Ebola, Protocols and the Shroud of Turin

The terrible fears engendered by the spread of Ebola have been caused in part by the insufficiency of the protocols for dealing with the disease. But instances of scientific failures engendered by the failure to promulgate, and abide by, effective protocols are not new. It’s the gravity of the Ebola plague that brings the issue front and center. Another example of failure to adopt and abide by sufficient protocols relates to the carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin.

Let’s not get ahead of the story – and the problem. First let’s look at the C-14 process and why it can be labeled a legitimate fiasco. To do that, we must look at the importance of protocols to scientific investigation for the errors of the C-14 process are directly linked to the issue of the use, or rather misuse, of appropriate protocols.

Excerpt from Chapter 10, The Coming of the Quantum Christ

“The carbon dating of the Shroud will probably go down in history as one of the greatest fiascos in the history of science. It would make an excellent case study for any sociologist interested in exploring the ways in which science is affected by professional biases, prejudices and ambitions, not to mention religious (and irreligious) beliefs.”
Thomas de Wesselow^[i]

Checklists, Protocols and Science

Anyone who has ever received medical treatment, whether at a doctor’s office or a hospital, has benefited from the use of checklists or protocols by their physicians or nurses. Protocols represent the required steps of any procedure, which experience has shown are necessary for the protection of a patient. At times, it may seem they are merely unnecessary red tape, but behind each step in a prescribed medical protocol there is usually a story, or often many stories, of things gone wrong if proper procedures were not followed.

Take the example of medicine gone awry when doctors in 1886, sought to treat bullet wound suffered by U. S. President James A. Garfield at the hands of Charles Guiteau^.[ii] Today, medical experts are unanimous in the opinion that Garfield should have survived. Easily.

His death was caused by massive infections that finally battered his body into submission. From the outset, steps were taken that today would be unthinkable. Foremost perhaps, doctors probed for the assassin’s bullet without washing their hands. While the use of sterilized procedures had been instituted in Europe by then, such procedures had yet to take hold in the United States. Today, the steps taken to prevent infection are detailed in lengthy protocols; and medical personnel, whether in the doctor’s office or the hospital, violate those protocols at their own peril. It is unthinkable.

Another example where protocols save lives is aviation. Commercial airlines fly more than two billion passengers a year. The actions of the pilot and crew before take-off, during the flight and prior to landing are governed by checklists which are also protocols. Each individual airport will have procedures set forth in protocols to govern the take-off and landings of aircraft adjusted for the discrete circumstances of the particular airport and its environs.

As a result of the checklists and protocols, the number of commercial aviation deaths in any given year is but a minuscule fraction of the number of passengers carried. In 2011, 2.9 billion passengers traveled in commercial airlines and there were only 402 fatalities.[iii] That is .000000014 of a percent.[iv]

Protocols are also of utmost importance in scientific research. In the case of clinical trials for the testing of drugs and other medical procedures, including medical research, the World Health Organization has adopted a number of forms and recommended protocols.[v]

In the final analysis, the results of any scientific investigation can only be judged in light of its protocols. There are two fundamental questions: Were there adequate protocols and were the protocols followed in practice? If the answer to either of these questions is no, the results of the study are rendered unacceptable or futile.

There was, and may still be, a common belief that dating of the Carbon atom isotopes in an object is a fool proof scientific method of determining the age of an object. When it comes to the Shroud, nearly everybody wanted to carbon date the Shroud “in the worst way” and that is precisely what happened. The protocols were supposed to map the way to the truth. Instead, the truncated protocols adopted led the carbon scientists over a cliff.

You can read the whole story in Chapter 10 of  my book: The Coming of the Quantum Christ: The Shroud of Turin and the Apocalypse of Selfishness. It was published this month and is currently  available on available on KINDLE and  NOOK

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[i] de Wesselow, Thomas, The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection (p. 172). (Penguin Group New York, 2012) ( Cited hereafter as “de Wesselow”)

[ii] “A President Felled by an Assassin and 1880’s Medical Care,” New York Times, July 25, 2006.

