The Miracle of John Paul II

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By: Patricia Treece

JPII

Moments after Pope John Paul II’s death on April 2, 2005, the chant “Santo subito! Santo subito!” [“Sainthood now!”] begins from the sad, but somehow exhilarated, crowd in St. Peter’s Square. Through all the events that are part of burying a pope, it continues.

Through all this, in the south of France, Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre’s struggle with Parkinson’s is not going well. For some time before his death watching him on television had gotten too hard. “I saw myself,” she would later remember, “my own future.”

When Parkinson’s hits an individual who is sixty or seventy, the disease often moves slowly. Sr. Simon-Pierre  was probably already ill in her early thirties. In younger people, Parkinson’s can move very fast. After diagnosis, she did her best to carry on her work in the maternity birthing ward. But before the pope died, tremors causing trouble controlling her hand movements forced her to give up handling fragile newborns for off-the-floor work in administration. To add to her distress, although she was exhausted, sleeping was becoming increasingly difficult.

Pope Benedict’s waiver to open the Cause became official on May 13. Immediately Sister’s community, the Congregation of the Little Sis ­ters of Catholic Motherhood,  united in asking John Paul II to get God to work a miracle for Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre. Women of faith as well as of medicine, they prayed fervently with “strong hope.” Even their one foreign mission in Senegal, Africa, joined in.

As if thumbing the papal nose at the little French community, rather than a cure, Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre’s condition at once deteriorated markedly. June 1, the two-month anniversary of John Paul’s death, she could no longer go on. The pain was unbearable. It was a struggle to  even stand. Walking, kneeling, and driving a car were terribly difficult, all hampered like face, hand, arm, and other parts on her left side by stiffening as the muscles hardened. She was left-handed, and the entire left arm now hung as if lifeless at her side.

That afternoon, she dragged herself to the office of her immediate superior of the past sixteen years, Sr. Marie Thomas Fabré, a midwife serving the congregation as one of its leaders. The suffering sister asked permission to give up professional work. Sr. Thomas, not quite grasping the deterioration the last two months had brought, thought to encourage her younger charge’s hope and faith, reminding Sr. Simon-Pierre that the community were sending her to the healing shrine Lourdes in August. The superior asked her to stay at her post until then. When Sr. Simon-Pierre tried to explain about her hands, Sr. Thomas told her to write the name of John Paul II.

As she looked at the paper, it hit Sr. Thomas just how bad Sr. Simon-Pierre’s condition had become. They looked at each other and then simply sat silently for a time praying. Sr. Thomas recalls, “I remember praying and thinking at this moment that we had tried everything [medically] and that we had reached the end. ‘Lord, the only thing left is a miracle!’ That’s how I expressed my thoughts.”

Before Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre made her laborious way out of the office, her superior found herself saying, “John Paul has not said his last word.”

She had no idea how true that was about to be!

Some hours later alone in her room, somewhere between 9:30 and 9:45 p.m., Sr. Simon-Pierre  relates, “something in my heart seemed to say, ‘Take up a pen and write.’ ”  She did, writing some Scripture, and, in her words, “the pen skipped across the page.” Before her eyes, her handwriting was clear, completely legible,  normal.

Filled with excitement – still, as is actually not uncommon with those receiving miracles, she did not take in what had happened to her two months to the day and hour  after John Paul died of her disease. An event so momentous, simply too much to absorb, continuing her routine, she went to bed. But at 4:30 in the morning she woke. First she was in awe that she had actually slept. Mornings with the stiffness and fatigue unconquered by sleep were normally “very difficult” but not this one. She recalls, “I got up fully alive.” There was no pain, stiffness, nothing. Even interiorly, she could later say of the moment that she felt “much different.” Dressing without trouble, she hurried to Jesus in the tabernacle.  Filled with thanksgiving for the changes in her body, she spent an hour or so expressing her gratitude and joy for what she would later describe as “a bit like a rebirth.” Then she went to the community chapel and joined her community for Mass. She – who for a long time had not been able to stand steadily enough to do so – volunteered to do the Scripture readings for the daily celebration, proclaiming with gusto. It was only as she received Jesus in the consecrated bread during  the Mass, she says in one interview, that she was able to finally absorb beyond a shadow of doubt that she no longer had Parkinson’s.

