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In a message dated 1/12/03 4:24:51 PM Central Standard Time, "john d'souza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >Mother Teresa miracle well checked >From: The Catholic Register >ROME (CNS)-- More than a dozen physicians in India and Rome were >consulted about the mysterious cure of an Indian woman before the >Vatican accepted the healing as the miracle needed for the >beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The promoter of Mother >Teresa's canonization cause, Missionaries of Charity Father Brian >Kolodiejchuk, posted detailed information about the medical >condition of Monika Besra and about her cure on the cause's web site >in early January. > It is good to read the entire miracle story as told by its promoters, and examine the best possible protagonistic evidence presented by them on their website. However, to an objective and critical observer who is not easily predisposed to accepting supernatural explanations, the evidence presented comes no where close to establishing that an unexplained cure has taken place, let alone that a miracle has occurred. Briefly, there is no expert testimony or physical evidence that the primary abdominal mass (the so-called "tumor") disappeared overnight or within a few hours. No doctor examined the patient immediately before or immediately after the purported disappearance of the so- called "tumor". A doctor had examined her 1 month before and 24 days after this event. No ultrasound or any other objective test was conducted to ascertain the presence of the so-called "tumor" immediately before or immediately after the event. Such a test was conducted 28 days before and 9 months after the event. >From the selected testimony presented, almost all doctors who examined the patient's reports - even those who uncritically accepted the diagnosis of ovarian cyst, implied that the cure is unexplained only if it is assumed that the complete disappearance of the "tumor" occurred overnight. One of the doctors very astutely suggested an alternative diagnosis - tuberculosis peritonitis with encysted fluid, which would respond well to anti-TB treatment that the patient was on, and which could also be open to possibilities of rapid improvement of the patient's condition, including sudden reduction in the size of the so-called "tumor" depending on how and where the fluid drained. This possibility was not offered up for discussion with the other doctors whose selected testimonies are provided. Had this been a real scientific case conference, such a thing would have most certainly been done. Given the above reservations and many others too technical and boring to be discussed in this forum, there is no compelling reason to reject the notion that the so-called miraculous cure of Monica Besra can simply be accounted for by a much more likely natural explanation involving the use of artificial modern medical drugs. Cheers, Santosh