[iii] “Airplane deaths at record low in 2011: report,” N. Y. Daily News, January 1, 2011

[iv] 401 divided by .2,900,000,000.

[v] http://www.who.int/rpc/research_ethics/format_rp/en/index.html

[vi] de Wesselow, Thomas, The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection (p. 172). (Penguin Group New York, 2012) ( Cited hereafter as “de Wesselow”)

The Apocalyptic Prophecy of Pope Francis

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013, the conclave of Cardinals convened to elect a new pope of the Roman Catholic Church elected Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina as the 265^th successor to the Chair of St. Peter. It was a surprising selection; he was the first non-European to be chosen in nearly 1,300 years and the first member of the Jesuit order to achieve that office. It is probable that many members of the conclave did not fully understand the man they elected.

His choice of a name may have been the first clue that something was afoot. Saint Francis was a medieval reformer who clashed with the Vatican of his day and inveighed against the wealth and privilege of ecclesiastical authorities. Bergolio’s choice of name was both propitious and prophetic. He eschewed the Papal Palace as a residence and adopted a humble persona that captivated the world. Among his very first acts was a new twist in the papal custom of washing feet during Holy Week. His predecessors usually washed the feet of seminarians. He chose a dozen inmates of juvenile detention center and the feet he washed were neither all male nor all Catholic. Among them was a young Moslem girl. More traditionally minded Catholics were aghast.

In the sermon he delivered at his inaugural papal mass, he left little doubt that he believed that protection of creation – the environment – was a profound religious duty.[1]

His public statements, many seemingly off the cuff, have been either deeply alarming, or uniquely perceptive, depending on one’s point of view. When it came to environmental issues, his statements, including his controversial exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, the Joy of the Gospel, were perceptive and prophetic. His model, perhaps, was not so much Isaiah as Jeremiah.

Evangelii Gaudium was not an “Encyclical” setting doctrine but an “Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World.” Chapter Two, “Amid the Crisis of Communal Commitment” discussed “Some Challenges of Today’s World.” Paragraphs 52 to 60 dealt with issues, either directly or tangentially, related to the alarming, perceived collapse of

1. No to an economy of exclusion [53-54]

2. No to the new idolatry of money [55-56]

3. No to a financial system which rules rather than serves [57-58]

4. No to the inequality which spawns violence [59-60]

Earth’s environment. They included with explanation four exhortations:

In paragraph “56” he directly relates his concerns about the world economic order to the environment:

“The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.” (Emphasis supplied)

Later in his Exhortation, he expresses the obligation of humanity to the environment directly:

"215 There are other weak and defenseless beings who are frequently at the mercy of economic interests or indiscriminate exploitation. I am speaking of creation as a whole. We human beings are not only the beneficiaries but also the stewards of other creatures. Thanks to our bodies, God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement. Let us not leave in our wake a swath of destruction and death which will affect our own lives and those of future generations.[177] Here I would make my own the touching and prophetic lament voiced some years ago by the bishops of the Philippines: “An incredible variety of insects lived in the forest and were busy with all kinds of tasks… Birds flew through the air, their bright plumes and varying calls adding color and song to the green of the forests… God intended this land for us, his special creatures, but not so that we might destroy it and turn it into a wasteland… After a single night’s rain, look at the chocolate brown rivers in your locality and remember that they are carrying the life blood of the land into the sea… How can fish swim in sewers like the Pasig and so many more rivers which we have polluted? Who has turned the wonderworld of the seas into underwater cemeteries bereft of color and life?” (Emphasis supplied)

Despite some criticisms from conservative elements in the Church, Francis has not retreated from his elevation of the environment to a religious issue. On May 21, 2014, Pope Francis told an audience; “If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us.”

Is Francis right? Was his statement hyperbole or prophecy? Creation destroying us! Is he prophesying an Apocalypse?

[i] Drew Christiansen, “A Pope Comfortable In Green Implores 'Protection' Of

Creation” America, April 8-15, 2013.