Selection of Awards
Everyone has an intuition of Intelligent Design and so anyone is qualified to submit a design proposal. All information about the nominees and the deliberations of the various committees cannot be revealed for 50 years.
Irreducible complexity
The design must have a specified strategy that requires the deployment of well-matched, interacting assets, wherein the failure of any one asset would lead to mission failure. Intelligent Designs are discovered by scientists who analyze the deployment and coordination of these critical assets. An example is a component of a joint force that uses malaria to pacify a target. During operations it enters a host cell as a sporozoite, takes shelter in a liver cell where it produces merozoites that break out and commandeer red blood cells in which they form trophozoites and schizonts that replenish the legions of merozoites. A failure at any stage would doom the operation: the design of this cycle is irreducibly complex.
Colonialism
The agents we honor establish a lodgment in the host then multiply their forces. Some, such as Steptococcus pneumoniae colonize the respiratory track. Employing flagella in their assault on a target, Salmonella enterica force their way into enteric macrophages where they multiply. Trypanosoma brucei , a flagellate protozoa, carries out its mission while swimming in the turbulent blood stream of its host.
We reject designs, however perfect, that do not colonize a host. Many an agent subsists aimlessly in water or soil, with no ambition greater than leaving offspring. Many just pass the time breaking down metabolites, fixing nitrogen, or discharging oxygen.
Virulence
The microbe armamentarium contains many virulence factors. Tetanus toxin and Botulinum toxin target the central nervous system, causing paralysis. There are many toxins that eliminate host cells by disrupting their membranes. A variety of superantigens overwhelm the host’s immune system, resulting in toxic shock syndrome. And there are many more. With this embarrassment of riches, the correct deployment of virulence factors is critical. The microbe must do more than decorate the skin with ulcers, pustules or cysts. It must go beyond tickling the throat or yellowing the skin. Myalgia and malaise are well intentioned but inadequate, nor will necrotizing fasciitis alone win the coveted prize. The palmary agent must be designed to pacify a 70 Kg host, or at least seek targets of opportunity among the young or the immunocompromized.
Defense
Hosts are hostile, and a successful design must anticipate biological hazards. Whatever the field of operation, microbes will always find themselves under attack and must mount a defense—active or passive. One type of active defense is the celebrated strategy of HIV: it enters and destroys CD4+ T cells, degrading the command center of the host immune response. In a common passive defense an agent evades immune surveillance by taking cover within a host cell.
Transmissibility
Continuing an assault requires the redeployment from one host to another. Any successful design will include molecular machines for entering and leaving a host.
Complex and Specified Information
Irreducibly complex biological structures require the synthesis, integration and coordination of many molecules. Virulence factors—fibrii, flagella, endotoxins, exotoxins, agents of immunoevasion and immunosuppression—have operational characteristics that are finely tuned and precisely targeted. They, and the agents they weaponize, are clearly the products of complex and specified information.
Nominate a design for the ID Prize
Please describe the design you nominate for the Intelligent Design Prize. Provide any relevant references in the scientific literature, including the first description of the intelligently designed agent. The size and duration of its campaigns carries great weight with The Committees, as does the intricacy of the design. Include a description of picturesque or dramatic signs and symptoms. In recent years The Committees have shown partiality to asymptomatic incubations and long-lasting sequelae.
How does the ID Committee assign dates to laureate designs? Why do so many awards seem to predate the founding of the ID Prize Foundation?
Despite exhaustive research in our extensive archives, The Committees often cannot fathom the date that an Intelligent Design was created. Sometimes they cannot determine the year in which the design was reduced to practice. There are even times when they fail to ascertain the era in which the design was first deployed. In such cases, The Committees assign to a prize the year in which the design was first clearly described.
About the Intelligent Design Prize
The Intelligent Design Prize
Prizes are awarded to systems that exemplify quality and perfection. Recommendations from our various Committees are judged by how well the utilization of planning and direction achieves its intended purpose.
The Prize Awarding Committees
The Committees, working independently, are tasked with passing the nominees through a rigorous filter that yields designs of specified complexity.
Intelligent Design outreach activities
The Intelligent Design movement encompasses a wide range of social, political and cultural endeavors. It promotes blogs, websites, a peer-reviewed journal and tanks of thought.
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