AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome)

AIDS has a peculiar infection route and is brought mostly by hematogenous infection.

It is perfectly right that the author of Leviticus told not to drink blood. The infection is most likely to be caused by mainly homosexual intercourse. This disease is considered to be a modern epidemic but I would say there has existed this disease since the earliest times like other diseases, for the Bible tells us how to prevent this disease.

Leviticus prohibits sexual intercourses between men and any beast. Men actually did not seem to follow this order and this is why AIDS virus which originally lived among African monkeys has spread to human beings. "Thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness." (Leviticus: 18:19) This is a wisdom because blood is one of the most dangerous means of infection. Malignant Kaposi's sarcoma occurs in some cases of AIDS, and infections by a weak virus, which never affects normal men, let AIDS-patients die.

Several kinds of virus from the patients with AIDS have been identified, and therefore, the theory that different kinds of virus bring AIDS must be correct. By the way, unfortunately, the virus cannot live alone. It invades the nucleus of a human cell where it produces its copy using nucleic acid contained there. It maintains its species by transferring from man to man. Therefore, when the virus annihilates men, it suffers annihilation, too.

However, God can always alter the case if He intends to terminate the world with virus.

Plague

Charles T. Gregg considers emerods of the Ashdod in 1 Samuel 5:6 to be bubonic plague. When the Ashdod carried the ark of the God of Israel to Gath, the hands of the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction, and he smote the men of the city, both young and old, and they had emerods. When the ark of God came to Ekron, the hands of the Lord was again against the city of Ekron and the cry of the city went up to heaven. The plague was brought to the Philistines by rats in a wrecked ship which reached the city of Ashdod.

Yersinia pestis invades a lymph node through skin using a flea as a vector. When the lymph node becomes swollen, it is called bubonic plague. The Pasteurella pestis moves around the body, and when it stays in the lung, it is called pneumonic plague. By the Bible's description that the plague in Ashdod caused emerods, it can be assumed that it was a bubonic plague. The plague from which the young and the old suffered was probably pneumonic plague.

It was believed that the Yersinia pestis was first discovered by Shibasaburo Kitasato. But there remained some doubt in this discovery and Alexander E.J. Yersin reported in the same year Gram-negative bacillus, which was a true pestis. It was officially named Yersinia Pestis after him finally in 1970. It was a surprisingly long period of time, 76 years, from Yersin's discovery to that time.

Yersinia pestis was used as one of bacterial weapons. For example, grains with fleas carrying pestis were sent to China and mice carrying pestis were dropped on North Korea. But this strategy with the bacterial weapons failed unlike the Lord's work to keep the ark of the God away from the Philistines by spreading a plague among them.

Anthrax disease

"Behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain." (Exodus: 9:3) All the cattle of Egypt died and even the oxen which were objects of worship for the Egyptians died. We do not know what disease killed them. We can think of two diseases, namely, pestis or anthrax. Pestis infects men and the infection more often spreads from men to animals. This is why I would guess it was anthrax instead of pestis.

A germ of anthrax, bacillus anthracis, is Clostridium gram-positive long and thin bacillus and Clostridium tetani belongs to the same category. It is anaerobe which dislikes air and lives mainly under the ground and sometimes infects cattle. There were a few rare cases reported in the newspapers in which men were infected because they ate meat of animals which died of anthrax infection. For this reason, the Japanese law prohibits non-professionals' slaughtering of cattle.

This bacillus produces a deadly poison, endotoxin, and shocks animals to death instantly. The same thing happens to humans, too. So, be sure to eat meat which is sold at butcher shops and don't eat beef found dead in the field.

Bacillus anthracis has a flagellum which shows the same microstructure as that of flagellum and cilium in animals. There are a pair of central tubules in the center of the flagellum and nine pairs of peripheral tubules around them with nine pairs of spokes connecting between both tubules.

Nine pairs of the peripheral tubules and spokes are located at intervals of 40 in the angle and are fixed in a definite direction owing to the odd number of them. Human tracheal cilia move while maintaining a certain direction in order to drive out powdery dust from the lung. Don't you think it is surprising that cilia of bacillus and trachea have the same ultrastructure?

If there is a defect in this ultrastructure of the cilia, the cilia stop moving, which is called an immotile cilia syndrome and causes various symptoms.

Fetus organs should be arranged in certain proper locations at a certain time. For example, a heart should be in the left and a liver should be in the right. For this transfer cilia play an important role. So if the cilia do not move, organs are left in wrong locations, which is called situs invertus.

Leprosy

At present there are about a thousand patients of leprosy in Japan. Lepers are found mostly in Asia and Africa. Mycobacterium leprae like tubercle bacillus is one of the acid-fast bacilli. This is a technical terminology in staining, and it does not mean that mycobacterium leprae are strong against acid.

This bacterium is 0.5μ in width and 2-4μ in length. It is so stubborn that it keeps its species by propagation moving from man to man. A bacterium which appeared to be an acid-fast bacillus was found also in Egyptian mummies. It is interesting that mycobacterium leprae which infects men is different from that which infects a mouse. Mycobacterium leprae which infects men can be cultivated only with difficult techniques. It cannot proliferate if it cannot infect men. It means that the human should be created at the same time with mycobacterium leprae.

