Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Dr. Simmons goes a long way in showing that evolution is based more on faith than creationism. The writing is excellent. The problem is the repitition. This reads like an introduction to medical school. Instead of giving the reader a fair number of examples of design in the human body, he gives us no fewer than 16! As a layperson, that becomes tedious and overwhelming. The whole idea seems to get lost.I will say that the summaries at the end of each chapter are outstanding and that the first and last parts (the book is divided into 4 parts) are very good. It's all very well-written and thought out, it's just too much of a good thing.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative, but tedious
Review: Dr. Simmons goes a long way in showing that evolution is based more on faith than creationism. The writing is excellent. The problem is the repitition. This reads like an introduction to medical school. Instead of giving the reader a fair number of examples of design in the human body, he gives us no fewer than 16! As a layperson, that becomes tedious and overwhelming. The whole idea seems to get lost. I will say that the summaries at the end of each chapter are outstanding and that the first and last parts (the book is divided into 4 parts) are very good. It's all very well-written and thought out, it's just too much of a good thing.
Rating:
Summary: a Northwest Professor
Review: I found What Darwin Didn't Know fascinating and engaging. Not only does Dr. Simmons lay out the older, obsolete arguments and the newer Intelligent Design arguments, but he shows us how Darwin went wrong and yet gives him credit for working with science in that century. Would you go to a doctor who was trained in the early 1800s and take his or her advice? Of course not. Then why would you believe a scientist from that era whose only exposure to monkeys was twice in a zoo, who didn't know why a child looked like its parents, who made many racist and sexiest comments in his writings and who didn't have the foggiest idea about any internal human physiology.
Dr. Simmons lays it out simply and yet like tidal wave (as stated in the blurbs) He shows the reader how impossible it would be to have clotting, heart beats and breathng control by accdient. There had to have been design it in from the beginning, whether one believes that the earth is 8ooo or three billion years old
Modern Darwinism has already rejected the Neanderthal man and others as our predecessors and is still trying to find a common olrigin to all primates. So far no luck. Also,there are no fossils for pre-whales, none for pre-fish, noe for pre-giraffes and indeed none for pre-monkeys.
What keeps us breathing when we're alseep? Was this a hit and miss trial by nature before man? What keeps our kidneys and heart functioning and adjusts them according to our needs?. Whats keeps us from rolling off our bed at night.
The nay sayers to Simmons book, don't want to accept Intelligent Design for a variety of reasons, probably/mostly personal agendas, but there are no other logical options to Intellgent Design and Simmons makes that very point very clear.
This is not a religious, in the usual sense, book, but one that clearly argues science against science. It is time to smell the roses and enjoy a book that leads you down one of the right paths. Too many customer reviewer have tried to slam this book and others for their own egos and agendas. To sound cute; to impress their friends with a "line veto"; or maybe stir people away from worthwhile books that address issues differently than they feel.
Read this one if you have any interest in the area! Or tell someone else who might be. They won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Probably not what you're looking for
Review: I'm a supporter of Intelligent Design, and found this book to be a big disappointment. As a previous reviewer has said in more words, it does not really attempt to "dissect the theory of evolution." It is simply a collection of medical facts and trivia, after which the author asks in a sentence or two in each chapter, "How can this be the work of chance?" I read the first few chapters with highlighter pen in hand, expecting to highlight various things as I often do, but then found myself simply skimming through many sections as I began to realize that every chapter is the same: just a recitation of what things in our bodies do. If you're looking for argumentation and critical examination of evolutionary theory (such as in Behe's or Denton's books), this is not the book to buy.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: The author, a medical doctor, in this book recounts his conversion from a Darwinist to an Intelligent Design advocate. He also goes into detail about his indoctrination into Darwinism in school and why he began to doubt Darwinism in later life (as have more and more intellectuals today). What Darwin Didn't Know is an excellent, very readable, work about how little Darwin knew about biology, especially cell biology, because so little was known when he lived and worked. If he lived today in a nonDarwinian world, his theory would have difficulty getting published in a mainline journal. For example, in the middle 1800s cells were thought to be simple globs of protoplasm that served as mere building blocks of a body much like bricks are used to construct a house. Now we realize that cells are the most complex machine in the known universe that can live on their own in the right environment. Over 200 very different types are known. Much of the book is on human anatomy and physiology and why our modern knowledge has proven Darwinism wrong. As I teach Human Anatomy and Physiology at the college level, I found the book fascinating and found much insight to enrich my classes. This book is also an excellent introduction to anatomy and physiology that covers all 10 organ systems plus cell biology. I wish I had a book like this when I was an undergraduate (or even a graduate student in medical school). My first text was boring, to say the least. Students today are fortunate to have such excellent material as this available.
