SCIENCE 2

Busting some of the hype around the miracle in 2003, The Busting some of the hype around the miracle in 2003, TheNew York Times reported quoting Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, a doctorwho said he had treated Besra, and claimed that "the medicineshe prescribed had eliminated the tumour. He also said it was acyst caused by tuberculosis, not a cancerous tumour. TheVatican team that travelled to India and certified Ms. Besra’saccount, he added, never made contact with him." According to the National Catholic Register, "A board ofmedical specialists worked with the Congregation for theCauses of Saints to study the alleged miracle. After assessingthe records and interviewing the medical staff involved, thecommittee determined that the healing was medicallyinexplicable. Pope John Paul approved the miracle on December20, 2002, barely five years after Teresa’s death." But speaking to the New York Times in 2003, Besra’sphysician Mustafi said "It was not a miracle", adding, "Shetook medicines for nine months to one year." According to the National Catholic Register, "The secondmiracle took place in December 2008 in Brazil. Marcilio HaddadAndrino, a now-42-year-old mechanical engineer from Santos,Brazil, struggled with a bacterial infection in the brain thatcaused severe brain abscesses and agonizing head pain. "A priest friend encouraged the recently married young manand his wife, Fernanda Nascimento Rocha, to pray for MotherTeresa’s help. Andrino, however, slipped into a coma astreatments failed, and while Rocha prayed, he was taken in forlast-ditch surgery. "When the surgeon entered the operating room, he foundAndrino awake and asking him what was going on. Andrino made afull recovery, and the couple went on to have two children,even though it was deemed by doctors to be a near medicalimpossibility." Rationalists oppose tooth and nail that miracles takeplace since most so-called miracles have a scientific basis. Take the case of 1995 rumour that statues of Lord Ganeshawere drinking milk, devotes lined up in thousands outsidetemples offering milk to the elephant god. In the end itturned out that simple laws of physics and how a meniscusbehaves could well explain why milk was disappearing from aspoon and heading down towards mother earth due to laws ofgravity. Yet to date, you can see gullible people being taken in byfakirs, babas and priests for performing miracles. One common miracle is exorcism of a ghost from person bodyusing a coconut and by sprinkling water on the coconut. In reality the miracle maker usually hides a piece ofsodium metal within the husk of the coconut and when water issprinkled on it, the sodium catches fire gives out a smoke andthe people are fooled into believing that the ghost wascleansed from the victim’s body. In reality it was a heatgiving or exothermic reaction of water and sodium that becamea ghost excommunicated. (MORE) PTI COR ZMNDIP