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"The time to stop the ACLU is now."

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:20:22 -0500

Sally Kerns list of terrorists is getting long. Gays, evilutionists, and now, apparently, the ACLU:

In recent months, we have witnessed the reign of terror that the ACLU has exacted on Americans--aggressively working to strip away our religious freedom.

From the Pledge of Allegiance to the Ten Commandments, to prayer, the ACLU is the nation's foremost censor of religious freedom. They have effectively manipulated our very founding principles to repress religious liberty.

But it doesn't end there.

ACLU policies and goals are destroying America's fabric by pushing a radical agenda that supports polygamy, child pornography, infanticide, gun control and more.

Despite their claim to be great defenders of liberty, they are actually defending terrorists, molesters and murderers while attacking honest, hard-working, principled Americans.

The time to stop the ACLU is now.

What spurned this Caturday Kernado?

The OK ACLU asked how much government dough was used on Kerns Proclamation of Morality-- the OK Constitution is pretty damn explicit about religions and government money.

Well, this is simply unacceptable terrorism (except when they do it).

Because, according to a GOP push-poll, everyone in Oklahoma goes to church, so preaching from the capitol is really just The Will of the People.

A poll by Cole Hargrave Snodgrass taken about four years ago showed that Oklahoma has the highest percentage of church attendees in the nation. Oklahoma's people by and large are a religious people. They are concerned about the economy and our nation's morals. Rep. Kern's Oklahoma Citizen's Proclamation for Morality was a statement calling on those in Oklahoma who are concerned for their state and nation to take a stand.

So since everyone in Oklahoma goes to church... why did Kern need to issue a Proclamation on morality? Oklahomas saved, right? And why are so many of the 689 support signatures she has fake/protests/duplicates/anons, when OK state has a population of about 3.6 million (... poll crash?)?

I cant wait to see how this woman falls!! heeeeeeeeheeheehee!!! *giddy clapping*

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Microbiology and Abortion

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:30:05 -0500

RU-486, or mifepristone, was approved for use in 2000 in the US, for medical abortions.

Shortly there after, something weird started happening. A handful of women who used RU-486 were dying from sepsis, caused by a really rare bacteria, Clostridium sordellii. Like, these women didnt have AIDS. They werent meth addicts or recovering from cancer. They were previously completely healthy 18, 22 year-old women dropping dead.

To pro-lifers, the message was clear: Abortion kills women.

Planned Parenthood's recommendation to use the abortion-causing drug Misoprostol vaginally rather than orally has led to fatal infections according to a research study released by the University of Michigan.
...
"This study shows Planned Parenthood not only disregards the lives of babies in the womb, but the lives of their mothers as well," said American Life League's Jim Sedlak. "This is scandalous, if not criminal. It's time people stopped viewing Planned Parenthood as a responsible healthcare organization and saw it for what it is -- a money-making, social engineering group that plies its trade of sex and abortion without regard to human life, born or preborn."

To rational people and scientists, there is a different puzzle afoot.

Planned Parenthood recommended vaginal application of RU-486 the same reason you put neosporin on a cut, instead of taking oral antibiotics-- Lower dose, you have the drug at the site you need it rather than systemic, dont need to worry about stomach/liver/whatever doing something weird to the drug before it gets where it needs to go-- theres nothing that should have been weird about PPs recommendations.

But there was.

Because in Europe, RU-486 was approved late 80s/early 90s. No one had died from Clostridium sordellii. And, the Europeans were also not recommending oral RU-486-- they were recommending women just hold the pill in their cheek, so the drug went straight to the bloodstream.

RU-486 via cheek-- everyones fine
RU-486 via vagina-- women die from Clostridium sordellii

This makes no sense.

