Title Author Date

Just my humble opinion... Martin, Steve Oct 23, 2005

I find the whole blood clotting cascade debate interesting, however, I think two points are being missed. The first point is that the elegant diagrams of the cascade most likely do not actually represent in vivo function of clotting factors. The second point is that when considering survival of an individual or species, platelets are much more important than clotting factors anyway.

The discussion seems to be about blood clotting in general, but the arguments are all specifically about blood clotting factors. Blood clotting factors only play a small role in overall blood clotting. It seems everyone assumes that lack of these factors invariably leads to death at birth, but this is not true. Dysfunction of blood clotting factors leads to a broad spectrum of results in humans, ranging from early spontaneous abortion, to relatively healthy adult. While we are taught the extrinsic, intrinsic, and common pathways, this is most likely not the actual functioning in the human body. The "physiologic pathway" probably starts with the extrinsic pathway and jumps to the intrinsic pathway.

The most important part of blood clotting is the blood platelet, not the clotting factors.

What does this mean? It means these great arguments about the clotting cascade are really not relevent. Using the argument of the cascade as revealing intelligent design is not only wrong, it is a totally irrelevant analogy.

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