This supposition may arouse much controversy among evolutionists. When mycobacterium leprae invades one's peripheral nervous system, a person loses sensation of feeling in his skin. Even if a needle sticks into his finger and infection is caused, he never can feel it, which leads to necrosis and loss of the finger. The same process happens also to the nose and eyelids. This disease does not destroy muscle, so it occurred even in a mighty man in valor, Captain Naaman. He washed his body in Jordan River seven times and was cured of leprosy.

Gehazi, a servant of Elisha, got leprosy because of his avarice and became as white as snow (2 Kings:5). The white skin as snow was incipient symptom of leprosy. Therefore, the priest could check if a man was a leper or not by investigating his bright whitish spot. If this spot spread in 7 days, the man was a leper, and if not, the man was not a leper. (Leviticus: 13).

Dysentery

At the Island of Melita where Apostle Paul was drifted shore after the shipwreck, the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux. (Acts: 28:8) Paul visited him, prayed for him, and healed him putting his hands on him. What Paul did for the father of Publius seemed to contribute to Roman's decision for Paul's treatment because in Rome he was allowed to stay by himself, with the soldier that guarded him. During the sailing at first the centurion of the Augustan Cohort, Julius, paid more attention to the captain and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said. But gradually the centurion began to be kind and friendly.

The disease of the father of Publius was called δυσεντεριον in Greek, which consisted of 2 parts;δυσ that meant trouble or evil and εντερον that meant internal organs; and therefore, meant enteritis putting them together. He also had a fever which in Greek was called πυρετοσ in singular and πυρετοισ in plural. We can suppose that the disease must have been dysentery.

Dysentery is an infectious disease caused by dysentery bacillus. This bacillus was first discovered by Dr. Kiyoshi Shiga in 1898. The scientific term for dysentery bacillus is Shigella dysenteriae which was named after the discoverer of the bacillus. This bacillus is lean and long and proliferates in human intestines to maintain its species. Dysentery seldom infects other animals than humans, which means it infects from person to person. It has become a very rare disease with the development of good antibiotics, but still some people are seized by dysentery every summer in your country.

Please be careful not to drink　unboiled water because the bacillus of dysentery which has been traveling all the way from the Island of Melita for about 2000 years may visit your intestines this summer.

Cancer in Old Testament

In the Old Testament a word "cancer" never appears. But there appear various descriptions on tumor. First of all, in Exodus 9:9 "a boil breaking forth with blains" is referred. Ashes of the furnace surprisingly caused pyogenic tumor in Egyptians. This is not a carcinoma. Secondly an inflammatory tumor found in leper appears in Leviticus 13:18, which is a boil with a white rising, or a bright spot.

White plaque occurs in a case of leprosy to make a node but it is not a carcinoma, either. Next tumor in Bible occurred to King Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, (2 Kings:20:7), who was about to die. It is interesting that a lump of figs healed him and gave him fifteen more years to live. I suppose his disease was a fatal cancer because, otherwise, God would not have promised to add fifteen more years of life. Fig contains much calcium and sugar just like a Jew's-ear. It is recently said that components of mushrooms are good for prevention and cure from cancer, so it is assumed that maybe figs work likewise.

Lastly, tumors which Job got were very dramatic (Job: 2:7). In spite of his wife's word "Curse God and die", Job overcame the pain of boils. His tumor were probably non-malignant neurofibromatosis described as "sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown". Job could live until the age of 140 because his disease was not a cancer.

In short, it is up to you whether we can say as Job said, "What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10), when you are given a diagnosis of your illness as cancer.

Cancer in New Testament

A word "cancer" appears just once in 2 Timothy. The English version goes like this, "But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: (2 Timothy 2:17). We cannot confirm if there was a disease called "cancer" or not in those days in Asia Minor because there had not been any pathological examination established. In the Greek version this word is "γαγγραινα " and direct translation for it is gangrene. Both cancer and gangrene putrefy and spread, so it is the right word to compare to the dirty empty rumor. If Paul had known what cancer was like, he might have used the word "cancer" as a metaphor to represent sins, for there are some similarities between cancer and sin such as the following three points;

1. both arise from normal tissue or mind,

2. if you get rid of either of them when it is still small, you will be O.K.,

3. if you leave either of them, it will grow larger and larger, metastasize in different directions and at last cause your death.

Cancer is a disease in which normal cell suddenly begins to proliferate at random, destroy the order of tissues and organs, absorb nutrition, and metastasize the whole body, and at last it brings death to the body. At present, most of the cancers kill you, and even if carcinoma in stomach or lung is fortunately discovered and removed while it is still small, the patient can rarely live ten more years. We have not known much on the pathogenesis, yet, and many doctors are devoting their efforts to the studies of cancer.

A man's sin ruins him as is described in a passage in Bible, "For the wages of sin is death." (Romans: 6-23) But sometimes sin ruins not only himself but also people surrounding him. Also we come to realize that a certain kind of cancer, such as adult T-cell leukemia, is an infectious disease.

Study on cancer will continue further to elucidate gradually its reality. Even if what we know about cancer changes by new findings, what the Bible says will give us everlasting freshness.