Today, more than 1 billion people are suffering from the lack of potable water. About 2.3 billion people (41 percent of the earth’s population) live in regions with water scarcity; this number is estimated to be 3.5 billion by 2025.1

96.5 percent of the world’s water is found in seas and oceans, and the remainder is found as ice caps, brackish water, and fresh water sources (e.g. lakes, rivers, and ground waters). To overcome water shortage problems, methods such as water conservation and dam construction have been applied for several years, but they are not enough against increasing water demand and decreasing fresh water sources.2

Water is also very important for generating energy, and vice versa. The largest portion of U.S. electric production is provided by thermoelectric power generation, where steam-driven turbine generators are used to generate electricity. In 2000, thermoelectric power plants used 39 percent of all fresh water sources in the United States.3 All these reasons make the production of drinking water a worldwide issue.

Desalination

Since most of world’s water supply is found in oceans and seas, desalination is the process of removing salts and minerals from either ocean or brackish water to make it safe for human consumption and use. The most widely applied desalination processes are divided into two main categories, thermal distillation processes and membrane processes.

Desalination via thermal distillation methods, which separate liquid mixtures based on their boiling points, mainly fall into three categories: multi-stage flash (MSF), multi-effect distillation (MED), and mechanical vapor compression (MVC). Thermal distillation processes require the evaporation of water while leaving the salt in a concentrated brine. Middle Eastern countries mainly use thermal-based desalination plants to produce fresh water because of their easily accessible fossil fuel sources.2, 4

Membrane-based separations are the main choice of producing potable water in countries outside the Middle East. More than 50 percent of the newly installed desalination plants have been using reverse osmosis (RO) membrane technology (since 2001).2

Membrane separations

A membrane is an interphase between two adjacent phases acting as a selective barrier, regulating the transport of substances between the two compartments. It is a very thin film that allows passage of some types of substances while preventing the passage of other substances, depending on their sizes. Membranes used for separation technology gave rise to an interdisciplinary area including many fields of science and engineering such as chemistry, chemical engineering, material science, process engineering, environmental science, ecology, and economics.5, 6 Today, the membrane industry is impressively large. The membrane separation technology market is quite diverse and ranges from medicine to the chemical industry, and the most important markets are medical devices and water treatment. There was a $2 billion sale of synthetic membranes worldwide in 2003.6

Water purification membranes

Water treatment processes employ several types of membranes. They include microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. They are designed to remove materials of increasing sizes. MF membranes have the largest pore size and typically reject large particles and various microorganisms. UF membranes have smaller pores than MF membranes and, therefore, in addition to large particles and microorganisms, they can reject bacteria and soluble macromolecules such as proteins. RO membranes are effectively nonporous and therefore exclude particles and even many low molar mass species such as salt ions, organic substances, etc.7 NF membranes are relatively new and are sometimes called “loose” RO membranes. They are porous membranes, but since the pores are ten of angstroms or less, they exhibit performance between that of RO and UF membranes.8 Of these membranes, NF and RO membranes constitute the dominant technology for desalination of water.9

2.1 Nanofiltration Membranes

Membranes for nanofiltration (NF) are usually comprised of cellulose acetate or aromatic polyamides. NF allows diffusion of organic compounds, and rejects some salts with low pressures being applied. NF itself cannot purify seawater to drinking water standards, but it is a process that can be used to produce mildly salty water, or as a water-softening technique.2, 4 When NF is coupled with RO, then it can be used to turn seawater into drinking water.10

Nanofiltration membranes usually have negative charges (e.g., carboxylate groups, sulfonate groups, etc.), and as a result, ion repulsion is a major factor in determining salt rejection. More highly charged ions, such as sulfate, are more highly rejected than monovalent ions, such as chloride, by a negatively charged nanofiltration membrane. In particular, NF membranes are used to remove divalent ions such as calcium and magnesium, which are mainly responsible for water hardness. These membranes also usually display good rejection of organic compounds with molecular weights above 200 to 500 grams.2,11,12

2.2 Reverse osmosis membranes

Osmosis is a natural process in which water molecules move across a semipermeable membrane from a lower solute concentration area to the higher solute concentration area. Water flows until a chemical potential equilibrium of water is established. When equilibrium is reached, the pressure difference between the two sides of the membrane is equal to the osmotic pressure of the solution.12

Reverse osmosis (RO) is the process of forcing water from a region of high solute concentration through a membrane to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure that is greater than the osmotic pressure. As a result, separation of water from the solution occurs as pure water from the high concentration side to the low concentration side. The RO process includes a feed water source, feed pre-treatment, a high-pressure pump, RO membrane modules and post-treatment steps.

RO membranes are capable of rejecting monovalent ions such as sodium and chloride, which makes the RO process a valuable method for desalination. Membranes used for RO processes have salt rejections of more than 99 percent. RO membranes do not have distinct pores, but rather rely on free volume within the polymer film.