Buoyed by the “peace and joy of her Communion,” Sr. Simon-Pierre, for whatever reason, still went back to her room as she did each day and took her morning medication. As always, it caused nausea and made eating so difficult that her weight over time had plummeted. At noon, she decided to stop medication and noticed she was eating that meal normally.

Later that day, Sr. Thomas relates that she met Sr. Simon-Pierre, who had put in a phone call wanting to see her “right away,” in a corridor. Sr. Simon-Pierre excitedly shared her cure. She produced an account she had written.

Now it is Sr. Marie Thomas’s turn to not quite get it. Deeply shaken, she can’t understand what is going on even with the handwritten document before her. As Simon-Pierre insists that she is healed, her stupefied superior demands, “How come you are healed?” The miracle recipient wants to rush to tell the mother superior, Mother Marie Marc. But when she further gushes she has taken no more medication, Sr. Thomas exclaims, “That will kill her!” These are, after all, professional medical women oriented to complying with medical directives.

The mother superior, Marie Marc, is told the following day. She waits for Marie Simon-Pierre’s visit to her neurologist. That takes place on the seventh, a regularly scheduled checkup. As she walks in, the absence of  any Parkinson’s symptoms is so striking, the physician exclaims, “What have you been doing? Doubling up on your Dopamine?”

Sister replies, on the contrary, she is taking no medication (this is now four days). When she tells the doctor what God has done through the request for John Paul’s intercessory prayer, he is shocked, speechless. But his examination agrees that his suddenly former patient has no sign of Parkinson’s. (He will see her again to confirm this several weeks and then several months later.)

The visit over, Mother Marie Marc consults with the neurologist her ­self. That evening she tells the community. Given the news (although asked to keep it among themselves), members enthusiastically switch from asking for a miracle to praising and thanking God and His praying servant, as they marvel over the cure of their “incurable.”

Next the mother superior reports what to her and the other sisters is a miracle to the postulator  of John Paul II’s Cause, Monsignor Slawomir Oder. Oder asks the local bishop, Archbishop Claude Feidt, head of the diocese of Aix-en-Provence, to investigate. Following standard procedures in such matters, Feidt sets up a special commission under Fr. Luc-Marie Lalanne. The thorough investigation involves an expert neurologist  who sets up the questions that need answers. Those involved include other neurologists, professors of  neurology, a neuropsychiatrist, a psychiatrist, and even a handwriting expert, since handwriting is an important gauge of Parkinson’s.  Theologians and canon lawyers also play a part.

It takes a year, during which Sr. Simon-Pierre is probed and prodded, body, mind, and soul. In the end, the verdict is favorable. Sr. Marie Si-mon-Pierre’s cure becomes one of those inexplicable-by-human-efforts, doctor-seconded cures that are being sent by bishops to the postulator.

During 2007 Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre, now 46 and working quietly at the order’s maternity hospital in Paris, comes into the public eye as a beatification-miracle candidate (this is rare, a new phenomenon as cures being studied are traditionally kept under wraps). Interviewed, before TV cameras, at a press conference with Archbishop Feidt she admits willingly, “I am cured. It is the work of God, through the intercession of Pope John Paul II.”

Pressed by members of the press to claim the healing is a miracle, she sagely mimics a man cured by Jesus: “I was sick, and now I am cured [cf. John 9:25]. I am cured, but it is up to the Church to say whether it was a miracle or not.”

