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Wikipedia cites Clarkson and Magos, "Critical Reviews in Toxology":

Ethylmercury clears from blood with a half-life of about 18 days in adults. Ethylmercury is eliminated from the brain in about 14 days in infant monkeys. Inorganic mercury metabolized from ethylmercury has a much longer half-life, at least 120 days; though it appears to be much less toxic than the inorganic mercury produced from mercury vapor, for reasons not yet understood

The study you cited (which was performed on a total of 21 subjects, so the authors do not regard it as conclusive) only deals with blood concentration of mercury. You can't kill human babies and assay their brain tissue for mercury content like the toxicologists do with their monkey babies. The second study also includes fecal sampling but I don't see anywhere that it compares the amount eliminated with the amount ingested, eh? So it still does not disprove what Wikipedia cites.

Thus, it's currently believed that it takes 120 days for the mercury that comes out of the thiomersal due to normal metabolic activity to clear the system. It's 14 days for the thiomersol that does not break down. Therefore, mercury does not rapidly leave the system, it takes at least four months. This is not what people mean by "rapid".

As a side note, "the dose makes the poison" is not a view I subscribe to, personally, although it's not inherently invalid. Meaning no offense to Paracelsus.

And in any case, my major point has always been that we should minimize the use of mercury, and I don't think a lack of ill effects from thimerosal in vaccines means it's OK to roast cinnabar in China and 3rd world countries. If thiomersal left the body at the speed of light, it would still be a good idea to work towards elimination of mercury in vaccines.

I must admit, for lack of time I grabbed an older bookmark thinking Biointegrity's heading: "INDEX: KEY FDA DOCUMENTS REVEALING (1) HAZARDS OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS--AND (2) FLAWS WITH HOW THE AGENCY MADE ITS POLICY" (I'm not yelling it's their caps!) would be backed up with better documents.

As to your first link, that's specifically an "antibiotic resistant marker gene". And did you miss "Memorandum from Dr. Murray Lumpkin to Dr. Bruce Burlington. Subject: "The tomatoes that will eat Aron." Those same GM tomatoes were later removed from the market.

Also, I wasn't planning to single-handedly prove GM foods are toxic. Just don't have the time right now and it wasn't my intent today. For now, how about these quotes from a PBS inquiry:

• "Today the vast majority of foods in supermarkets contain genetically modified substances whose effects on our health are unknown. As a medical doctor, I can assure you that no one in the medical profession would attempt to perform experiments on human subjects without their consent. Such conduct is illegal and unethical. Yet manufacturers of genetically altered foods are exposing us to one of the largest uncontrolled experiments in modern history." --Dr. Martha R. Herbert, pediatric neurologist
• "With genetic engineering, familiar foods could become metabolically dangerous or even toxic. Even if the transgene itself is not dangerous or toxic, it could upset complex biochemical networks and create new bioactive compounds or change the concentrations of those normally present. In addition, the properties in proteins may change in a new chemical environment because they may fold in new ways. Further, the potential toxic or carcinogenic effects could have substantial latency periods." --from The Need for Greater Regulation and Control of Genetic Engineering: A Statement by Scientists Concerned About Trends in the New Biotechnology
• "Lots and lots of people -- virtually the entire population -- could be exposed to genetically engineered foods, and yet we have only a handful of studies in the peer-reviewed literature addressing their safety. The question is, do we assume the technology is safe based on an argument that it's just a minor extension of traditional breeding, or do we prove it? The scientist in me wants to prove it's safe." --Dr. Margaret Mellon, director of the agricultural and biotechnology program, Union of Concerned Scientists

This link also indicates areas of concern: http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/pusztai.html

That's all I have time for now. Just go on unconcerned if you must.

Actually one of the key points here is that there *isn't* a nice neat dividing line between species. Humans like to put nice neat labels on things dividing them into "this" and "that", but in biology things blur into each other. What day does a puppy become a dog? What offspring of a reptile was the first mammal? Is something one species or two species?

