Do you believe in miraculous cures? ( I'm not referring to
situations where believers refuse medical treatment yet want divine
intervention.)
 Have you experienced one?
Heard of any recently?
 Witnessed one?
 How do medical personnel respond/explain such unexplained cures?

Could you be a bit more specific?  Are we talking about miracle cures
supposedly brought on by faith healers, or are we talking about e.g.
spontaneous remisssion of cancers?

The latter certainly exist, and I daresay you could get lots of
explanations for them.  (Certainly the MDs would like to know how they
work, so as to be able to cause them deliberately!)

The former, on the other hand, seem to be more or less mythical.
Judging from books like James Randi's "The Faith Healers" there are no
authenticated cases in this area.

  -- David Wright, Hitachi Computer Products (America), Inc.  Waltham, MA

     but you're free to disagree, you poor deluded creature

Easy to explain, every one that is closely investigated and adequately
documented turns out not to need any explanation.  Simple.

--
A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns
the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in
the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is
not a fact.  Robt Ingersoll / Atheists are unbelievably good!

No.

No.

Not believablely.

No.

Depends on their belief systems. I suspect that mostly that they don't believe
in them either or they talk about 'spontaneous remission' - this means that
patient got better but they don't know why.
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There is no physical law against rare fortunite accidents. For example
a cancer patient might get lucky and have there immune system suddenly
effectively attack the cancer. They go back for a check up and its gone,
God didn't yank the cancer out of them, a bunch of killer cells killed
every cell displaying some protein specific to the mutation causing the
cancer.

With the degree of current understanding of the body and immune system,
there is no reason to expect an explanation for everything that happens.
That doesn't mean that it can't be explained, just that the body is
tremendously complicated and not fully understood.
--
------ Legalize:          >--<o | If we where meant to hack God would    .
\    /  :-)-~             o>--< | have given us jacks.                  . .
 \  / You are ~1,000,000,000,000,000 .1ms NAND gates have a nice day.  . . .
  \/ The true theory of everything will run on a finite turing machine. . . .

You've eliminated them by defining your terms so that you will no
longer use the word "miraculous," not by investigating nature.

A more empirical answer would be that there are of course going to be
some sudden recoveries whose mechanisms are not presently understood
by medical science, and this merely reflects a limitation of
present-day medical knowledge.

Reason's last step is to admit that there is an infinite number of
things beyond its grasp.  -- Blaise Pascal (not an atheist, but
a wiser man than Robert Ingersoll by any reasonable criterion).

--
< Michael A. Covington, Assc Rsch Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Programs >

<>< ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ><>

I've been in medicine for 20 years now and have yet to see my
first miraculous cure.  I hear about them all the time from
patients who have heard of other people who were miraculously
cured of incurable diseases, but it just doesn't seem to happen
with any of the cases that I personally know the medical facts
about.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon Banks  N3JXP      |"I can eat more fat meat than you can cook in a week

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Most of the miraculous cures for terminal diseases are usually
misdiagnoses in the first place.  The rest of the cases are
simply the tail end of the normal bell shaped curve for disease
survival.

One never really hears about the cases that die sooner than the
doctor predicted.  Also I've never heard someone say that the
the doctor said I would never walk again and he was right.

Mike K

Yes, but these are also an act of faith.

If you believe axiomatically that there is no such thing as a
"miraculous" cure then of course one reaches for other, more
scientific-sounding explanations (e.g. someone said the immune system
suddenly wiped out the cancer, unexpectedly. Do they have any more
evidence for that then that it was due to an appeal to a saint? Not
likely.) But such cures are also rarely investigated unless someone
believes something is to be learned from the particular case,
investigations cost money.

So either you believe that there must be some scientific explanation,
or you believe there must not be, neither opinion is especially
founded on hard facts or evidence except in specific cases. It's
possible we're missing some other explanation because we tend to
dismiss such cases as having some explanation even if not worthwhile
looking into (e.g. maybe there really *is* something to mental
attitude beyond what we generally feel comfortable admitting.)

As an example, there are many studies that conclude by statistical
observation that certain segments of the human population, typically
certain ethnic groups (usually living in their home country), have
very, very low incidences of certain common forms of heart disease.

Then random things are correlated back to try to explain this, the
French drink more wine, the Japanese drink green tea, or just things
that fit our belief systems (less stress, more exercise, whatever.)

But they're almost never causal relationships, and we might just as
well say in many cases that speaking French (whatever) causes them to
have less heart attacks except that it wouldn't fit our belief systems
very well so we look for other things which are easier to believe and
less likely to garner scorn, moderate (always moderate! any finding
must be tempered by the advice of collective wisdom and caution!) wine
drinking or whatever. Certainly no American (eg) wants to accept that
maybe they just have a better joie de vie or whatever. I mean, for the
love of god they're CATHOLICS and French to boot (hah, joke,
plaisanterie)!

I dunno, when I spent a few years involved in medical research I often
found more interesting what researchers wouldn't investigate (for fear
of derision or just that's not the way it's done) then what was
investigated. One prof (this was at Harvard) was interested in things
like support groups and heart disease and unexplained stuff like I
list above, but it was pretty clear it wouldn't be taken seriously
(that is, wouldn't be funded, might attract scorn) so he went on to
more acceptable endeavors. Occasionally someone arises who bucks the
tide, but I wouldn't count on it.

My point is, I don't believe in "miraculous" cures any more or less
than I believe in the psuedo-scientific explanations or speculation
for unexplained cures. Both tend to just arise out of the deeply held
beliefs of one or another's faith, with little hard evidence.

--
        -Barry Shein

Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD

Isn't that pretty much a paraphrase of Shakespeare's "There are more things
on heaven and earth, than are dreamed of in your philosophy?"

I rather like W. V. O. Quine's response to that which was something like,
"Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy
than are in heaven and earth."

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Keith Doyle

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