She and the archbishop are present in Rome that year on April 2. It is the second anniversary of John Paul’s death, and Pope Benedict celebrates a Mass to mark the occasion. It is also the second anniversary of her cure. Archbishop Feidt formally delivers the findings of his commission to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The archbishop and nursing sister also attend ceremonies that mark this as the day when the Cause of John Paul, fast-tracked by Benedict, ends the diocesan inquiry and is formally sent, with favorable findings, to the Vatican for investigation at that level.

A Man Who Has God’s Ear

From the moments of his death, as if by instinct, people around the globe – by no means all Catholics – began turning to John Paul as a man who surely must have God’s ear.

Postulator Slawomir Oder, the man in formal charge of John Paul II’s Cause, in his words, was “being inundated with emails and letters . . . at a level of 80-100 a day.” Sent directly to Rome in envelopes of every shape and size “they came,” Oder stated, “from all over the world, even from nonbelievers.” Their writers reported various favors, including healing many did not hesitate to dub miracles.  Also arriving after diocesan investigation were claims of miracles from bishops, like the one made on behalf of Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre. By 2007, from varied sources, there were many cures that looked as if they might be the real thing.

Sister Marie Simon-Pierre’s case could easily have been just one in what was, so to speak, a huge pile. But Mother Marie Marc’s report for some reason had caught postulator Oder’s eye. Perhaps because it is Parkinson’s? Perhaps because it was submitted by a mother superior rather  than a bishop or just anyone? At any rate, he had looked into it even before the local bishop did. Now, for whatever reason, her cure is one of those submitted by bishops chosen for a deeper look.

As this inquiry by the Congregation of the Causes of Saints’ medical commission is in progress, there is a flurry of opposition to Sister’s cure in the press. It goes like this: Parkinson’s is incurable. If she has been cured, she must not have had Parkinson’s. Since she  was  healed, she had some neurological condition that can be cured. Ignored is that her complete instantaneous cure of an advanced neurological disorder was obviously not of a kind to be ascribed to medical intervention whatever neurological disease she had – and that, more importantly, the nurse’s Parkinson’s diagnosis was well established.

On May 1, 2011, Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre is there seated among those who will play a part.

A year later, a priest asks her on TV  whether she was scared doing this, reminding her of the million and a half onlookers. The sister, who has sat for the TV interview with this priest who wants people to be made aware miracles do actually happen, with her hands quietly in her lap (there is only once a glimpse she has in them a small circle of rosary beads), happy to let others do the talking for her, lights up. She responds at once, “I had the impression that I was being carried by angels, one on each side. I felt very light.” She sensed, she goes on, that she was carrying to the altar all the sick who ask her congregation’s prayers (a companion sister interjects that it is the cured sister who is asked a lot for her prayers). It seems from her description that the verse that rang in her head about seeing glory has been fulfilled.

Miracles affect a recipient, body, mind, and soul. The French nurse, working again today with mothers experiencing difficult pregnancies and babies born with problems, has been a person of faith at least since she gave herself as totally as she could to God when she was a teenager. When she is next asked by the inquisitive priest what, after the miracle is different in her life, she does not speak again of her restored physical abilities. She speaks instead of her experience of “great interior peace and joy. My spiritual life has been completely transformed.” There is much she could say,  but she volunteers only one example to the TV interviewer: “Eucharistic adoration [being with Jesus in the tabernacle] is a very powerful moment in my life.” And finally the nursing sister says she believes she has a greater compassion for the sick and those who suffer. She admits to receiving letters from Americans who write her for  prayers and, through the translator, expresses her desire to reach out to these people.

A miracle is also never just for the individual who receives it.

This act of God, permitting his beatification, served John Paul and the Catholic Church. It has also given new encouragement, says Sr. Marie Thomas Fabré, to the sisters. The eighty-some-year-old congrega ­tion founded in 1930 has always operated on the principle that every human life is precious, even one that may have to live with limitations and disabilities.

