[ad_1]
Why do oncologists care about Biblical Christmas stories?
As a devout student in my twenties, I found great solace in molecular biology during my early medical school years. Like Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, I intuited the “God’s language” of DNA.
The process by which cells replicate and utilize DNA represents grace, efficiency, beauty and divineness. Even the most die-hard skeptics can’t help but stare in wonder.
Yet, as soon as we finished learning about human physiology, we started exploring. patheticMenstruation.
I spent the first few months learning how wonderful it was for my body to function properly, and the next few months learning all the ways things could go wrong.
Of all the diseases we have learned about, none is more philosophically and theologically depressing than cancer. After all, cancer does not involve foreign invasive bacteria. Rather, it just happens because of a very reverent process that struck Dr. Collins and spoke deeply to my soul.
My patients most often want to know why they got cancer. Was it what they ate? what did they do? Something their parents inherited? But for the most part, cancer’s origins are embedded in the very miracle that allows all life to function and thrive.
Cancer, as Siddartha Mukerhjee observed, is what our own biology has turned against us.
And the results aren’t necessarily abstract, subtle, or theoretical.
Cancer cells are ravaging patients every day. It invades the lungs, liver and brain. Fill your belly with endless liquids. Confine the lungs within a growing pool. Squeeze your intestines. Brain damage; takes away mobility and even the ability to speak. culling families; widowing young mothers; They attack young and old, healthy and sick.
Moreover, cancer is of its original origin, which makes our treatment terrifying.
Cancer cells are our own cells going bad, so when we create chemotherapeutic drugs we have to accept that they poison our own cells as well.
Given all this, it seems little wonder that Bertrand Russell concluded that humans are nothing more than “random arrangements of atoms.”
So what good is the story of Christmas in all this?
Is there room for rejoicing in the face of the evil literally written into our own genetic code? What does it have to do with a manger baby born more than 20 centuries ago? The idea of anything other than a baby being housed in such a meager environment should strike die-hard oncologists as the most repulsive kind of stupidity.
Considering the thousands of years of suffering, cruelty, sorrow, and cancer that have flowed since the birth of Jesus, what does it matter if angels sang in the plains of the shepherds so many years ago? Is not it?
But it is the special vocation of religion, its own realm of faith — to stare into the yawning chasm of despair and absurdity, and to declare nonetheless I believe
To see salvation descend from heaven in that manger, to believe that poor refugees transcend sin and death to transform women and men, and ultimately bring justice and peace to the earth, is a feat of folly. Extreme—unless it’s true.
Such beliefs require choice. For devotion to the monastic life has always been and always will be a choice.
Taking care of meaningless organisms that happen to be full of cancer cells is, after all, nothing more than proof of the randomness of their atomic arrangement.
But paradoxically, take care Man Having cancer and seeing their tenderness, grace, forgiveness, wonder and love in their bones is a realization that there is a deeper truth beyond the cells and DNA. Life means something more.
— Dr. Tyler Johnson is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford Medical School and Director of Inpatient Oncology Services at Stanford Hospital.
[ad_2]
Source link
