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Letter: Design's purposes

Published 17 January 2007

From Ray Merewether

Douglas Axe of the Biologic Institute is far from the first to believe that bacteria had intelligent designers (16 December 2006, p 8). In the 17th century, New England settlers took it as a sign of divine providence that the Native Americans were dying of various diseases. Mark Twain in his Letters from the Earth similarly attributes a lot of bacterial misery to an intelligent designer.

La Jolla, California, US

Issue no. 2587 published 20 January 2007

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