In a time when many disagree that all life  is worthy of defense, affirming life’s value is getting harder. With the miracle, she says, “John Paul II has looked on our little community and given us the courage to continue” this part of their mission. Both Sr. Marie Thomas and Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre believe John Paul II is truly with their con ­gregation, referring, for one thing, to the feeling each had, when they sat silently together in prayer when things looked darkest and later, when they told then mother superior Marie Marc of the miracle, that he was “in the room.”

Beyond all this, to some of us it seems fitting that Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre was cured through the dead pope’s compassionate prayers for someone whose condition he understood only too well, God gifting not just Marie Simon-Pierre but newly dead John Paul II, as well. That he may have especially liked bringing it to a Parkinson’s sufferer seems entirely reasonable.

Credit to  Patricia Treece of CatholicExchange.  

Finding Happiness Where You Least Expect It

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By: Trent Beattie

happiness

Ask someone where happiness may be found,  and you’ll get a variety of answers. Many of them, however, are centered on attaining something currently out-of-reach. The thinking goes like this: “If only I could make more money,  then  I would be happy.” Or “If only I had a nice car,  then  I would be happy.” Or “If only I could win that tennis tournament trophy,  then  I would be happy.”

The problem is, there are people all around who have plenty of money, a nice car and maybe even an entire collection of tennis trophies, yet they are not happy. Material goods don’t bring happiness, and in fact, the more earnestly such goods are sought as if they would bring happiness, the more bitter the disappointment that follows.

Many years ago, Venerable Fulton Sheen wrote: “Every earthly ideal is lost  by being possessed.” After someone attains the object he was searching for, he no longer places happiness in it. He realizes that his unhappiness was not due to his lack of that material item. He got what he had wanted, and, despite a possible temporary kick, the general unhappiness remained.

Instead of deriving satisfaction from what we’ve achieved, we use our achievements as baselines from which to achieve more. Those making $30,000 per year want to make $40,000; those making $40,000 want to make $50,000, and those making $50,000 want to make $60,000. As the material rewards increase, the search for happiness does not abate, and it can in fact intensify.

If happiness cannot be found in material possessions, where can it be found? The answer is: we find happiness where we least expect it–in self-denial. This is not a piece of wisdom that is easily learned and lived, because it is so paradoxical. Who, without being told, would ever imagine that denying oneself would bring happiness?

Yet, we are told by Jesus Himself in Matthew 16:24 that “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it; and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it.” Self-seeking ends in destruction of self, while self-denial (and seeking of God) culminates in happiness.

Self-denial being the route to happiness is possible, because,  as Sheen points out, denial of self prepares us for disappointments from others: “Contradictions from others will hurt us less when we have first contradicted ourselves. The hand that is calloused will not pain as much as a soft hand, on catching a hard ball. Contradictions can even be assimilated and used for further taming of our own errant impulses.”

Yes, even the disappointments of life can be used for out greater good, if we take them in the right way. What happens outside of us is not nearly as important as what happens inside of us, and the latter is oftentimes the only thing we have control over. Good can come even from the worst situations, by a mere act of the will.

Sheen reminded us of the great important of the will. He said, “There is one thing in the world that is definitely and absolutely your own, and that is you will. Health, power, life, and honor can all be snatched from you, but your will is irrevocably your own, even in Hell. Hence, nothing really matters in life, except what you do with your will.”

Happiness, then, is found by making decisions (acts of the will) to contradict our own errant impulses. When our own wills have been negated, we can live out the will of God here on earth and for eternity in Heaven. Complete happiness can only be attained after this life, but true happiness does start here by saying no to oneself.

Because I wanted to share this great paradox  with others, I chose passages from Venerable Sheen found in the new book  Finding True Happiness.  Sheen’s prescription for happiness is just as relevant to us today as it was decades ago when he first wrote it. In fact, it is even more imperative to get his message out now, because even fewer people know of its value. Finding happiness in self-denial and God-acceptance is a reality we all need to be taught or reminded of.