It makes no sense, but its easy to fix. In 2006 PP changed their recommended protocol to Europes, plus sometimes also antibiotics. They just released a retrospective analysis of their procedures/outcomes before/since the change in protocol in the New England Journal of Medicine:

Rates of Serious Infection after Changes in Regimens for Medical Abortion-- Rates of serious infection dropped significantly after the joint change to buccal misoprostol from vaginal misoprostol and to either testing for sexually transmitted infection or routine provision of antibiotics as part of the medical abortion regimen. The rate declined 73%, from 0.93 per 1000 abortions to 0.25 per 1000 (absolute reduction, 0.67 per 1000; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.44 to 0.94; P<0.001). The subsequent change to routine provision of antibiotics led to a further significant reduction in the rate of serious infection -- a 76% decline, from 0.25 per 1000 abortions to 0.06 per 1000 (absolute reduction, 0.19 per 1000; 95% CI, 0.02 to 0.34; P=0.03).

So after they changed their protocols, 0.93 per 1000 turned into 0.06 per 1000.

But their protocol is asking for more trouble. Is it worth giving everyone drugs to prevent a very rare event, when giving everyone drugs could lead to antibiotic resistant Clostridium sordellii, thus perhaps more/harder to treat Clostridium sordellii infections??

DAMMIT.

To further complicate things, Clostridium sordellii isnt confined to women who get abortions. It also kills women who just give birth. No abortion. No RU-486. We had a visiting PI speak about Clostridium sordellii earlier this year-- he told an absolutely tragic story of a happy healthy woman who gave birth to a happy healthy baby. Everyone was released from the hospital. Happy happy happy!... A few weeks later mommy is back in the hospital with Clostridium sordellii. She fights it for a year... then drops dead from other complications.

And, women can die from Clostridium sordellii after spontaneous abortions.

DAMMIT.

We dont have good diagnostic tests (women who get sick have really general symptoms- nausea, cramps- no fever). We dont have great treatment protocols. We dont even have a good scientific explanation for how Clostridium sordellii is causing all of this trouble in the first place.

None of these problems are solved when pro-lifers proclaim Planned Parenthood is killing women.

None.

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Speak of the Devil, and He shall appear

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:45:09 -0500

Via The Watchers-- AtBC, also Colloquy

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

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Congrats on the transformation, Sheril and Chris!

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:00:06 -0500

Hey, you remember how in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, the more Frodo wears The Ring, the more he acts like Gollum? In the end, Frodo wants to keep The Ring and almost totally blows it?

Well, congrats, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney! Youve been wearing The Ring for so long, youve officially turned into CASEY LUSKIN!!!!

YAY!

Bringing internet drama no one cares about into meatworld!

Attacking your 'opponents' character in forums where they cannot respond, then bitch when they do respond!

Bitching about how 'mean' people are in comments!

Why, I honestly cant tell you buxom brunettes apart!

Round of applause, everyone, for the happy threesome!!!

P.S.-- I hope you two enjoy my gift of Kwok! Its the least I can do, really!

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Norovirus: Not a party pooper, just makes a poopy party.

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:30:18 -0500

Oh, the things researchers get people to do in the name of Science...

When most microbiologists talk about poop, they are talking about bacteria. Salmonella, E. coli, Cholera-- they have all evolved different, wonderfully complex ways of making people poopy.

But if you really want to make a lot of people poop, and fast, you need a virus!

While we get a pathogenic Salmonella outbreak every now and then, GoogleNews 'norovirus' real quick. You can find tons of current articles on outbreaks on cruises, parties, schools, weddings-- This bastard is everywhere, all the time, ruining peoples good times. Like other non-enveloped viruses (ie polio), noroviruses are tough bastards that require special cleaning/cooking protocols to ensure the buggars are dead. So when those protocols arent followed, noroviruses spread like wildfire.

But despite all the diarrheal damage noroviruses cause, we didnt even know they existed until very recently. We thought enteric diseases were caused by bacteria... but then in the 1940s, scientists filtered poop from infected individuals (cell free=no bacteria) and got volunteers to swallow it. I shit you not. These volunteers subsequently got sick too.

So, something smaller than a bacteria, ie, a virus, was causing the illness.