Rating:
Summary: Well done from a medical point of view
Review: This book is unique in that it comes from a medical/physiological point of view. It is the first book in over 30 years that looks at the complexity of the human body as it pertains to evolution. In the early 70's a book entitled The Body has a Head was published. It was virtually unreadable. Dr. Simmons book is eminently readable and very interesting. Furthermore, Darwin had several doubts about his own theories and Dr. Simmons points out these areas of weakness. If you want to learn something about the arguments surrounding evolution and don't want to have to read a scientific tome, this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: An enlightening detail of the human body
Review: Though "complexity" itself may not be a surprise to Darwinian Evolution - after all, supporters say that time is on their side - this detailed analysis of the human body clearly shows that the type of complexity we observe is not what we would expect if evolution and natural selection were true. In other words, evolution by gradual change (which is what Darwin demanded must be true) would have developed into something much different than what we observe: the human body is a vast system of interworking mechanisms that would fail if parts were only gradually developed over time. Instead, it makes more sense to hypothesize that the species were created independantly but with common materials. With the flood of recent books challenging evolution, it seems clear to me that it may indeed take more faith to believe in the theory of macroevolution than belief in a Creator. This book is but one piece of evidence which is specialized to detail the human body and the vast amount of design that we observe. It is one thing to say that the human body is complex - which is something everyone would agree with - but it's another thing to observe that the working systems of the human body appear to be "pre-planned" and designed to work together from the start. However, evolution cannot explain nor predict this. Aside from the debate itself, the book is also very informative. I learned much about the human body that still makes me drop my jaw in awe. Nothing that man has made can touch this.
Rating:
Summary: An enlightening detail of the human body
Review: Though "complexity" itself may not be a surprise to Darwinian Evolution - after all, supporters say that time is on their side - this detailed analysis of the human body clearly shows that the type of complexity we observe is not what we would expect if evolution and natural selection were true. In other words, evolution by gradual change (which is what Darwin demanded must be true) would have developed into something much different than what we observe: the human body is a vast system of interworking mechanisms that would fail if parts were only gradually developed over time. Instead, it makes more sense to hypothesize that the species were created independantly but with common materials. With the flood of recent books challenging evolution, it seems clear to me that it may indeed take more faith to believe in the theory of macroevolution than belief in a Creator. This book is but one piece of evidence which is specialized to detail the human body and the vast amount of design that we observe. It is one thing to say that the human body is complex - which is something everyone would agree with - but it's another thing to observe that the working systems of the human body appear to be "pre-planned" and designed to work together from the start. However, evolution cannot explain nor predict this. Aside from the debate itself, the book is also very informative. I learned much about the human body that still makes me drop my jaw in awe. Nothing that man has made can touch this.
Rating:
Summary: What medical science might look like without Darwin!
Review: We all share a basic intuition from our daily experience of doing things with our own hands: very complicated things require effort and planning to get them right, and the more complicated and interlocked and interdependent their mechanisms, the more effort and planning they require. Dr. Simmons does for human physiology what Mike Behe did for biochemistry before him; he describes some excellent examples of complicated, interlocked, and interdependent mechanisms in the human body, and then steps back to admire them and say, "how could all this wondrous complexity and interdependence be the result of an *unguided* physical process?"
Dr. Simmons builds on this intuition and gently guides his readers to the conclusion that the evolutionary worldview of the scientific orthodoxy is essentially implausible. As William Paley and intelligent design author Phillip Johnson have implied or stated, natural selection really only makes sense to us intuitively if we make the assumption that things weren't designed by a creator specifically for a pre-planned purpose. So intelligent design authors question whether we should make that assumption in science.
Against that intuition, the scientific orthodoxy presents natural selection, a seemingly unlikely blind process whereby random accidents can accumulate to produce intricate purposeful designs. It isn't a difficult task for Simmons to present the logic of intelligent design as more having more surface plausibility than that of natural selection.
Simmons takes us on an illuminating trip through the mind of the intelligent design believer. How does a medical doctor come to reject mainstream biological science in order to present the body as a collection of "gifts" and "plans" inserted into it by a creator?
Simmons approvingly quotes William Dembski that evidence for design in nature would mean that naturalism was wrong. Ironically, the scientific orthodoxy of evolutionary biology that Simmons believes he is debunking also looks for evidence of design in nature, but as part of natural processes rather than a prior plan.