Credit to  Trent Beattie of CatholicExchange.

 

Rescandalized by the Gospel

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By: Cari Donaldson

Christ

Sometimes, as an English major, there are certain books I feel guilty for not having read.  Moby Dick.  Anything by Joyce, even a couple pages’ worth.  As aCatholic  English major, adding Flannery O’Connor to the list seemed almost a stoning offense.

Oh, I tried.  I tried to read her and like her, and, failing that, I tried to read her and understand her.  I couldn’t.  If there was a point beyond “bad things happen in dreadful ways”, I missed it.

Then I came across a  really great essay  on O’Connor written by Daniel at  Carrots for Michaelmas.  It’s more than worth a read in its entirety, but it was this quote that really stuck with me:

“But, more dangerously for the Christian,  we’re safe from a violent encounter with Christ. What I mean by that is that we’ve all heard the bloody, scandalous, disturbing elements of Christianity for so long they’ve lost the ability to shock or surprise. It’s easy to forget how radical the call of Christ truly is.  “

The quote made such an impression on me because it not only made me want to give O’Connor another try, but also because I had just read Pope Francis’ interview and was wading through the wreckage of people’s responses to it.

I know that places like NARAL and HuffPo and, shoot, the mainstream media as a whole completely missed the point, and instead decided to “helpfully” translate the three-day interview for their readers to “Shorter Pope: Let your freaky sex flag fly, he won’t judge!”, and I am in no position, from my small and messy corner of the Internet, to dissuade them of their misconception.

But for all the faithful who are wringing their hands and wailing and gnashing teeth about the Pope’s comments, I say this: go back and read that quote right up there.  Christianity is not a safe, comfortable religion.  It’s not a set of manners.  It’s not a political path.  It is a shockingly radical concept- that God Himself loves us so much- us! stupid bags of bones and snot and bad attitudes!- that He became one of us so that we may know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this world, so that we may be happy with Him in the next.

I’ve heard people complain that the Pope’s words have made things even more difficult for conservative politicians here in America. I’ve heard people complain that the interview signed the death warrant on marriage here in the Western world.

To everyone upset by the Pope’s interview because you think it undermines the Church’s teachings on abortion, homosexuality, and the permanence of marriage, you’ve been given a great chance to be re-scandalized by Christianity.  You’ve been shocked and surprised by the Gospel once again, and that’s an amazing gift!  This is your opportunity to remember that the Universal Church is bigger than America, or the West, or politics.

Look at the progression of our catechism- we must know God first, then choose to love Him, and  from  that love will flow a desire to serve Him.  There are so many people in this broken and toxic culture that don’t even  know  God.  There are so many people enslaved to sin that yearn to love God.  If we, as disciples of Christ, can help with those first two things, then the last one- serving God, will follow organically.  Engaging the culture about sex and abortion without first giving them some reason to know and love God is like yelling at someone for cutting their arm off and bleeding out when we should be doing everything we can to get them to a doctor.

This is not to say that the moral teachings of the Church aren’t important.  They are.  But they are important only because they help us get closer to God.  They have no value apart from their relationship to Him.

In a world as damaged and fallen as ours is, it is tempting to impose order first, simply to stop the noise from all this sin, then introduce God into the quiet, but that’s not the way our hearts and souls were designed.  We need to remember always that Christianity is about following Christ first, and everything else is a result of that relationship.  There is a whole world longing to be seen and loved and healed by Christ, so we need to be sure we’re bringing them Jesus, and not simply a political cause.  We need to remember the radical call of Christ, and resist the urge to swap it out for something temporal and fleeting,  something safe and tame, something that will never heal us the way God can.

Credit to  Cari Donaldson of CatholicExchange.