But the actual virus wasnt identified until 1972, when scientists got volunteers to swallow cell-free poop once again after an outbreak in a Norwalk, Ohio elementary school. Scientists used the volunteers antibodies to get the virus to clump together to get chunks they could visualize with electron microscopy. Importantly, the clumps didnt form with pre-infection sera, thus, the apparent virus that these antibodies were sticking to was the etiologic agent behind non-bacterial enteric disease. So thats how noroviruses got the nickname 'Norwalk virus'.

But even now that the scientists knew what they were dealing with, they couldnt get the virus to grow in tissue culture. Like, with HIV-1, I can get a ton of virus in 48 hours with an infectious molecular clone. Or you can just throw virus on white blood cells from volunteers, and in a week, youve got a ton of HIV-1 in your flask. No big whoop.

These tricks dont work with noroviruses.

So, to get enough virus to characterize its genome, scientists fed volunteers yet more poop, collected their poop, and purified the viral RNA. By 1990, we had the Norwalk virus sequence!

Now, this is a lighthearted post, but many people (especially children/elderly) die from bacterial/viral enteric diseases. Sure, poopy is funny. Dead, dehydrated babies, not so much. So obviously we are trying to make a vaccine.

Unfortunately, it appears that none of us have long-term immunity to noroviruses. After feeding volunteers filtered poop, scientists discovered that after an infection, you are protected from another infection for a couple of weeks. But then youre right back to being just as susceptible as you were in the first place.

Some volunteers drank the filtered poop and didnt get sick... but scientists cant figure out why. Seems it has nothing to do with the concentration of norovirus-specific antibodies in your system, because some of the people who didnt get sick didnt have any norovirus antibodies... an unfortunate, unexpected stumbling block for vaccine developers.

To make matters worse, we cant even get an animal model going. Scientists have fed poop to mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, cats, cows, baboons, rhesus macaques, marmosets, owl monkeys, patas monkeys, cebus monkeys, chimpanzees, mangabeys, and pig-tailed macaques... they dont get poopy. Only humans get poopy.

There is some hope in the recent discovery of a murine norovirus, but for the time being, it seems we still need to rely on the generosity of volunteers who dont mind pooping a couple days for The Greater Good.

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LOL! Atheism wins AGAIN

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:20:31 -0500

We get Harry Potter too.

"I'm an atheist, but I'm very relaxed about it. I don't preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do. Anything he does on television, I will watch."-- Daniel Radcliffe

Win!

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Video from Anti-Silly-Sally Rally!

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:25:29 -0500

Via DAM10N, video from Kerns 'morality proclamation' that is both nauseating and inspiring :)

So, Im starting the betting pool: What is Sally Kern/her psycho hubby going to be outed with?

Oxycontin?

Boinking babies?

Maybe theyre illegal immigrants!

Normal people dont behave like Sally. Normal people arent obsessed over these things. Its just a matter of time before we find out the root cause of Sallys abnormal behavior, and you know its gonna be good.

*evil grin*

*giddy laugh*

I can hardly wait!!

EDITED TO ADD: Local news coverage, also via DAM10N.

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Anti-Silly-Sally-Rally!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:00:32 -0500

Yo!

Tomorrow at noon, OK Capital, some folks are meeting up to protest Silly Sallys 'proclamation of morality'.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

God, she is so weird!

Too bad for her the 2011 Evolution meeting is going to be in Norman. Kern has 2 years to get out of OK to avoid Gaaaaaawds wrath!

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OMG I CAN SELL MY EGGS NOW!! EEEEEEEEEE!

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:00:06 -0500

This is so awesome! Women in New York can now be fairly compensated for donating their eggs for stem-cell research! WHOOOO!

With the exception for near-sightedness, a sweet tooth, and a 'bad attitude', my family doesnt have a history of genetic diseases. It would be SO AWESOME if I could donate my eggs to a research laboratory and be fairly compensated for the time/pain/risks involved!

But lots of assholes dont want me to do that.

