7/12/00

Dear Secretary,

I was alarmed to see the thrust of Dr Yu's statements in the on-line article. As a neurologist, I too am struck with a sense of wonder by the complexity of the human nervous system - but to go on from that and say that evolution is not the process by which the brain develops is a bit much. That's an old chestnut which has been thoroughly addressed. eg Voltaire: The nose was designed so that we can wear glasses. Please note that:

• Virtually all Nobel-prize winning scientists support evolution.
• Dr Yu asks how long will it take a monkey to compose Fuer Elise. The mathematical answer is: longer than the lifetime of the Universe; but that is a totally wrong analogy. Dawkins has explained this in books such as " The Blind Watchmaker".
• It is convenient that when creationists talk about design, they neglect to mention little things like cancer, natural disasters, human suffering etc.

We don't expect paleoanthropologists, zoologists, biochemists, geologists and astronomers to show us how to perform a burr-hole but doctors should not go and stand years of convergent scientific evidence on its head. By all means "controversial" topics shoul be debated but I think the next featured article should be a rebuttal of Dr Yu's fundamentalist position.The credibility of our Academy as a scientific and critical institution is involved.

Yours fathfully,

Dr Andrew CF Hui FHKAM
Medical Dept
Prince of Wales Hospital
Shatin.

Dr. Yu's Reply to Dr. Hui: (11/12/00)

I thank Dr. Hui for his comments. The evolution versus creation debate has been going on in courtrooms, school education boards, US presidential campaigns, scientific journals, and even among atheists and theists alike. I do not intend to use these pages to fuel off another battlefield. Science is never static and is constantly moving forward with new discoveries disproving old ones. There is tremendous amount of information from each camp on line and off line. I encourage interested readers to go into the details of both opposing views and draw your own conclusions.

Dr. C.P. Yu FHKAM