Wednesday, August 11, 2010

But Could He Make a Disease so Great Even He Couldn't Cure it?

Here's the abstract from a paper published in Virology Journal:
The Bible describes the case of a woman with high fever cured by our Lord Jesus Christ. Based on the information provided by the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, the diagnosis and the possible etiology of the febrile illness is discussed. Infectious diseases continue to be a threat to humanity, and influenza has been with us since the dawn of human history. If the postulation is indeed correct, the woman with fever in the Bible is among one of the very early description of human influenza disease.

Infectious diseases continue to be a threat to humanity, and influenza has been with us since the dawn of human history. We analysed a case of high fever that happened 2000 years ago in Biblical time and discussed possible etiologies.
At least they formally ruled out demon possession. The rest of the paper isn't much longer and is a pretty bizarre piece of peer-reviewed research. There's too much to write about it, I don't even know where to begin. Luckily Tara Smith at Aetiology already did most of the work.

Who says the quality of peer-reviewed publication is on the decline?

UPDATE: The paper has been retracted.


1 comments:

Rob said...

If we are going to focus our scientific efforts on miracles of the Bible, we are wasting our time with this one... it's all about the water into wine.