 

See & Imitate the Good in Others

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By: Edward F. Garesche, SJ

friends

Whether you like it or not, you are sure to imitate other  people.  The impulse to follow the example of others is so strong in us that we obey it unconsciously. We begin as little children, copying those around us, and we imitate the bad in them as well as the good.

But now that you are older, you can choose what to imitate. On that choice depends, to a great degree, your character and your destiny. If you observe and imitate the good and choose to copy the good qualities of those with whom you associate, you will be, in the old comparison, like the bee that gathers honey from every flower and leaves the poison. On the other hand, if you do not choose carefully whom to imitate, you will collect bad qualities and accentuate the faults of your character.

To have a clear, alert, and fair mind, and to judge men’s good qualities rightly are of supreme importance, especially to the young. Do not be deceived by appearances; do not adopt wrong standards of conduct. Some people have showy, specious, false characters that make a good impression at first, but there is no substance to their personality. Others do not attract or impress us much at first, but they improve on acquaintance. They wear  well; they have solid characters, fine hearts, good minds, and consistent principles. Those are the ones to imitate. Many a young person has gone wrong and wrecked his whole life be ­cause he did not see truly and judge rightly whom to follow, but let himself be carried away by his first impressions, his feel ­ings, or his emotions.

All human beings have some good qualities, of course, and by observing their good qualities and imitating them, and rec ­ognizing their mistakes and avoiding them, you can steer your way safely through the difficult seas of human character.

It is told of one young man who made a supreme success in life, that he deliberately noted the good qualities of all those around him. He would jot down such notes as this: “I like A’s pleasant, kindly smile; I am going to try to imitate it. I like B’s everlasting willingness to oblige and serve other people, and I am going to try to make it my own. I like C’s custom of punctu ­ality and reliableness, and I am going to try to be the same my ­self. D’s fine mental culture appeals to me, and I want to be like him in that respect.” In this way, the young man deliber ­ately emulated, and made his own by constant practice, the very best that he saw around him.

No human character is quite ideal, but every one has some divine spark of goodness in it. By taking all the good characteristics of those around you, you can build up the ideal of a perfect character, just as, by taking all the unpleasant charac ­teristics of each one, you could create a sort of monster.

One advantage of this method of looking for the good qualities of others and imitating them is that it brings out by contrast your own imperfections. If you study the best in oth ­ers and compare that best with your own corresponding traits,  you will feel humble and be stirred up to be better. There is hardly anyone around you who does not surpass you in some ­thing. Yet, you have the divine gift of free will, by which you can continually practice and aspire after the good qualities that others possess, without envying them and without taking anything away from those whom you imitate. This is the very opposite of jealousy, that wicked and hideous monster of vice, which observes the good in other people and is saddened by it. Your keen observation must pick out the good qualities in oth ­ers not in order to envy them, but to rejoice in them and imi ­tate them. Thus, you will multiply their goodness and gain by it, by becoming like them in that particular characteristic in which they most excel.

Suppose you had the power of taking for yourself the best qualities you see in others. With what keen interest you would study each one’s character in order to choose the very best trait you would find there. You would weigh each one’s per ­sonal charm and try to find out on what it depended. Here you would see that it was the result of a spirit of great kindness and interest in others, and you would choose that characteristic. There you would see that it came chiefly from a finely cultured mind, and you would make that quality your own. Another man’s influence over others and power to do good to them has come, you would perceive, from his deep conscientiousness and faithfulness to duty, and you would make those qualities your own.

Now, in literal truth, you can obtain to a degree any one of these things, by wanting it earnestly enough and seeking it persistently enough. The measure of your right judgment in seeing clearly the best that is in others and your strong will in  disciplining yourself to acquire their particular excellences will be the measure of your success in getting the best that they possess.

When thus trying to acquire the best characteristics of man ­kind, you need not confine yourself to the people you actually know. Through the magnificent works of literature, you can associate with marvelous familiarity with the great minds, the noble hearts, and the shining characters of all history. Saints and heroes of hundreds of years offer you their knowledge and companionship on the shelves of libraries.

