Today, we watch creatures evolving around us. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the
machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them. Wherever we aim at a species point-
blank, for whatever reason, we drive its evolution, often in the
opposite direction from what we ourselves desire. So says
Jonathan Weiner in his new book, The Beak of the Finch. Weiner's
chapter "The Resistance Movement" talks about the way we can
watch evolution in action as we try to eliminate species. Bugs,
germs -- even elephants -- are unwilling to be eliminated. And
few things are as resilient as viruses. First Weiner runs
through a catalogue of evolving micro-organisms. He tells how
you barely had to whisper the word "penicillin" over pneumonia
to kill the disease in 1941. Fifty years later, a thousand times
greater dose might not eliminate it. Pneumonia bacteria have
steadily evolved to resist The reason that AIDS is such a plague
is that the AIDS virus is