Prayer might not aid healing, but apparently regular church attendance increases life expectancy. I’m sure tomorrow there’ll be new studies with opposite findings to both. *rolls eyes*
Faith Healing
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Category Archives: science and technology
Stem Cell Update II
Hot off the presses: a stem cell paper connected to the disgraced Hwang laboratory in South Korea has been just retracted for misleading use of photos that were claimed to be of different stem cells, but were actually the same (doctored) photograph.
The NY Times had a good article a few months ago on spotting doctored photos; Adobe Photoshop is a very useful tool in laboratory work so you can zoom in on areas of interest or clear up some noise. Astronomers also alter the color scales so X-Ray photographs, for instance, correspond to our visible spectrum (you’ll see how some beautiful photos of astronomical objects are called "false color"–this is an example).
Alas, these powerful programs can also be used for cheating.
Stem Cell Update
Researchers in both the USA and Germany claim to have produced embryonic-like stem cells from testicular cells. The Germans published the results of their work on mice in Nature last week; the Americans claimed to have done similar things with human testes (ouch), but have not published in a peer-reviewed journal, but rather presented it at a conference. The group that did the work in America is also studying similar work on ovaries.
Presumably these cells can be entirely legitimate from a Catholic bioethical standpoint, provided that the germ cell (i.e., testicular or ovarian tissue) material is donated and procured in an ethical manner (which can get complicated, but we’ll leave that for another entry). The problem with embryonic research to date is that the process involves killing or harming human embryos, and perhaps involves involves cloning to boot. Since this embryonic-like cells are taken from adult donors, this intrinsic stumbling-block is removed.
In addition to avoiding that big ethical issue, this technique, if it works, would also avoid some serious technical barriers facing embryonic stem cells. If you give a patient stem cells derived from an embryo, you must either try to create a cloned embryo or else face the risk of tissue rejection. Human cloning has yet to done, now that Dr. Hwang was exposed as a fraud, and any therapy that involves such a concept faces quite a few issues with expense, technical validation, etc.
In other news, Geron Corporation, which holds the rights to the original human embryonic stem cell lines that Dr. Thompson derived at the University of Wisconsin Madison (thus sparking this whole debate) is preparing to launch a clinical trial of human embryonic stell cells on human patients–and just to clarify, unlike the embryonic-like stem cells that I mentioned above, these ones are derived from destroyed human embryos. I believe that this is the first such trial to happen in the USA in several years–in the last trial on Parkinsons Disease patients, the subjects’ symptoms got worse after getting the cells.
Healing Prayers
"In churches, mosques, ashrams, ‘healing rooms,’ prayer groups and homes nationwide, millions of Americans offer prayers daily to heal themselves, family, friends, co-workers and even people found through the Internet. Fueled by the upsurge in religious expression in the United States, prayer is the most common complement to mainstream medicine, far outpacing acupuncture, herbs, vitamins and other alternative remedies."
"’Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism — every religion believes in prayer for healing,’ said Paul Parker, a professor of theology and religion at Elmhurst College outside Chicago. ‘Some call it prayer, some call it cleansing the mind. The words or posture may vary. But in times of illness, all religions look towards their source of authority.’"
"The outpouring of spiritual healing has inspired a small group of researchers to attempt to use the tools of modern science to test the power of prayer to cure others. The results have been mixed and highly controversial. Skeptics say the work is a deeply flawed and misguided waste of money that irresponsibly attempts to validate the supernatural with science. And some believers say it is pointless to try to divine the workings of God with experiments devised by mortals."
"Proponents, however, maintain the research is valuable, given the large numbers of people who believe in the power of prayer to influence health. Surveys have found that perhaps half of Americans regularly pray for their own health, and at least a quarter have others pray for them."
Click here to read the rest of the article.
"[The apostles] cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them." – Mark 6:13
"Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven." – James 5:14-15
I’m curious. Have any of you every prayed for your own or someone else’s healing? Did it work? How did you know?
Investigating NFP: Pius XII
Click here to read the previous post in this series.
I have recently come to the (re)realization that bishops are the authoritative teaching body of the Church. As such, it is their responsibility to properly and effectively teach such sticky subjects as the regulation of births. However, those teachings must be in accord with the Bishop of Rome and magisterium of the Church, so I still think there is merit in exploring the relevant papal documents. Let us then continue by hearing the thoughts of Pope Pius XII.
I had thought that Pius XII had written an encyclical about contraception. As it turns out, the only statements he made about the subject were in in various allocutions (addresses) to associations of doctors and the like. These don't carry nearly the same weight as encyclicals and are certainly not infallible. An exploration of the doctrinal authority of papal allocutions can be found here, but I cannot vouch for its accuracy. Nevertheless, Paul VI quotes from these addresses extensively in Humane Vitae, thus lending some of theauthority of an encyclical. I searched for the texts of these addresses and only found the 1951 Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession and the 1958 Address to Officers and Representatives of the Associations for Large Families-of Rome and of Italy. If anyone knows where I might find the rest of them, I'd be indebted. Anyhow, here's the address to midwives.