WHAT SCIENTIFIC FORGERY IS THE MYTH THAT "HUMAN EMBRYOS HAVE GILLS" BASED ON?

THE thesis that living things go through various stages in their
mothers' wombs that can be seen as evidence for evolution has a
special position amongst the unfounded claims of the theory of
evolution. That is because the thesis, known as "recapitulation" in
evolutionist literature, is more than a scientific deception: It is a
scientific forgery.
Haeckel's recapitulation superstition
Ernst Haeckel, one of the foremost charlatans in the history of
science.The term "recapitulation" is a condensation of the dictum
"ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," put forward by the evolutionary
biologist Ernst Haeckel at the end of the nineteenth century. This
theory of Haeckel's postulates that living embryos re-experience
theevolutionary process that their pseudo-ancestors underwent. He
theorised that during its development in its mother's womb, the human
embryo first displays the characteristics of a fish, then those of a
reptile, and finally those of a human. The claim that the embryo
possesses"gills" while it develops stems from this thesis.
However, this is utter superstition. Scientific developments in the
years since recapitulation was first broached have enabled studies to
be made of just how valid it is. These studies have shown that the
recapitulation doctrine has no other basis than evolutionists'
imaginations and deliberate distortions.
It is now known that the "gills" that supposedly appear in the early
stages of the human embryo are in fact the initial phases of the
middle-ear canal, parathyroid, and thymus. That part of the embryo
that was likened to the "egg yolk pouch" turns out to be a pouch that
produces blood for the infant. The part that was identified as a
"tail" by Haeckel and his followers is in fact the backbone, which
resembles a tail only because it takes shape before the legs do.
These are universally acknowledged facts in the scientific world, and
are accepted even by evolutionists themselves. George Gaylord Simpson,
one of the founders of neo-Darwinism, writes:
Haeckel misstated the evolutionary principle involved. It is now
firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny.1
The following was written in an article in New Scientist dated October 16, 1999:
[Haeckel] called this the biogenetic law, and the idea became
popularly known as recapitulation. In fact Haeckel's strict law was
soon shown to beincorrect. For instance, the early human embryo never
has functioning gills like a fish, and never passes through stages
that look like an adult reptile or monkey.2
In an article published in American Scientist, we read:
Surely the biogenetic law is as dead as a doornail. It was finally
exorcised from biology textbooks in the fifties. As a topic of serious
theoretical inquiry it was extinct in the twenties…3
As we have seen, developments since it was first put forward have
shown that recapitulation has no scientific basis at all. However,
those same advances would show that it was not just a scientific
deception, but that itstemmed from a complete "forgery."
Haeckel's forged drawings
Ernst Haeckel, who first put the recapitulation thesis forward,
published a number of drawingsto back up his theory. Haeckel produced
falsified drawings to make fish and human embryos resemble each other!
When he was caught out, the only defense he offered was that other
evolutionists had committed similar offences:
In its April 8, 2001, edition, The New York Times devoted wide space
to the theory of intelligentdesign and the ideas of scientists and
philosophers who support the theory, such as Michael Behe and William
Dembski. In general, it said that the theory of intelligent design
possessed such a scientific respectability and validity that it would
rock Darwinism to its foundations. The paper also compared Haeckel's
forged drawings with true pictures of embryos taken under the
microscope.After this compromising confession of "forgery" I should be
obliged to consider myself condemned and annihilated if I had not the
consolation of seeing side by side with me in the prisoner's dock
hundreds of fellow-culprits, among them many of the most trusted
observers and most esteemed biologists. The great majority of all the
diagrams in the best biological textbooks, treatises and journals
would incur in the same degree the charge of "forgery," for all of
them are inexact, and are more or less doctored, schematised and
constructed.4
In the September 5, 1997, edition of the well-known scientific journal
Science, an article was published revealing that Haeckel's embryo
drawings were the product of a deception.The article, called
"Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered," had this to say:
The impression they [Haeckel's drawings] give, that the embryos are
exactly alike, is wrong, says Michael Richardson, an embryologist at
St. George's Hospital Medical School in London… So he and his
colleagues did their own comparative study, reexamining and
photographing embryos roughly matched by species and age with those
Haeckel drew. Lo and behold, the embryos "often looked surprisingly
different," Richardson reports in the August issue of Anatomy and
Embryology.5
Science, September 5, 1997Later in this same article, the following
information was revealed:
Not only did Haeckel add or omitfeatures, Richardson and his
colleagues report, but he also fudged the scale to exaggerate
similarities among species, even when there were 10-fold differences
in size. Haeckel further blurred differences by neglecting to name the
species in most cases, as if one representative was accurate for an
entire group of animals. In reality, Richardson and his colleagues
note, even closely related embryos such as those of fish vary quite a
bit in their appearance and developmental pathway. "It [Haeckel's
drawings] looks like it's turning out to be one of the most famous
fakes in biology," Richardson concludes.6
It is noteworthy that, although Haeckel's falsification came out in
1901, the subject was still portrayed in many evolutionist
publications for nearly a century as if it were a proven scientific
law. Those who held evolutionist beliefs inadvertentlysent out a most
important message by putting their ideology before science: Evolution
is not science, it is a dogma that they are trying to keep alive in
the face of the scientific facts.
1. G. G. Simpson, W. Beck, An Introduction to Biology, Harcourt Brace
and World, New York, 1965, p. 24
2. Ken McNamara, "Embryos and Evolution," New Scientist, vol. 12416,
16 October 1999, (emphasis added)
3. Keith S. Thompson, "Ontogenyand Phylogeny Recapitulated," American
Scientist, vol. 76, May/June 1988, p. 273
4. Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong,
Ticknor and Fields, New York, 1982, p. 204
5. Elizabeth Pennisi, "Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered,"
Science, 5 September
6. Elizabeth Pennisi, "Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered,"
Science, 5 September, (emphasis added)