Lions and tigers can interbreed, but their offspring are infertile.

Nice neat dividing line, two species, right?

Whoops, no. Lions and tigers can interbreed, but their offspring are usually infertile. On rare occasions the offspring are fertile and can lead to 1/4th lion - 3/4ths tiger descendants or vice versa, and 1/8th lions - 7/8ths tigers and vice versa, etcetera for any potential mix.

Coyotes and dogs and wolves and dingos and jackals all crossbreed, with multiple unconfirmed fox crossings. If you try to apply a "species rule" of completely incompatible even by artificial crossings, you pretty much start lumping all canines almost down to a single species, and lumping felines down almost as much as listed here and here.

In biology the fuzzy rule for used species is populations that "normally cannot or do not produce fertile offspring". For example two species of frog might technically be able to produce crippled but minimally viable minimally fertile offspring if you artificially cross fertilize them, but they never interbreed in nature because they have completely different breeding seasons and wildly different mating habits.

When you have two gene pools that aren't mixing, their genetics are only going to further diverge and only going to increase incompatibility, even if by mere random drift. A million years ago lions and tigers were almost certainly much more cross-fertile, a million years from now lions and tigers will likely be completely cross-infertile.

Look at Chihuahuas and Great Danes, separated from their common wolf ancestor by maybe 15,000 years and separated from each other by much less than that, and physically incapable of interbreeding. If Chihuahuas and Great Danes were simply wild and given another million years or some such, they would genetically and physically and behaviorally and biochemically only get further apart.

Three isn't really "multitudes".

Ok, I was writing off the top of my head that I knew a non-trivial multiple number of examples. According to this page:
At least 23 cases have been proposed, but most of them are not such clear examples as the salamanders and warblers.
With Warblers sounding like the perhaps the best example.

It's a fuzzy issue trying to define and decide in some cases if you are looking at one species or two, and it is even fuzzier define and decide in some cases if something should be labeled a Ring Species or not. How many tiny changes need to accumulate before something is labeled a different species? How many tiny changes need to add up and just how much absolutely of a breeding divide has to build up before it is labeled a different species?

The point is that a population can continuously diversify, either over time or across physical distance, and that difference can quite easily accumulate to the point where populations genetically split in two.

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Evolution is a theory. I won't go into the scientific definition of theory here; that's covered quite well in this document that was previously talked about on Slashdot. Evolution is not a fact (at least, not according to science) because it is untestable at this time.

Evolution is is a theory AND a group of facts. This article explains it better and the author has a phd so understands science.

FTA:
Scientific understanding requires both facts and theories that can explain those facts in a coherent manner. Evolution, in this context, is both a fact and a theory. It is an incontrovertible fact that organisms have changed, or evolved, during the history of life on Earth.

And Edward O. Wilson too, and I suppose many others.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.h tml

There are plenty of methods to accurately measue the age of rocks and fossils.

What is your point exactly anyway?

OK!

So they publish a statement saying that the earth is becoming overpopulated. They say it is therefore imperative that abortion be universally available. (Coded, "reproductive decision.")

Saying that populations are exceeding expected future ability of the planet to sustain a minimal lifestyle...that is a relatively politically neutral statement. Just saying "overpopulation" is a bit more political, but only because you aren't stating your assumptions. Saying then that abortion is the solution is overtly political, and everyone should acknowledge this. There's probably a million potential solutions to overpopulation. Why do you suppose that abortion was chosen instead of generic population culling; or enacting a global one-child policy; launching a campaign to change cultural values; MANDATORY abortion; etc.

