did the illness exist,
has there been a cure,
and can this be explained naturally?
Can the tide turn? Three recent events suggest that it can.. The final judgement of the European court in the case of Mrs Dianne Pretty established that article 2 of the Human Rights Convention proscribing deliberate taking of life, means what it says. The GMC document on Withholding and Withdrawing Life-Prolonging Treatment; Good Practice in Decision Making, is largely unobjectionable. The final version was discussed on 21 May and has not yet been published but the section on conscientious objectors has been altered to our satisfaction.
Now the scientific and even political tide is turning on cloning as we see from Prof. Scolding’s paper reported below. The Judgement and GMC document have many ideas and even phrases from Catholic sources. In a world short of ethical reasoning a Catholic contribution can be influential.
Dr Dulake is a member of the International Committee that examines cases of possible miraculous cures which meets in Paris and Lourdes. He is a former Consultant Physician at St James Hospital London.
He outlined his connection with Lourdes which began before his becoming a Catholic. After several trips as an ordinary pilgrimage doctor he was invited to join the Committee in 1993 and had to brush up his French. Historically the visions of Bernadette in 1858 had resulted in pilgrimages, processions and a church being built together with bathing or washing with water from a spring in the grotto of Marsabielle where the visions had occurred. A mother who immersed her child thought to be suffering from meningitis was the first instance of an unexplained cure. Between 1858 and 1862,145 cures were reported although only 7 were thought to be inexplicable. In 1908 20 cures were accepted.
In 1954 an International Committee was set up to adjudicate and protect the Church from false claims. Although 6645 cases have been examined only 66 have been proclaimed miraculous cures. Psychological illness is not considered because of evidential difficulties. The three initial questions that have to be answered are:-
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did the illness exist, |
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has there been a cure, |
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and can this be explained naturally? |
The following criteria are used:-
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there must not have been any treatment given which could possibly have led to a cure, |
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the recovery must have been instantaneous with no period of convalescence, |
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the cure must be totally unusual and there must be recovery of function and no relapse. |
The principle reason for rejecting claims nowadays are that very few people have not received some treatment which just might have brought about a cure.
Any claim is followed by an initial examination in Lourdes by any of the doctors there sharing the claimant’s language. The claimant must then return a year later with full documentation from their own doctors including material such as biopsies and scans from their previous medical records for the Medical Bureau to examine. If still valid referral is made to the International Committee.
If this scrutiny is passed the case is referred to the claimant’s Bishop who establishes a Canonical Commission containing at least two independent doctors with appropriate expertise. Religious belief not being required of them. Only this Canonical Commission can declare a "miraculous cure" which usually follows 9 or more years after the initial claim.
Given the strict criteria and ubiquitous nature of antibiotics, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, it is not surprising that there are so few miraculous cures.
This takes no account of the huge number of persons who feel that they have been 'healed" in a spiritual or other sense however. Psychological disease remains an unresolved question
He concluded with three examples; one being the Italian soldier Vittorio Micheli who enjoyed a cure of a massive destructive osteosarcoma of the pelvis which had been judged too advanced to receive treatment. The other was the case of Jack Trainer a British soldier raked with machine gun fire in the first World War, who was eliminated because the War Office had not retained all his medical records much to the chagrin of Merseysiders! The most recent (1999) cure of M Bely was unusual in that he was proclaimed cured by his bishop despite the International Committee not having agreed by the two-thirds majority.
Science and ethics are integral though there is a tendency amongst most scientists to deny any knowledge of ethics. This and the beguiling prospect of working with human embryonic stem cells and clones has led to them choosing only one path when in fact like water running down a hill, the advance of knowledge will find another route if an obstacle, in this case an ethical one, is put in its path. Their attitude can be summarised as "nothing must stand in the way of scientific research".
In his research on demyelinating disease the view of nearly a hundred years that though neurones may regenerate, they cannot restore function is now being challenged. In MS there are three support cells which may be capabIe of remeylinating diseased cells and of restoring a more healthy sheath and therefore function.
This work began with rats and is now being lone using human nerve cells obtained from neurosurgical resections. Some of the regeneration seen in animal models is arising from adult stem cells present in the brain. These stem cells are capable of regenerating any cells in the brain and are part of its natural repair mechanism.
Until recently it was thought that they could only be obtained from the brain but now it is known that they can be obtained from the much more accessible bone marrow. Furthermore bone marrow stem cells have been extracted stored and infused for more that 20 yrs. If infused they are now known to be able to migrate to the brain.
Adult stem cells appear to be as pluripotential as embryonic stem cells but are already part of the natural healing process. Embryonic cells on the other hand tend to form conglomerates or tumours if injected into animal models.
In the United States where research with human embryonic or clone stem cells is forbidden in Federal funded laboratories the main research and finding is going into adult stem cells. "This is where the scientific tide is flowing now".
Moreover actual clinical trials infusing adult stem cells into post myocardial infarction patients is already under way and showing promising first results, whereas embryonic and cloned stem cells are variously described as 10 or 15yrs away from clinical trials. The insertion of embryonic cells into the brains of Parkinson sufferers had only produced temporary improvements and then the cells went out of control and produced additional symptoms.
"Embryonic tissue is designed to make an embryo. Adult stem cells are there to repair damage" he said.
Mr Peter Garrett; speaking at the same meeting noted that The House of Lords Select Committee on Stem Cell Research did not ask Prof Scolding to give oral evidence to them. Could it be that such views were unacceptable to a scientific community so fascinated by cloned and embryonic stem cells that they must have permission to use them, and the political and commercial complex that hoped to profit from them?