One winter evening, during my first year at the University of Toronto, I  numbly sat in a dark auditorium where powerpoint slides depicting phylogenetic trees of the flu virus flashed before my eyes; all the while I sadly thought about my upcoming essay on Creationism vs Evolution. I remarked then to myself, how interesting it was that all of us, creationists and scientists alike, subjected ourselves to the flu shot.

And I wondered if my fellow believers knew they were carrying the anti-christ in their veins…

Nowadays synonymous with 3-plus days of serious discomfort and pain, the influenza was once responsible for the deaths of over 40 million people worldwide between 1918 and 1919 – and that’s just the one strain of the influenza (type A, also responsible for the “spanish flu”). This disease had, however, already been responsible for the loss of  many lives before this 20th century deadly outbreak; it had even been described by Hippocrates around 2,400 years ago.

But today this has all changed as we now have a vaccine that protects our poor little souls from this dire fate. Phew, thank God! Right?

Wrong. Thank Darwin.

The most common human flu vaccine is the “trivalent influenza vaccine”, which contains purified and inactivated material from three viral strains (two influenza A virus subtypes and one influenza B virus strain). The decision of which subtypes and strains of the virus to include in the cocktail is relegated to scientists of fields such as molecular virology, pathogenesis and molecular evolution. This last field of study is responsible for making prediction about which strains will be the most infectious on any given year, through the study of the virus’ taxonomic and phylogenetic relationships (or the evolution of the influenza virus).

Understanding how the flu virus works and how to prevent its spread requires basic research on how viruses enter cells, replicate, mutate, evolve into new strains and induce an immune response. The tecnique used by Bush et al (1999), for instance, seems to have successfully predicted – through the analysis of the molecular evolution of flu strains through recent years – the flu strains for the 8 years prior to 1999.

The bird flu, which has been all the rage these days, is caused itself by a viral subtype (H5N1) of the spanish influenza virus, influenza A. A vaccine against H5N1 has been approved by the US in April 2007. Two people have officially died of this flu strain this year.

The beauty in this, is that Evolution can single-handedly predict harmful outbreaks of this disease and provide protection against them, without the need for ‘magic cloaks’. But while I will gladly take the flu jab on any given year, I would strongly suggest Creationists not to go near that Evolutionary needle; as far as Creationism goes, the flu shot is the anti-christ in liquid form.

… And I bet they never would have thought it possible to find Salvation in Evolution. How about that, eh?