discovered.

The newly identified mutation of antibiotic-resistantE. coli is described in a new paper in Nature Communications. The team, including Professor Alan McNally from the University of Birmingham suggests that some existing antibiotics called carbapenems will be ineffective against the bacteria.

While scientists have already identified strains of carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli (CREC) and note that is one of the most problematic AMR bacteria in circulation, with the ST410 version becoming the most common resistantE. coli in Chinese hospitals between 2017-2021. Now, the discovery of a stronger and more infectious version of ST410 CREC, called ‘B5/H24RxC’, has been implicated in two outbreaks in a children’s hospital in China.

Analysis of the B5/H24RxC strain in a lab showed the bacteria was able to grow faster and was more harmful to living organisms than previous versions.

Professor Alan McNally, Director of Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham and an author of the study said:

It has often been thought that the E. coli that evolve to be most resistant to antibiotics do so at the cost of being able to cause infections in humans. Our incredibly important collaboration with our partners in China, funded by the MRC, has allowed us to discover and characterise this new clone of E. coli which is becoming both more antimicrobial resistant and more pathogenic. This is a worrying new trend and we would now urge surveillance labs across the world to be on the look out for this new clone which we know has spread beyond China.

Professor Alan McNally, co-author
Director of Institute of Microbiology and Infection
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.

Urgent need for collaborative effort

Samples from hospitals across 26 Chinese provinces between 2017 and 2021 were used to examine how widespread antibiotic-resistant E. coli was.

Using a total of 388 CREC isolates from various clinical samples including urine, sputum and blood, the team were able to identify that ST410 was the most common CREC, and given that the highest proportion of samples (111) were taken from urine, that there may be a connection to urinary tract infections.

Our study highlights the evolving landscape of antimicrobial resistance within clinically significant pathogens, such as E. coli, emphasizing the urgent need for collaborative efforts to address and mitigate this escalating challenge in global public health.

Dr Ibrahim Xiaoling Ba, first author
Senior Research Associate
Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Technical detains are given in the teams open access paper in Nature Communications:

Abstract

Carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli (CREC) ST410 has recently emerged as a major global health problem. Here, we report a shift in CREC prevalence in Chinese hospitals between 2017 and 2021 with ST410 becoming the most commonly isolated sequence type. Genomic analysis identifies a hypervirulent CREC ST410 clone, B5/H24RxC, which caused two separate outbreaks in a children’s hospital. It may have emerged from the previously characterised B4/H24RxC in 2006 and has been isolated in ten other countries from 2015 to 2021. Compared with B4/H24RxC, B5/H24RxC lacks the blaOXA-181-bearing X3 plasmid, but carries a F-type plasmid containing blaNDM-5. Most of B5/H24RxC also carry a high pathogenicity island and a novel O-antigen gene cluster. We find that B5/H24RxC grew faster in vitro and is more virulent in vivo. The identification of this newly emerged but already globally disseminated hypervirulent CREC clone, highlights the ongoing evolution of ST410 towards increased resistance and virulence.

Introduction

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has become one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century, threatening the effective prevention and treatment of infections in humans and animals alike^1.1,2.1. A bacterial strain is considered multidrug-resistant (MDR) if it is resistant to at least one agent in three or more antimicrobial classes^3.1. Carbapenems are a group of last-line antibiotics for treating infections caused by MDR Gram-negative bacteria⁴. However, carbapenem resistance has been observed in many pathogens, including members of the Enterobacteriaceae family such as Escherichia coli^4.1,5.1. The most frequently observed carbapenem resistance mechanism in Enterobacteriaceae is the production of carbapenemases that hydrolyse carbapenems^4.1,6. Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase, New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase (NDM), imipenemase, Verona integron-encoded metallo-β-lactamase, and oxacillinase-48 (OXA-48) are the most commonly encountered carbapenemases in Enterobacteriaceae^7,8,9. Among these, NDM has been reported to be highly prevalent in many parts of the world^9,10,11.

In the past two decades, carbapenem-resistantE. coli (CREC) has emerged rapidly and become increasingly prevalent around the globe, causing various hard-to-treat clinical infections^9,10,12. The global CREC population is made up of diverse multilocus sequence types (STs) with varied geographic distributions. A previous study reported two major (>10%) STs (ST410 and ST131) and three minor (5–10%) STs (ST1248, ST167, and ST405) in a global collection of 229 CREC collected by two global surveillance programs during 2015–2017¹³. No CREC from China was reported in that study¹³, although CREC isolates are frequently isolated in Chinese healthcare settings. Two Chinese national surveillance studies carried out over a similar period (2014–2017) revealed that most CREC isolates in China belonged to ST167 or ST131, with ST410 the third most prevalent^9,14.