Union of Concerned Scientists in a statement made in 1992 regarding overpopulation: "We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions. "

Regardless if one agrees or not with their statement, it is OVERTLY POLITICAL and has NO connection to scientific method or rigor!

http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/worlds cientists.html

The fact of the matter is, they are and have been for many years taking political positions on scientific findings. So the Bush administration says they disagree with some scientific finding or another. That's less destructive to science (maybe not the planet, however) than SCIENTISTS deriving concrete moral imperatives from cold scientific statement of fact.

very few of the extinctions throughout history were caused by humans.

Yeah, it's not like we've killed off so many species that scientists refer to the modern era as the Holocene Extinction Event, or the Sixth Extinction; or are claiming that this is the fastest mass extinction in Earth's history, giant meteors included. No, there's hardly any extinction going on.

Please perform at least a cursory Google search before making broad scientific claims.

Genetic differences disallowing breeding between closely related sub-species of birds mean that the birds lost some genetic information that allowed them to breed. This in fact happens among humans where there is great pollution or other factors (chemicals, etc.) that effect reproductive abilities. So, this means that some of these birds cannot mate and produce offspring. That is not evolution in the sense of simple beings evolving into higher life forms but rather "devolution" or genetic loss of information and decay in the gene structure.

Holy shit... you have *no idea* what you're talking about, do you? "Lost genetic information"?!? W... T... F... They didn't "lose" anything. The two groups of birds experienced simple genetic divergence, resulting in the two groups being no longer able to interbreed for whatever reason.

The specific example the parent is referring to is probably the Greenish Warbler. These birds live in a ring of mountains surrounding a desert. Starting in Siberia, these birds change gradually... in particular, coloring and male mating calls vary. However, in Siberia itself, the mating calls and coloring are sufficiently different that the two varieties do not interbreed, meeting the typical definition of speciation.

Note, no genetic material was "lost", as you so ridiculously posit. Their traits are simply sufficient varied that they no longer breed with one another.

Honestly, the least you could do is educate yourself a little before spouting off. "Lost genetic information"... it's been a long time since I've read something so patently ignorant.

Political promises and arrogance go hand in hand. The misconception of the
majority is that our world is vast and therefore could never be damaged
irrepairably. This is made believable through watered down reports and
important factors being dismissed easily. How many ecological disasters
happen every year that were preventable. They get their several days of
fame and are forgotten.

Reports that claim 450ppm could be tolerated yet neglect to mention the
million square kilometers of permafrost in Russia releasing methane.
Methane which is said to be 20x worse than carbon dioxide. I saw a
documentary a few months ago that detailed extinction and that by 2050
37% of the earth's species will see their end. When do any articles
ever mention the effect on the food chain? This issue shouldn't be
about our survival. But rather the damage we are responsible for.
I could go on and on listing every little factor contributing to this
planet's problems... but this article on slashdot will have become
just another archive by that time. We are in the grips of the sixth
mass extinction we can see:

http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldre dge2.html

The truth is "an asteroid could slam into earth and they'll be wiped
out anyway" is not positive reinforcement on the issue at hand. We have
the capabilites to work together as a whole and salvage our conscience.
But wars, religious disputes, racism, and poverty prevent it. Could
economy itself be the biggest problem? Star Trek mentioned this very
thing when Picard had a discussion with a woman whom had stowed away
on the Enterprise.

An interesting proposal is one that drug addicts use for rehab:

"Just for today." We are so busy focusing on goals and missing the
importance of doing something today. Environmental aggreements that
see meetings happening every few years??? Due to humanity's separations
in culture and the unfortunate focuses modern society imposes on us all
will bring our only salvation being robotics. We need help and it will
be them that salvage this planet. Solutions they will provide that we
cannot; or we are incapable of carrying out.

Jobs lost you say? What good are they if we can't live on the planet!
This is our lifeboat ladies and gentlemen... we keep poking holes in it
and she can't repair it fast enough. Read this:

http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

I see nothing but truth in this article... unfornately why are we so
important? We are concerned with our well being and there is a real
breaking point that we have met and might just be too late. Our
societies have become remedial and no longer focus on cures. The
meek shall indeed inherit.

