Michael Egnor

Senior Fellow, Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence

Michael R. Egnor, MD, is a Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook, has served as the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, and award-winning brain surgeon. He was named one of New York’s best doctors by the New York Magazine in 2005. He received his medical education at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital. His research on hydrocephalus has been published in journals including Journal of Neurosurgery, Pediatrics, and Cerebrospinal Fluid Research. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hydrocephalus Association in the United States and has lectured extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

Archives

Covid-19, Random Mutations, and Aristotle’s Matrix of Design

Michael Egnor
May 18, 2020
On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid speaks with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor about Egnor’s recent Evolution News article, The Coronavirus Demonstrates How Evolution Presupposes Intelligent Design. Egnor notes that the coronavirus and other viruses are not, strictly speaking, considered living things, even if they depend on living hosts for their continued existence. Egnor also discusses the role of Read More ›

The Scramble to Redeem The S-Blob

Michael Egnor
April 30, 2020
The S-Blob is increasingly under justifiable scrutiny for the most catastrophic scientific fiasco of the 21st century. Its defenders are spewing chaff like there’s no tomorrow.

Evolution Presupposes Intelligent Design: Case of the Coronavirus

Michael Egnor
April 7, 2020
Undirected natural selection can’t lift itself by its own bootstraps — accidents can’t happen in nature except in a sea of design. The evolution of the COVID-19 virus is a clear and terrible example of the undeniable teleology in nature. Darwinian random variation and selection, when it happens, is parasitic on biological and natural design.

The Myth of “Darwinian Medicine”

Michael Egnor
April 3, 2020
Whether or not Darwinian hypotheses can be teased out of some medical advances, it is simply a fact that doctors and medical researchers pay no attention to Darwinian speculations in their work, and their work has been astonishingly successful. Would heart transplants work better if cardiac surgeons speculated about the Darwinian origin of the four-chamber heart?

COVID-19: Remembering Dr. Jim Goodrich, 73, Pediatric Neurosurgeon

Born wealthy, he spent his life working 80-hour weeks, operating on poor kids in the Bronx
Michael Egnor
March 31, 2020
In this coronavirus maelstrom, it’s easy to forget the individual people whose lives have been touched by the pandemic. I met Jim Goodrich (right) when I was a medical student at Columbia and he was a neurosurgery resident. I shadowed him for a month, making rounds and going to the OR. He was a great guy—funny, hardworking, considerate. A real gentleman. Rounds with him always took a bit longer than with the other residents, because he would always stop to entertain and play with the babies. He trained in pediatric neurosurgery, remained a friend, and became one of the leading pediatric neurosurgeons in the world. He was chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx for three decades. He trained a couple of generations of students and …