Matthew 15:30
Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them.
Whether the above story has any foundation of truth cannot be demonstrated. And while certain people claim to have had their mobility restored in our times, the fact remains that its a very hit and miss affair.
This is a good time to be alive. Formerly fatal diseases are being vanquished. Fewer people are being affected by hunger and famine, and even wars (whether divine or not) are becoming fewer. Medical advances heal many diseases and an expansion of research possibilities promises even more progress in the future.
This story from Australia, shows what an understanding of how the body works can mean for the healing process.
This is the link to the story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-24/genetic-sequencing-gives-boy-right-diagnosis/6874716?WT.ac=statenews_nsw
The story is about a young boy born with a mysterious wasting disease. Doctors could find no evident cause for his illness and guessed that he suffered from a,
"degenerative mitochondrial disease, which affects the muscles and meant he might never reach adulthood."
Two years ago medical science developed to the point where doctors could pinpoint the precise problem:
Doctors had been wrong all along. Revolutionary advances in genetic sequencing proved he did not have mitochondrial disease at all.
"In recent years the capacity to read the genetic code of every single gene — all 20,000 of them in the human body — has reached a point where it is now efficient, accurate, cost-effective to be able to do this," he says.PHOTO: Paediatrician John Christodoulou gave Brandon the life-changing news that he had a genetic mutation which could be treated with medication. (Australia Wide)The new technique is called "next generation sequencing" — and where previously it took weeks or months to analyse the code of a single gene, today laboratory computers can decode all 20,000 genes in one go.
Almost immediately Westmead Children's Hospital researchers could pinpoint which one of Brandon's genes had a mutation.
Professor Christodoulou illustrates how the technique works on a chart.
"So here in the unaffected individual we have an 'A'. Here in the affected individual we have a 'G'. And that's precisely where the mistake is," he says.
Doctors using next generation sequencing discovered in fact that Brandon had congenital myasthenia — a different genetic disease which also affects the muscles.
But although incurable, it is not usually fatal and can be treated with medication.
"The name of the gene that we found the mistakes in is called COLQ, and it has a completely different role," Professor Christodoulou says.
"It has nothing to do with mitochondrial energy production.
"What it is involved in is co-ordinating the communication of nerve cells with the muscle, so that the muscle, when it receives an impulse from a nerve cell, it contracts and relaxes appropriately.
"So the problem with the COLQ mistakes is that this process couldn't be co-ordinated properly. And that's what actually led to his progressive problems."
And that was a treatable problem:
A simple drug quickly restored some of his muscle strength. As quickly as he had deteriorated as a toddler, he suddenly began making huge strides.
"We noticed it straight away. By the end of that week he got up off that bed and he walked," she says, wiping away tears.
Which means that we were all wrong, when, for all those years, we went house to house warning that this was the worst possible time to be alive.
Its actually a very good time to be alive.
What bloody fools we were.