Thank you for your time.

I'm pretty undecided as to what I should think of this project.
A sort of "Opensource genetics" organisation seems like a good idea at first. The fact that information likely to help researchers is made public is quite a good thing in my view, be it data about genes, the 1958 census of the Uzbek population, or about how many people in Uzbekistan wear jeans.
At least, this is far less freaky than a biotech company getting an "exclusive contract" from the Icelandic parliament to get access to the centralized database of all the Icelandic peoples' genealogical, genetic, and personal medical information. (See details here: http://www.actionbioscience.org/genomic/hlodan.htm l)
Yet, the information published by the Sanger Institute seems to be used mainly by private firms (Quote: "Dotcoms are responsible for about 80% of download each week"). I just wonder whether the Institute assesses these firms' goals before letting them download the data. I wouldn't be too glad to learn that they gave it to companies using genetic engineering for purposes other than medical.

By the way, just do a google search.....it's MORE then just religious right people proposing teaching of Intelligent Design. There are many PhD's and non religious people asking it be taught as well...

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.ht ml
http://skepdic.com/intelligentdesign.html

Either way you stand, I think a intelligent debate on this should be allowed in a classroom setting and it should be touched upon in a science class. If it's never taugh much less researched, then how can evolution be provded as the defacto truth? Can we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that evolution is a natural process??? No. Can we prove some intelligent species planned all of this? No. Can it be debated in class? Why not? When ID can be presented in a non religious way, then why the heck not?

Miller gave an interesting interview.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/miller.h tml

I discount his science because he's as fundy for gaia as some are for god. Global warming has become a religion and no longer counts as science.

Talkorigins is quite open that it exists to debunk the lies and distortions of creationists by pointing out the misunderstandings of the science involved. The fact is that speciation has been observed both in the wild and in the lab. For example lab experiments involving fruitflies (a favourite of scientists because of its short reproductive cycle) have shown that when subjected to different food supplies for an extended period that flies were 'speciated', ie. they didn't repoduce with members of the other group even when together http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VC1fE videnceSpeciation.shtml.
Some examples from outside the lab:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_0 52_05.html
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/irwin.ht ml
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.h tml#morphological_intermediates_ex3

Anyway this whole macroevolution as seperate from microevolution (where one's provable and one's supposedly not) is an invention of creationists. Macroevolution relies on the exact same processes as microevolution, the only requirement is some (usually environmental) factor to create seperate breeding groups of a species. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB902.html

You can remain in your blissful ignorance by convincing yourself that evolution is a religion and that it cannot be observed for all I care. Just don't try and force your beliefs on other people by arguing for it not to be taught in a science classroom, where it belongs.

How about living "half-mutated", quarter-mutated, full-mutated, etc species?

Look up "ring species". Here is a place to start.

Decent books on evolution will cover these among other forms of specication. We have plenty of evidence in various forms. You may also want to learn about "punctuated equilibrium" (note that the contententiousness of this doctrine is if the mainstream has always believed it or it was introduced by Stephen Jay Gould - SJG believed he created it, the mainstream says this has been mainstream since Darwin, using quotes), and various other aspects of specication and mutation/selection around it. There's examples of increased visual differentiation for hybridizable subspecies (as predicted: hybridization will, when the genepools are distinct enough, be worse than either parent), and there's examples of genetically almost identical groups that don't interbreed, considered species "in the process of happening".

We don't need the fossil record to show specication: We can show all the various stages existing today.

Eivind.

There is a ton of examples of speciation, and there are good explanations for numerous forms of this happening.

"Ring species" are the most glaring example: These happen where there's creatures that breed a bit left and right in a ring around an unsuitable habitat (often east-west around the entire world). At one end, there will be two "species" of birds (non-interbreeding populations), yet these are genetically connected through the ring. If the "middle" of the ring died (the other side of the earth), the genetic connection would disappear and they would be two species.