Remember Lisa Billy? Convinced scientists will prowl alleyways, hunting for poor black women to harvest their eggs for $20? See, if I just want to donate my eggs for free, thats one thing, but the second scientists start paying $$, why, poor people will be forced to donate so they can pay the gas bill! *cue picture of screaming and crying black woman laid out, spread-eagle, while ravenous evil white male scientists harvest her eggs*

Shes not alone--Heres a Catholic priest all worried about women!

"Moreover, critics worry that the move could lead to the exploitation of women, especially poor women, who tend not to be in demand for infertility donation.

"With the economy the way it is, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that when a woman is looking at receiving up to $10,000 to sign up for research project, that's an undue inducement," said Thomas Berg, a Catholic priest who directs the Westchester Institute for Ethics & the Human Person and serves on the Empire State Stem Cell Board's ethics committee. He opposed the decision. "I think it manipulates women. I think it creates a trafficking in human body parts."

Trafficking human body parts! Oh my! Thats so worse than trafficking priests! Your concern is noted, 'priest'.

But religious nutbars arent the only ones against basic stem-cell research. Some 'ethicists' are angry too.

According to some 'ethicists', if you dont offer women an appropriate sum, then they are donating because they want to. If you actually pay women a sum scientists, IRB panels, and donors think is fair, which is equivalent to how much woman make for donating eggs to an infertile couple ($2500-5000), youre 'exploiting women':

"In a field that's already the object of a great deal of controversy, the question is, are we at the point where we really need to go that route in order to do the science?" said Jonathan D. Moreno, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "I'm not convinced."
...
But Moreno, at the University of Pennsylvania, questioned whether enough effort had been made to persuade women to donate eggs without compensation. "I wonder if all the expertise that could be brought to be bear on this problem of getting unreimbursed donation have been explored," he said.
...
"People recognize that eggs can make a baby. That's a very concrete good for society. But you can't be sure any biological material you collect for research will be part of a medical breakthrough. That's the goal, but you can't be sure," Moreno said.

*GAAAAAAAAAAAAAG*

*spit*

*frown*

Actually, you can be sure 'any biological material you collect for research will be part of a medical breakthrough', Mr. Im-not-a-scientist-but-I-like-telling-scientists-what-they-should/shouldnt-do. If I donated eggs tomorrow, I have zero expectations that *my* eggs will be the ones used to cure _____. The experiments conducted on my eggs will inch scientists towards a cure for _____, either through 'Hey! This works! But we still need to do A, B, C.... WWW, XXX, YYY, ZZZ' or 'Shit! This approach will not work to cure _____'.

Both positive and negative data contribute towards 'medical breakthroughs'.

A scientist would know that.

Additionally, I can also be 100% sure how much 'good' my eggs will go towards if I dont donate. None. Oh, if I really cared I would do it for free, Mr. Ethicist? Even though every other study gets to fairly compensate their volunteer participants? What is the 'ethical' reason for why I cant be fairly compensated for donating my eggs to a cause that will move the medical community in a positive direction?

Piss off, 'ethicist'.

*high-five* to NY State for siding with scientists on this one!

"This is a really great, appropriate policy," said Susan Solomon, co-founder of the New York Stem Cell Foundation, a private, nonprofit research organization. "This could help us to pursue some critical experiments that we hope will lead to treatments for devastating diseases."
...
"Women are perfectly capable in our society in deciding to get plastic surgery, Botox, donate a kidney. I find it patronizing beyond belief. We compensate people in clinical trails for time and burden all the time," Solomon said.

Elsewhere:

"If you're donating oocytes, there is time and burden," Ms. Solomon said. "And in our society, we compensate for time and burden."

Thank you. I like Susan.

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Fish drowning in stupid: Now with added prions!

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:00:20 -0500

Anne Hart is still on her anti-frankenfishscapade.

Actually, this latest article looks like she plagiarized her last article and added stuff about prions.