The bulk of this book is an illustration of what human physiology would look like if it were seen through the eyes of someone who had an appreciation of many of the body's mechanisms, but saw them as having been pre-designed by a creator rather than the result of a history of descent with modification. It contains a long list of mysterious gifts, whose origin is incomprehensible. Pride, fear, imagination, and doodling are all things that were given to us for our own use rather than being built on a rationally penetrable natural history. Our immune system is "structured to protect us" rather than possessing a learning to recognize host cells from pathogens using a Darwinian selective process. Simmons asks the reader to simply guess whether they think these gifts could be the result of mutations and survival of the fittest, and then choose the most plausible "belief."
That is the essence of intelligent design and what distinguishes books like this from biology and medical books. It asks us to rely on our mysterious gift of intuition to choose the superficially plausible belief that complex things are pre-planned rather than trying to understand the powerful adaptation analysis used by evolutionary biologists to discover the real origin of biological "gifts." It would be hard to find a better explanation from an ID critic than Simmons own reasoning as to why this is a problematic approach to understanding biology. Seeing natural mechanisms as mysterious pre-planned gifts rather than trying to plumb their details is exactly what distinguished the scientific tradition from the medieval church. If we want to understand living things, their history matters, and there is no rational path from "mysterious gifts" to their origin.
In the worldview of "intelligent design," the body also contains genetic mechanisms that construct bodies according to strictly predestined trajectories. It contains plans rather than processes. The intricacies of physiological processes seem difficult or impossible to break into component mechanisms and the weaknesses in their design are hard to imagine and impossible to explain except in terms of a deliberate and inscrutable flaws inserted by the designer.
This book also does a great service because in exemplifying the reasoning behind intelligent design so clearly, it reveals the common conceptual links between the different forms of creationism. Simmons certainly doesn't claim that the world was created 4,000 years ago using Genesis as a technical manual or that the story of Noah is literally true. His reasoning about how natural phenomena can and cannot be explained, the cognitive processes he uses, the metaphors and intuitions he builds upon, are all nearly identical to those who do believe those things. Living things are what they are, designed for their purpose in their current form. The whole notion of living things changing continually over time to adapt to their environments apparently seems as bizarre to Simmons as it does to the Seventh Day Adventists.
To appreciate what I find interesting about this book it is important first to recognize that "intelligent design" books represent a metaphysical and theological position even when they are not explicitly religious. They offer a way of seeing the universe as meaningful. Simmons exemplifies this spiritual search in his introductory section when he describes his "conversion" from Darwinism.
Simmons describes his conversion from Darwinism as the result of his patient attempts at understanding his resolutely devout evangelical Christian wife, his personal quest to find the world comprehensible, and his finding several authors who were struggling with similar questions and found orthodox neo-Darwinism unsatisfying or unsatisfactory.
Explicitly theological answers were unsatisfying to him and natural laws plus chance events seemed to be the on that was available to explain everything. Most thoughtful people can surely relate. He was instinctively pursuing the classic modern quest
of finding meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. Surely, "unguided physical processes" fail utterly for most of us at achieving this. Simmons drifted to authors like Patrick Glynn who found a helpful reconciliation of religious faith and reason, allowing spiritual meaning to be brought back into the void of naturalistic nature.
Rating:
Summary: Not What the Dr. Ordered
Review: What can I say, I found this book disappointing. Perhaps my expectations were too high. As a supporter of Intelligent Design, I expect books which are riding on the ID coattails to have a certain level of sophistication. This one didn't.
The front cover advertises, A Doctor Dissects the Theory of Evolution. Unfortunately, the promise is never fulfilled. The book doesn't deal with evolutionary theory as anything more than a caricature. If you want a book that truly dissects the Theory of Evolution, I recommend The Biotic Message by Walter ReMine.
The book contains a great deal of anatomical and physiological trivia, and is therefore of some benefit, but the author fails to ever put the deatils together into any sort of coherent argument. The author relies upon what he terms the Whole Package Phenomena (WPP) which vaguely resembles Cuvier's Correlation of Parts and Behe's Irreducible Complexity but without the specificity.
His argument consists primarily of, look at this set of features, look at the complexity, look how they work together, it's inconceivable that they came about by chance mutations. Unfortunately, the features are described at such a high level that they don't seem to be all that complex and inter-dependence of the various parts is often not explained in sufficient detail to make it plain that one must have the whole package or none at all. Why it's inconceivable that these systems could not have come about through evolution is never quite explained and the reader is left with begging the question or circularity.
For a much better argument using biological phenomena, I would recommend Darwin's Black Box by Michael J. Behe.
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