This is one of the greatest blessings of a love of reading: it brings us into communion with the choicest spirits of all the ages. Entering a library in a thoughtful and reverent mood, we can stretch forth our hands and bid this, that, and the other of the most excellent of mankind to speak to us. In great books, we find a revelation of human character in its excellence and nobility that our personal experiences could never offer us. The ordinary dealings of everyday life are sometimes like a game of hide-and-seek, in which men and women carefully conceal even their own excellences. They are reluctant to show the finest depths of their characters. But the wonder of good books is that they can faithfully reveal these hidden excellences of human nature and can acquaint us with the in ­ward workings of good hearts and cultured minds. Therefore, in our reading, we may choose our associates from the most ex ­cellent of mankind and, through our knowledge of them, learn to emulate their finest characteristics.

Then, too, in our wonderful times, when nations are drawn so much nearer, we can become acquainted with the intellec ­tual and spiritual nobility of all the nations. We should avoid  that excessive nationalism which sees no good in people of other nations. On the contrary, we should try to recognize in nationalities, as in individuals, the excellent qualities in which they excel. This is one reason among many why it is a fortu ­nate achievement for anyone to learn a new language. When ­ever you learn a new language, you think the thoughts of another race and acquaint yourself with new models to imi ­tate, new excellences to emulate.

Human nature, therefore, lies before you, like a beautiful garden, in which a variety of exquisite flowers delights the eye. Some are more beautiful or more fragrant than others, and through the exercise of your intelligence and your will, choos ­ing from each character its more beautiful blossoms, you can pick for yourself an exquisite bouquet of fine characteristics and make for yourself a personality that will bring color and fragrance into the lives of others.

Credit to  Edward F. Garesche, SJ &  CatholicExchange.  

 

A Nobel Prize Well-Deserved

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By: Michael Cook

stem cell

Two stem cell researchers have shared the Nobel Prize  in Medicine for 2012, an elderly Briton, Sir John B. Gurdon, and a younger Japanese, Shinya Yamanaka. By a serendipitous coincidence, Sir John made his discovery in 1962 – the year of Yamanaka’s birth.

Fifty years of stem cell research have brought cures for intractable diseases within reach but they have also generated firestorms of controversy. Between 2001 and 2008, stem cell research vied with climate change as the most contentious issue in science. But since then, the firestorm died down – basically because of Yamanaka’s achievements. In fact, Tom Douglas, of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, at Oxford University, describes Yamanaka’s work as “a rare example of a scientific discovery that may solve more ethical problems than it creates”.

So what happened in these 50 years? (Click here for a graphic explanation  from the Nobel Committee.)

In his classic experiment at the University of Cambridge, Sir John discovered that cell development is reversible. The conventional wisdom was that cells could never change once they had specialized as nerve, skin, or muscle cells. He proved that this was wrong by replacing the nucleus of a frog egg cell with a nucleus from a mature intestinal cell. This modified cell developed into a normal tadpole.

This astonishing development eventually led to the cloning of the first mammal, Dolly the sheep, in 1996 and subsequent attempts by rogue scientists to clone human beings.

But while the technique clearly worked, no one really understood how cell development worked. The obvious target for research was the embryo. From this ball of undifferentiated cells come each of the body’s specialized cells – more than 200 of them in humans. Surely the answer must lie there. In 1998 an American scientist, James Thomson, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, isolated and cultivated human embryonic stem cells.

But a one-eyed focus on embryos left stem cell science hostage to ethics. Despite scientists’ bravado, everyone had some qualms about destroying embryos for their stem cells. Even Thomson  admitted to the New York Times  that “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough”.

Still, it seemed the only way forward. Desperate patient advocates, backed by a supporting chorus of bioethicists, scientists and doctors, argued tearfully that the possibility of miracle cures had to trump ethics.