Ring species have often initially been classified as two species, BTW, as the populations were not interbreeding.

Examples: Salamanders, greenish warblers.

Eivind.

Not understanding evolution means your doom.
Go read this - http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/bull. html

At least they're willing to say they they were wrong, unlike hundreds of years ago.

They are... as long as profits are not at stake.

While the scientific research community is willing to acknowledge the limits of their understanding, the corporations developing genetically engineered foodcrops maintain that their products are proven perfectly safe (implying that they have a perfect understanding of the effects of the changes they have made). This claim flies in the face of significant research. And they have no compunctions about applying political and economic pressure to independent university researchers who claim otherwise.

The grand irony in the whole mess is that, as far as Monsanto etc are concerned, it's really not about genetic engineering and whatever dubious advantages it might provide. It's really an intellectual property maneuver to establish ownership of the seed supply.

1) Neanderthals lasted until only 30,000 years ago - that's recent enough for DNA to survive
2) The DNA can be used to clone new Neanderthals, using other primates as host mothers.
3) Neanderthals were intelligent, with brains larger than the brains of most modern humans.
4) Because they're not human, they do not have human rights, and can be patented.
5) The patent-holder would license them to do jobs that humans don't want, for less than minimum wage!
6) Profit!

Mass Extinction Underway
The Sixth Extinction
The Holocene Extinction Event
The Current Mass Extinction

The earth, it appears, might be better off without us.

Actually, and somewhat ironically, if humanity first evolved in Africa, surely Africa is the first ever colonial power?

I don't subscribe to the "Out of Africa" theory myself,. actually I tend to lean towards the Multiregional theory of Evolution. Here's a good intro to the competition between the two theories, Origins of Modern Humans: Multiregional or Out of Africa?

Check out this site for a great (and very civil) set of back-and-forth essays on this topic by ID proponents and evolutionary biologists, first printed in NATURAL HISTORY magazine; it also provides suggested links for further research by all participants in the colloquy. http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.ht ml

Hey, why worry about neutron stars? As the article says, we can't do anything about it. But we are already in the sixth mega-extinction.

this http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.ht mlarticle , from Natural History magazine, may throw some light on what i want to say.

Reminds me of Intelligent Design versus Darwinism. Allow me to yammer on for a bit and I'll explain why:

Evolution did occur (scientific findings are in the latest issue of "Duh" magazine), but the question is how it occured. Darwinism doesn't explain everything as tidily as some may think. ID defender and Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University Michael Behe posturises biochemistry reveals a cellular world of such astonishing complexity and molecules so "precisely tailored" as to make inexplicable by gradual evolution. Only by an intelligent designer, i.e., God could much of this be plausibly explained. Behe goes on to say some systems can't be produced by natural selection because "any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional." Heavy stuff, but relative to this virus-like digital life. This is a good example of how God could've started the evolutionary ball rolling.

Darwinism and Creationism are not mutually exclusive. Our Heavenly Father could very well have used the evolutionary mechanism to bring about ideal living conditions for Adam and Eve, as well as help them and their offspring be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), or, as Slashdot puts it, "replicate, mutate randomly, and compete with each other".

Evolution in action in the modern world: Ring Species. AKA, "Animals who are geographically separated eventually become different species".

Here is a link to a series of articles at the American Institute of Biological Sciences. The articles discuss both points of view.

"but "Creationism" is a specific belief system which takes the Judeo Christian creation myth to extremes."

Calling it a "myth" is an assertion of your own religious faith, which includes the faith assertion that the Judaeo-Christian Creation is not true. As long as we clear on that.

"....nobody that I am aware is doing any serious research into what happened before the big bang because all of the laws of physics break down at that point"

Please see this link, one of many which refers to the cyclic universe model. This model definitely has something before the big bang, and those discussing it are far from being crazy creationists or Velikovskyites.