E. coli ST410 is an extraintestinal pathogen associated with multidrug resistance, and has been recognised as a high-risk international clone^15,16. Whole-genome sequence analysis and evolutionary reconstruction ofE. coli ST410 revealed that ST410 is comprised of two lineages, namely lineage A with fimH53 (A/H53) and lineage B with fimH24 (B/H24)15. The B/H24 lineage is further divided into four sub-lineages: B1/H24, B2/H24R, B3/H24Rx and B4/H24RxC. Sub-lineage B2/H24R is characterised by fluoroquinolone resistance associated with mutations in gyrA and parC, B3/H24Rx is defined by the introduction of the extended-spectrum β-lactamase-encoding gene blaCTX-M-15, and B4/H24RxC is defined by a further introduction of the carbapenem resistance gene blaOXA-181 carried on an IncX3 plasmid¹⁵. A more recent study has proposed a modification to this classification, where ST410-B1 is identical to B1/H24, ST410-B2 includes both B2/H24R and B3/H24Rx, and ST410-B3 is identical to B4/H24RxC¹⁷. That study characterised ST410-B2 by the introduction of fluoroquinolone resistance mutations and ST410-B3 by the acquisition of a four-amino-acid (YRIN N337N) insertion in the ftsI-encoded penicillin-binding protein 3 (PBP3, also called FtsI)¹⁷. The YRIN insertion in PBP3, together with YRIK and TIPY insertions, were reported to confer reduced susceptibility to a broad range of β-lactams such as ceftazidime, cefepime and aztreonam^18,19. Chen et al. reported that nearly all (292/293) ST410-B3 isolates analysed contain the ftsI YRIN insetion¹⁷. Over the past decade, there have been increasing reports of serious infections and possible hospital outbreaks involving the carbapenem-resistant ST410 sub-lineage B4/H24RxC in both developed and low- and middle-income countries^{15,16,20,21,22,23}.

In this work, we investigate the population of clinical CREC isolates from Chinese hospital patients between 2017 and 2021. The most commonly isolated CREC lineage, ST410, is analysed further. We examine the global ST410 population structure by comparing 847 publicly available ST410 genomes to the 109 ST410 genomes generated in this study. A hypervirulent MDR ST410 clone is identified and designated B5/H24RxC. Comparative genomic analyses and phenotypic assays are performed to characterise B5/H24RxC and provide insights into its emergence and evolution.

Now, thanks to Michael J. Behe's 'proof' that creationism’s god exists and is designing things, creationist now have to explain why this same designer not only designed pathogens like E. coli and Plasmodium falciparum for the sole purpose of making us sick and increasing the suffering in the world, but why it is actively working against medical science and producing upgrades for its pathogens that help them overcome the protection medical science is creating for us.

And all that to avoid admitting that pathogens, like other organisms evolve in response to environmental pressures such as the presence of antibiotics and a host population that has been made resistant to them.

---

Advertisement

The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is Not Good

This book presents the reader with multiple examples of why, even if we accept Creationism's putative intelligent designer, any such entity can only be regarded as malevolent, designing ever-more ingenious ways to make life difficult for living things, including humans, for no other reason than the sheer pleasure of doing so. This putative creator has also given other creatures much better things like immune systems, eyesight and ability to regenerate limbs that it could have given to all its creation, including humans, but chose not to. This book will leave creationists with the dilemma of explaining why evolution by natural selection is the only plausible explanation for so many nasty little parasites that doesn't leave their creator looking like an ingenious, sadistic, misanthropic, malevolence finding ever more ways to increase pain and suffering in the world, and not the omnibenevolent, maximally good god that Creationists of all Abrahamic religions believe created everything. As with a previous book by this author, "The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax", this book comprehensively refutes any notion of intelligent design by anything resembling a loving, intelligent and maximally good god. Such evil could not exist in a universe created by such a god. Evil exists, therefore a maximally good, all-knowing, all-loving god does not.

Illustrated by Catherine Webber-Hounslow.

Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle

Advertisement

The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting The Intelligent Design Hoax

ID is not a problem for science; rather science is a problem for ID. This book shows why. It exposes the fallacy of Intelligent Design by showing that, when examined in detail, biological systems are anything but intelligently designed. They show no signs of a plan and are quite ludicrously complex for whatever can be described as a purpose. The Intelligent Design movement relies on almost total ignorance of biological science and seemingly limitless credulity in its target marks. Its only real appeal appears to be to those who find science too difficult or too much trouble to learn yet want their opinions to be regarded as at least as important as those of scientists and experts in their fields.

Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle

Thank you for sharing!

Tweet Link