But, in 2006, there came astonishing news from the University of Kyoto. An orthopaedic surgeon turned stem cell scientist, Shinya Yamanaka, had discovered that skin cells from mature mice could be reprogrammed to become immature stem cells. It was an amazingly imaginative step. Instead of mimicking natural development from embryo to adult, why not wind back the clock from adult to embryo?

Yamanaka found that by introducing only a few genes, specialized skin cells could become pluripotent stem cells, i.e. immature cells that can develop into all types of cells in the body. Until then, creating pluripotent cells without resorting to cloning seemed unlikely. Like Gurdon, for whom he has an immense respect, Yamanaka had skittled the conventional wisdom.

This was electrifying news for biologists. It was as if commuters on the pot-holed, terrorist-infested road from Baghdad airport to the Green Zone could suddenly detour down a six-lane autobahn at 200km. Many famous scientists dropped human embryonic stem cells and began work on what Yamanaka had termed “induced pluripotent stem cells”. A year later, in November 2007, both he and James Thomson, in separate papers, confirmed that human cells could also be reprogrammed.

The rest is history.

As the  Nobel Committee says  about Gurdon and Yamanaka’s research, “Textbooks have been rewritten and new research fields have been established. By reprogramming human cells, scientists have created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy.”

What turned Yamanaka away from the group-think which goaded his colleagues into the swamp of human embryonic stem cell research? Nowadays, the feverish excitement over human embryonic stem cells in the early Noughties seems ridiculous. Leading scientific and medical journals launched a crusade of Enlightenment heroes against prejudiced troglodytes. In one memorable endorsement of embryo research, the  New England Journal of Medicine   – the world’s leading medical journal —  published an editorial  which concluded with this cringeworthy hyperbole: “The Promethean prospect of eternal regeneration awaits us, while time’s vulture looks on.” It never mentioned cell reprogramming.

Yamanaka’s originality may have sprung from his ethical sensitivities. Even Julian Savulescu, the director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, who has no objections to embryo research, recognises this. “Yamanaka has taken people’s ethical concerns seriously about embryo research and modified the trajectory of research into a path that is acceptable for all. He deserves not only a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but a Nobel Prize for Ethics.”

In an interview with the  New York Times  in 2007, Yamanaka remembered one day years before when he paid a social visit to a friend’s IVF clinic. There, he peered through a microscope. “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realised there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” said the father of two. “I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”

Nor does he believe that scientists should put progress above ethics. In another 2007 interview, with  New Scientist, he spoke about the firestorms. “These are very difficult decisions, and I think that society should make them,” he said. “It should not be scientists. They can find it difficult to think like the person on the street, and instead may see it simply as a good opportunity. We scientists can be involved in the decision-making process, but I think unless society is comfortable with the therapy it should not go ahead.”

Once again, experience shows that that ethical science is good science.

Credit to  Michael Cook of CatholicExchange.

 

Religion is Bad for Marriage (when there’s not enough of it)

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Great post over at David French’s blog on the Evangelical Channel on Patheos.  The Blue States often sneer at the South because the South claims higher rates of religiousness but ALSO higher divorce rates.  Many liberals take this to assume that religious people in general are just a bunch of hypocrites.  I’ll let David take it from here.

It’s pretty simple: When it comes to marriage, church attendance matters more than church affiliation.

I’ve often heard the South described as “God-haunted,” in the sense that there are millions of men and women who identify as Christians, who attend church at least semi-regularly, and who at least aspire to live a Christian life as they understand it. Within that “God-haunted” culture is a very large subculture of the “God-fearing,” in the sense that they hold to the orthodox tenets of the faith, attend church regularly, and –furthermore — immerse themselves in the larger life of the church, from Sunday School to mission trips to small-group Bible studies.

It turns out that the God-haunted lifestyle is terrible for marriage. The God-fearing lifestyle is excellent. The reasons are not difficult to discern.   READ MORE