Evolving viruses

The Times has an article this morning that is well-worth reading. It concerns the spread of avian flu into Western Europe from Asia and mentions, ever so briefly, that though Asian bird flu is not yet transmittable from human to human, it may well gain that capacity through "a variety of biological processes".

Hmmm... What could those processes be? Evolution anyone? Certainly, the CDC seems to think so. What about our President? Well, it's hard to say. Given his seriously low poll numbers, the President has decided to prove to America that he's "serious" about keeping us safe and undertaken a new effort to address asian bird flu. But, isn't this the same President who endorsed Intelligent Design, a non-scientific theory whose pseudo-scientific proponents couldn't design an anti-viral drug if their lives (or, more importantly, our lives) depended on it? Why yes it is.

So what's an ignorant chump like Pres. Bush supposed to do? Well, he could recognize that ID is just a bunch of creationist claptrap, let the real scientists go to work, and get the fuck out of the way. Or, he could just use the Army to quarantine the entire country. Yeah, that's a great idea.