The rich part is that she wasn't even born in this country ... she's from Africa.

Iceland has recently had a major controversy over creating a general DNA database of the people. Maybe if we can't learn from fiction, we can from reality.

Think of the medicine industry. To get a new drug, they have to do lots of research and testing.

The medicine industry is not in it to heal people. It is in it to sell as many medicine for an as high price as possible.. This means that they will patent ANYTHING, including my DNA. Depending on what you believe, this DNA is a gift from GOD or reached by milions of years of evolution. No matter how you look at it. It was NOT invented by the people who patent it. Here you can find some info on it.

A quote:

Patents on human life: A most alarming aspect of patenting life is the patenting of human genes, cell lines and tissues. Corporate patent attorneys have lobbied the Patent office that these "products of nature" are patentable once they have been isolated to produce a form not found outside of a laboratory. For example, in 1976 a leukemia patient named John Moore had surgery at the University of California to remove his cancerous spleen. The University was later granted a patent for a cell line called "Mo," removed from the spleen, which could be used for producing valuable proteins. The long term commercial value of the cell line was estimated at over one billion dollars. Mr. Moore demanded the return of the cells and control over his body parts, but the California Supreme Court decided that he was not entitled to any rights to his own cells after they had been removed from his body

Some more links can be found on google about DNA pattenting.

If all other potential influenes are removes, than yes. However, other evidence says otherwise.

Sings of global warming

"Mitochondrial Eve has been shown in secular literature (ever heard of the magazine "Science") to have lived ~6000 years ago. Evidence of the flood here."

What's going on?! I used the exact same message (below) already once this week for the exact same argument. Fortunately somebody else already took care of the rest of your message so I don't have to.

One nit to pick. Going back to the original "Research News" article in Science (vol 279 issue 5347 pg 28-29), we see that instead of this being evidence for a ~6000 year old mitochondrial eve, we have to reconsider some of our beliefs about mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), or more specifically a region of mtDNA called the D-loop, which comprises only 7% of mtDNA and which most mtDNA studies have used. One of the biggies is that most mtDNA studies use "so-called "noncoding" sequences of the control region of mtDNA, which do not code for gene products and therefore are thought to be free from natural selection." to quote the article. Another is to check and see if we are instead hitting "hotspots," regions with above-average mutation rates; hotspots will have more back- and parallel-mutations which will cloud the picture. A third is that the mutation rate may vary over time. A fourth is to investigate the issue of heteroplasmy--having multiple mtDNA sequences, even though for a given region there should be only one. For a while it was thought to be rare, now 10-20% of the population could be heteroplasmic. All of these issues would need to be addressed by the creationists before it could be considered evidence of a ~6,000 year old mitochondrial eve rather than a problem with the underlying assumptions of the technique. Indeed, with the advancement of our ability to manipulate and sequence DNA, we no longer have to utilize only 7% of the mtDNA--we can sequence the whole thing--all 16,000 or so base pairs of it. A recent study published in Nature (vol 408 pg 708-713, Dec. 2000) using mtDNA--all of it--found that the D-loop (used in most mtDNA studies) does not have a constant mutation rate. The study goes on to show (again using the whole mtDNA sequence) that the date of "mitochondrial eve" is about 170,000 years ago. A more reader-friendly report by the author of the Nature paper can be found here .

Say, you ever get a chance to actually read that Dalrymple article you so badly mangled? Here's a refresher. Just go up the thread.

"On a related note, mitochondrial DNA seems to indicate that our common mother (mitochondrial eve) existed ~6000 years ago, less than the 70,000 years proposed here."