She still doesnt understand retroviruses or gene therapy:

Farmed fish start out by having the rous sarcoma virus implanted into a specialized gene early in their embryonic development in order to amplify the fish's growth hormone. The virus acts as a carrier. It's called a vector (meaning a carrier virus). The farmed fish are made to grow faster and larger.

This specific rous sarcoma virus has been known since 1911 to cause cancer in chickens. See the article titled, "The Rous Sarcoma Virus (RSV)." For more information, also see The Cholersterol Hoax, by Sherry A. Rogers, M.D., page 193. In the book, The Cholesterol Hoax, the section on page 193 specifically mentions that farmed fish are implanted with the rous sarcoma virus. On page193, the reader also is referred to the doctor's newsletter, Total Wellness, 2001.

She is still convinced microwaves are slaughtering millions of innocent antioxidants:

The irradiation of farmed fish not only destroys the bad bacteria. It also neutralizes some of the vitamins. So now you have fewer vitamins in farmed fish than in wild fish. When you get the cheaper farmed fish home, perhaps the fish are microwaved.

Now the fish coming out of the microwave oven has had all the antioxidants destroyed.

This is exactly what she said in an article published May 16, verbatim (nor are these statements exhaustive-- the plagiarized significantly more from herself, wtf?). It also appears portions of this latest piece are lifted from a ScienceDaily press release. LOL!

But this June 28th article adds more anti-science fear mongering to RETROVIRUS, CANCER, AIDS, and MICROWAVES... PRIONS!!!

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Fish drowning in stupid: GMOs and retroviruses collide!

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:00:43 -0500

Can anyone name one anti-GMOer thats not a self-indulgent, arrogant moron?

Google News alerted me to this breathless expose by an Anne Hart: "Why farmed fish are genetically altered for faster growth with a carrier retrovirus"

Now, for some reason I can only get this article via Google cache. Hopefully this means some editor pulled this article because its so mind numbingly stupid/arrogant/shrill. But somehow I doubt that.

Frequent readers of ERV could probably fix Harts 'errors' themselves, at this point, but Imagonna do it anyway :)

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Hysterical chiro-woo at White Coat Underground

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:15:29 -0500

ERV does not have a monopoly on teh crazy.

Pal really reels them in with his chronic lyme disease posts, and now, evidently, chiro-woo.

I could not have made up this post from 'Dr. Howard Boos' if I had tried.

You tell me this asshole doesnt sound EXACTLY like a Creationist or HIV Denier!
1. Hates science
2. Uses title of 'Dr' in an attempt to gain unearned credibility
3. Personal expertise/experience trumps scientific community
4. Little/No interest in modern scientific findings, eg journal articles
5. Scientific community wants to hurt people
6. Science itself hurts people
7. Woo makes people happy
8. Scientific community persecutes professional wooer
9. Desperate pleas for 'civility', btw, scientific community is made up of murderous Nazis who genuinely enjoy seeing children in pain

**LAUGH!!!**

When he signed 'Tulsa, OK', I thought Id look him up on the Google machine. Dude is totally a real human. A real batshit insane human. Not only is he a chiropractor, hes also a proud graduate of Oral Roberts, and according to Google, a 'tax protester'.

Though they might traditionally be sleepy government repositories, clerk's offices are increasingly being used by fringe groups for antigovernment activism. In March, Howard Boos, an Oklahoma chiropractor and tax protester, was charged with filing in a clerk's office a false $20 million lien against two IRS agents who were investigating him for evasion.

LOL, WUT? WUT???

Oh whatever. Lets go see what kind of fun facts we can learn on Dr. Apparently Antigovernments website:

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Have you ever wondered why your chickens gonads are lopsided?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:15:19 -0500

Weird science fact of the day:

Girl birds only have a left ovary. The right one kinda develops, and then regresses. Left ovary is the only one that works. All birds.

Wait... what?

What the hell?

What kind of evolutionary weirdness led to this absurdity?

