DR MARC SIEGEL: Medical miracle or modern science? Both can be signs of God at work

Is what you are experiencing really a medical miracle, or is it simply medical technology advancing at just the right speed to swoop in and save your life, or the life of someone who really matters to you?

Or does it really matter which of these it is? For me, medicine and advancing technologies are the "hands of God," and so the coincidence of a miracle recovery occurring just as a technology emerging is God’s presence.

I remember when my cousin Howard, a retired physician, was in the hospital for a raging lymphoma back in 2002, and he responded well to a standard chemotherapy regimen called CHOP that had been used to effectively treat many lymphomas since the 1960s. 

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At the end, his hematologist said to me, and to Howard, that though he was now in remission, he felt the chances of recurrence over the next 15 years were close to 100 percent. But, then he said there was a new drug we could try that was just emerging, a targeted monoclonal antibody that was showing increasing promise against lymphoma. 

Howard received it and has never had a recurrence, and the combination therapy is now standard, known as RCHOP.

In 1995, Melvin Mann, was a 37-year-old Army major when he was diagnosed with a deadly blood cancer, chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). He lost weight, became severely fatigued and was in a downhill spiral when, three years later, he was among the first to receive a new tyrosine kinase inhibitor in a clinical trial (CML patients make too much of the enzyme tyrosine kinase, which leads to an overproduction of white blood cells). Soon his energy returned, and he put on weight and less than a year later, he ran a marathon.

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This is not to say that all new and emerging medical treatments are automatically miracle cures. We need to be very wary of snake oil salesmen. As Dr. Scott Rodeo, head team physician for the New York Giants, pointed out recently, "regenerative medicine isn’t there yet. The science is promising, but the marketing is sprinting too far ahead." 

For me, medicine and advancing technologies are the "hands of God," and so the coincidence of a miracle recovery occurring just as a technology emerging is God’s presence.

He wrote that stem cell treatments promoted in offshore clinics in Panama, Colombia and other countries are unproven and unregulated, "which makes it impossible for me, or any physician, to give objective medical advice about them." 

Rodeo also warned about devastating potential complications including blindness, tumor formation and severe infection. And that the effectiveness is "symptom-modifying at best."

Dr. Marc Siegel and the cover of his new book, "The Miracles Among Us."  (FNC)

Speaking of snake oil salesmen who promote hype that preys on people’s thirst for medical miracles, in Kenya there are literally miracle workers who profess to cure deadly diseases with magical waves of hands. These are preachers, prophets and magicians who claim they can provide cures by casting spells. And there are even medical professionals in Africa who claim that magic spells work. The problem has gotten so pervasive that the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council has raised concerns about public health safety and professional ethics surrounding these claims.

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Medical miracles are real, we experience them every day, as I wrote in my book, "The Miracles Among Us." These miracles have many definitions and are unexpected and frequently overlooked. They are uplifting and provide us with hope in the New Year. 

At the same time, we need to be wary of those who offer us free miracles to make a buck or otherwise control us.

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