One nit to pick. Going back to the original "Research News" article in Science (vol 279 issue 5347 pg 28-29), we see that instead of this being evidence for a ~6000 year old mitochondrial eve, we have to reconsider some of our beliefs about mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), or more specifically a region of mtDNA called the D-loop, which comprises only 7% of mtDNA and which most mtDNA studies have used. One of the biggies is that most mtDNA studies use "so-called "noncoding" sequences of the control region of mtDNA, which do not code for gene products and therefore are thought to be free from natural selection." to quote the article. Another is to check and see if we are instead hitting "hotspots," regions with above-average mutation rates; hotspots will have more back- and parallel-mutations which will cloud the picture. A third is that the mutation rate may vary over time. A fourth is to investigate the issue of heteroplasmy--having multiple mtDNA sequences, even though for a given region there should be only one. For a while it was thought to be rare, now 10-20% of the population could be heteroplasmic. All of these issues would need to be addressed by the creationists before it could be considered evidence of a ~6,000 year old mitochondrial eve rather than a problem with the underlying assumptions of the technique. Indeed, with the advancement of our ability to manipulate and sequence DNA, we no longer have to utilize only 7% of the mtDNA--we can sequence the whole thing--all 16,000 or so base pairs of it. A recent study published in Nature (vol 408 pg 708-713, Dec. 2000) using mtDNA--all of it--found that the D-loop (used in most mtDNA studies) does not have a constant mutation rate. The study goes on to show (again using the whole mtDNA sequence) that the date of "mitochondrial eve" is about 170,000 years ago. A more reader-friendly report by the author of the Nature paper can be found here.

Evolution is a fact

Obviously not a scientist - nothing is a fact - it's all just a theory.

Here are five links explaining why evolution is a fact.

And just in case you're too lazy to click the links and read the damn text - I know from experience that most of you fundie types are really that lazy - here is a sound-bite that even you can't ignore:

"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them." [Stephen Jay Gould]

Clear enough? Or perhaps you'd like to claim that the late great Stephen Jay Gould was not a scientist?

When I did my Biology degree (10 years ago) one of the first statements made, when teaching Evolution, was that Chimps have DNA that is up to 98% the same as humans.

Amazing! They've been saying this for years. The problem is that the human genome was only mapped a couple of years ago, and I'd bet they haven't mapped the Chimps - so how did/do they know this?

I claim you are a liar. Even a first year biology student is taught how the similarity was determined. It's an estimate based on the rate of hybridization. It's simply impossible for you to have a biology degree and not know this.

"A quick method of measuring changes in DNA structure is to mix the DNA from two species, then measure by how many degrees of temperature the melting point of the mixed (hybrid) DNA is reduced below the melting point of pure DNA from a single species. The method is generally referred to as 'DNA hybridization.' As it turns out, a melting point lowered by one degree centigrade means that the DNAs of the two species differ by roughly 1 percent." [http://www.netherworld.com/~walkerk1/chap1.html]

And before you make the obvious (and incorrect) claim that hybridization isn't an accurate measure, you would do well to educate yourself on the topic. If you or anybody else could disprove hybridization you would be famous overnight.

Is there a point in debating this?

No, which is why I don't bother. Creationists purposefully ignore contrary evidence, overstep their area of expertise, fradulently claim skills and knowledge that they do not have, and repeat "arguments" that have already been shown to be false.

As I've said before, I don't debate with creationists. I treat them with the contempt I'd reserve for any religious nutcase who perverts science and attacks education. I ridicule them. I attack them. My purpose is not to enlighten you, but to make you stop talking.

In the end how can you say that evolution is a fact?

Because it is a fact. That you bring up the tired old argument of "evolution is just chance" is exactly why I don't bother with debate. You repeat this refuted argument as if it's still a matter for debate! It is not.

I always remembered Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe's book - Diseases from Space, as the first place that I heard about Pan Spermia. Look here for an article by N.C.W that was posted last year about the supporting evidence. At the time, the whole issue concerning bacilli was that they are the best shape for surviving the passage through the upper atmosphere.

Wrong: you already lost the right to your own genes (almost).
Check this and this; I agree it's crazy, but as always money talks - at least in the U.S, that is.