From Chapter 17 — Divine Intervention. © 2020 by Emory Lynn.
If a recovery from a disease is considered a miraculous case of divine intervention, to what do we attribute the contacting of the disease in the first place?
— John Allen Paulos (Irreligion)
It seems that every community and every church has at least one celebrated medical miracle story that is prominently touted as evidence of God’s supernatural intervention. We’ve all heard the stories. Someone has a terminal disease, doctors exhaust all treatment options without any success, then amazingly the person overcomes all odds and survives. It must have been a divine miracle since no other explanation is apparent.
Medical miracle claims are fraught with several problems. First, the claim is sometimes premature, as in the case of a slowly growing cancer. A cancer that seems to have disappeared may still be viable, eventually becoming lethal years later. Second, a non-terminal condition may have been misdiagnosed as a terminal condition, and subsequently the body’s immune system prevailed without any miraculous action. A third problem with medical miracle claims is that diseases that reach an assumed terminal stage are sometimes defeated ultimately by natural means. Late-stage spontaneous remissions caused by the body’s immune system occasionally occur. The immune system is extremely complex. When it goes into attack mode and when it pulls its punches can be perplexing. How the body can surprisingly heal itself when the odds appear heavily stacked against it is the subject of a Discover magazine article titled Citizen, Heal Thyself:
Today researchers are just beginning to piece together the clues they hope will allow them to see what makes a deadly cancer sometimes reverse course and melt away. Much of their research focuses on the immune system, which they describe as a sort of military unit that protects the body from foreign invaders. T lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell, serve as a frontline defense against invading bacteria and viruses. A subtype of lymphocyte, known as a natural killer cell (NK), patrols the body, attacking and killing viruses and cancer cells. Researchers are studying how NK cells recognize cancer cells as abnormal and how other cells, known as regulatory T cells, can command NK cells to hold their fire, in order to prevent them from attacking the body’s own tissues.5
What researchers hope to eventually do is determine factors that trigger immune system responses and develop modulators to kick-start the process when a little assistance is needed, but it’s a daunting task. Again from Citizen, Heal Thyself:
There are a few dozen distinct immune cells that release between 50 and 100 signaling molecules—molecules that tell the other cells what to do and when. When the relationships among these cells and molecules are graphed, the result looks like a plate of spaghetti.
Occasionally a widely spread cancer stunningly reverses course after a very localized treatment is applied, such as radiation. This amazing phenomenon, called an abscopal effect (abscopal is derived from the Latin prefix “ab,” meaning “away from” and the Greek word “skopos,” meaning “target”), was first described in 1953 by physician R.H. Mole. The effect is described in a March 2014 Discover magazine article titled Disappearing Act. Doctor Mole observed that occasionally when cancer in one part of the body was subjected to radiation treatment it affected distant cancerous regions of the body.
How can this be? Some research suggests that cancer can hijack the immune system, lulling it into believing tumor cells are normal tissue. In the abscopal phenomenon, the spell may somehow be broken, allowing the immune system to snap to attention and recognize the cancer for what it truly is. High doses of radiation sometimes cause cancer cells to release antigens that had been masked. Perhaps these antigens appearing on millions of cancer cells that are about to die, or the release of such antigens just after the cells’ death, alerts the immune system that something is awry at a more global level.6
Since late in the 19th century doctors have known that cancer patients who incurred a serious and unrelated infection occasionally recovered from their deadly cancer. More than a century ago a few doctors began purposefully injecting cancer patients with toxic bacteria in order to jolt their immune system into aggressively attacking the cancer cells. Results were mixed and some patients died from the introduced bacteria rather than from the cancer. Nevertheless, some cancers were cured. In 2015 it was widely reported in the news media that doctors had successfully eliminated glioblastoma in two patients, by introducing a genetically modified form of the polio virus. Glioblastoma is a particularly virulent form of brain cancer. The polio virus apparently disabled the protective measures the cancer employed to hide from the immune system.
Gaps in the understanding of how the body fights diseases have been eagerly filled with anecdotes of supernatural intervention. Drugs that interact with the immune system are now being marketed for the treatment of a few kinds of cancer. Immunotherapy has become a rapidly ascending field in cancer research. In the future, miracle cures that are currently thought to come from a higher power will come from people you know. The wonder drugs prescribed by physicians and dispensed by pharmacists will assist in modulating what evolution has designed the human immune system to do.
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The study of mutations in the human genome has led to some troubling implications regarding the validity of supernatural miracles. The genetically inherited disease called phenylketonuria is caused by the mutation of a single nucleotide base. A codon (a three nucleotide DNA word that creates a specific amino acid) that would normally be CGG is instead TGG, which produces a different amino acid. Infants with phenylketonuria are normal at birth but develop mental retardation and seizures, among other problems. Phenylketonuria was discovered in 1934. Today infants can be screened for the disease, and if detected early enough an affected infant can develop normally with a special diet and/or medication. Another disease caused by a single nucleotide mutation is sickle cell anemia. This is an inherited red blood cell disease that causes the red blood cells to be sticky and look like a C-shaped farm tool called a “sickle.” A codon that would normally be GAG is instead GTG.
The occurrence of phenylketonuria and sickle cell anemia bring up a troubling theological question. The problem is especially troubling for phenylketonuria. Why would God circumvent the laws of nature to save a person in a horrible accident or cure someone’s terminal disease, yet in the cases of phenylketonuria, he would not make a teeny, one-nucleotide tweak that would save someone from a lifetime of mental retardation? Prior to modern medicine, without the teeny tweak, the child’s opportunity to grow up normally and have a personal relationship with God was gravely handicapped. It does no good to say that phenylketonuria is punishment because of the original sin of humanity. That’s based entirely on fictional characters. And it’s just a copout to say that “we may not understand, but God has his reasons.” The same theological question can be asked regarding other mutations that rob people of a healthy, meaningful life, especially mutations that short-circuit the brain’s ability to function normally and supposedly connect with a God who loves us and wants a personal relationship with us.
Notes:
5. Jeanne Lenzer, Citizen, Heal Thyself, (Discover magazine, September 2007).
6. James Welsh, Disappearing Act, (Discover magazine, March 2014).