I bet you guessed an ERV is involved :D

OVEX1, a novel chicken endogenous retrovirus with sex-specific and left-right asymmetrical expression in gonads.

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Making influenza fun! SNEEZE!

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:15:16 -0500

No idea what this website is (Routes?), but they have some fun science themed (loosely science based) Flash games, like SNEEZE!

They also have 'DNA Hero'-- Guitar Hero with ACTG sequences, and 'Ginger Dawn'-- increase the frequency of that recessive gene, baby! LOL! And it looks like there are a few more games in the works... gonna have to investigate this site more.

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Charles Jackson: Expert on ERVs

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:45:20 -0500

There is nothing wrong with not knowing something.

I dont know lots of stuff.

You dont know lots of stuff.

Its okay-- we share knowledge with each other. I dont *have* to be an expert in car repair. I dont *have* to be an expert in particle physics. You dont *have* to be an expert in retroviruses. We are a hippy commune of knowledge.

Seems like the only people who *have* to know EVERYTHING are Creationists. Pressures not on them from our end-- I dont expect Creationists to know how to feed themselves without assistance, much less the details of ERVs. No, its the Creationists who insist that they KNOW EVERYTHING. They are experts in EVERYTHING. William Dembski fancies himself a biochemist. Casey Luskin (aka DoubleD) is an expert on molecular genetics.

And Charles Jackson, the fellow who I 'debated' a while back, thinks of himself as an expert on ERVs.

Even though he had no idea what they were when he and I 'debated'.

But he heard my presentation, and my presentation was directed towards laypeople like him, so now he KNOWS EVERYTHING. He knows SO MUCH about ERVs, that hes now using them in his email 'debates' with people. As if these people arent going to email me with their questions. As if Im not going to blag about it.

Now, I spent about an hour this morning (admittedly, pre-coffee) trying to get the formatting of Jacksons email right. I cant. Its so far down the TimeCube hole, MoveableType doesnt know what to do with it when I break it up into quotes. So first, I will post the email in its entirely to you can appreciate its html beauty. Then Im going to break it up into normal font/color/size for rebuttal:

POINTS OF ORIGINS with Dr. Jackson
a ministry of CREATION TRUTH FOUNDATION (www.CreationTruth.com )

Dr. J, your debate with Abbie Smith did very well ... I was appalled at the accusation you were not a Scientist. About Endogenous retroviruses and their impact on evolution and creation, I have not heard much about these.
Thank you so much for what you do, Alex
(see exerpts of the debate on YouTube : use search word "creatordebater" )

Alex, evo's talk like ERVs are an evo slam-dunk. Not!
Here's what they are: A retrovirus injects an RNA stand into a cell. The strand backward-copies ("retro"-copies) itself in DNA form, then splices ("endogenizes") into a spot along the victim's DNA. The strand is now called an "Endogenous RetroVirus" sequence.
Here's why they matter: To become inherited, an ERV must get into a sex cell. After that, it should show up at the same spot in the DNA of every new generation. So, if youhave the same ERV in the same spot as somebody else(so goes the reasoning) then you must be related through a "common ancestor." So -- evo's hunt for ERVs inhumans that are the same in chimps hoping to prove we have a common ancestor.
Here's the evo bogus-ness: Evo ERV-story makesassumptions -- like ERVs always only splice into host DNA at random sites. But research reports they are slightly non-random -- that alone could explain the mere 14 out of 98,000 human ERVs that happen to be in the same sites (orthologous) as 14 of the chimp ERVs. Evo's claimjust one's enough to "prove" chimp-human evolution. Do the math. What's worse, ERVs shuffle around once they endogenize a genome. So how can you be sure where you see it now -- is where it's always been?! Plus, evo's sayone ERV created all the special traits of placental mammals. The average ERV is only 500 base-pairs long -- the average gene is 1500 bp's -- and it would take manygenes to account for placental traits! Do the math.
Like all evo-"proofs," their ERV argument is really justa buncha hype! Keep thinking! Dr J

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