RO membrane separations depend highly on the properties of the polymer film such as the chemical and physical structure of the membrane material. Desired RO membranes should be resistant to chemical substances and microbial organisms, stable over a long time both mechanically and structurally, and have ideal separation properties such as high water flux, high salt rejection, chlorine, and fouling (clogging of membrane pores) resistance.

Approximately one billion of six billion people in the world live in water-stressed areas, and RO membrane technology is the leading desalination technology to overcome the problem of insufficient clean water and estimated to continue its leadership in the near future.13 Scientists and engineers are extensively investigating the development of the most efficient membrane desalination technology to produce the cheapest potable water.

On the other hand, cells use membranes, though scientists do not try to further develop them, since they were already designed in a perfect manner. Cellular membranes have a phospholipid structure with embedded proteins. They control many different kinds of transportations of substances in and out of cells (e.g. sugar, drugs, ions). They are so well designed that they know which substances are helpful or harmful for the cell, and decide on the passage of substances based on that. Many researchers have tried countless times for many years to produce an equally wonderful membrane technology for making clean water. But cellular membranes, consisting of hundreds of functions in living organisms, do not form spontaneously.

REFERENCES

1) R.F. Service, Freshwater resources, desalination freshens up. Science, (2006). 313, 1088- 1090.

2) L.F. Greenlee, D.F.Lawler, B.D. Freeman, B. Marrot, P. Moulin, Reverse osmosis desalination: Water sources, technology and today’s challenges. Water Research (2009), 43, 2317-2348.

3) T.J. Feeley, T.J. Skone, G.J.Stiegel, A. McNemar, M.Nemeth, B. Schimmoller, J.T. Murphy, L. Manfredo, Water: A critical resource in the thermoelectric power industry.Energy (2008), 33, 1-11.

4) G. A. Tularam, M. Ilahee, Environmental concerns of desalinating seawater using reverse osmosis. J. Environ. Monit.(2007), 9, 805–813.

5) P. Vandezande, L. E. M. Gevers, I. F. J. Vankelecom, Solvent resistant nanofiltration: separating on a molecular level. Chem. Soc. Rev.(2008), 37, 365–405.

6) M. Ulbricht, Advanced functional polymer membranes. Polymer (2006), 47, 2217–2262.

7) R.H. Perry, D.W.Green, Eds., Perry’s Chemical Engineers’ Handbook, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill: New York, 1997.

8) Sagle, A., and B. Freeman, “Fundamentals of Membranes for Water Treatment,” in The Future of Desalination in Texas: Volume 2, Report Number 363, Texas Water Development Board, Austin, TX, pp. 137-154 (2004).

9) H.B.Park, B.D.Freeman, Z.Zhang, M.Sankir, J.E.McGrath, Highly Chlorine-Tolerant Polymers for Desalination, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (2008), 47, 6019-6024.

10) N. Hilal, H. Al-Zoubi, N. A. Darwish, A. W. Mohammad, M. Abu Arabi, A comprehensive review of nanofiltration membranes: Treatment, pretreatment, modelling, and atomic force microscopy, Desalination (2004), 170, 281-308.

11) A. Gorenflo, D. Velazquez-Padron, F.H. Frimmel, Nanofiltration of a German groundwater of high hardness and NOM content: performance and costs. Desalination (2002), 151, 253-265.

12) M.E.Williams, A Brief Review of Reverse Osmosis Membrane Technology,EET Corporation and Williams Engineering Services Company, Inc., Harriman, TN, 2003.

13) K. P. Lee, T. C. Arnot, D. Mattia, A Review of Reverse Osmosis Membrane Materials for Desalination – Development to Date and Future Potential. J. Membr. Sci. 370 (2011) 1-22.

Heart regeneration in mammals

Such heart regeneration holds the promise for the treatment of heart failure following heart attacks. But so far, the adult human heart is known not to show adequate regeneration or replacement of dead tissue with functional tissue such as beating cardiomyocytes (cardiac muscles) and arteries. When a patient has successive heart attacks and myocardial infarctions (death of cardiac muscle resulting from interruption of the blood supply), the number of dead cells increases due to the decreased level of oxygen reaching the heart tissue. That’s one of the reasons heart disease is so deadly.

The rates of cardiac regeneration, from fish to amphibians to mammals, demonstrates a decreasing trend — high in fish, moderate in amphibians, and limited in mammals. The regeneration mechanism is thought to occur via incorporating stem cells, using differentiation into cardiac muscle and other cell types, or via dedifferentiation of cardiomyocytes. It is known that the heart of an adult zebra fish can regenerate without scar formation, whereas adult rodents and humans respond with a fibrous scar, without obvious cardiomyocyte regeneration. This remarkable phenomenon had been demonstrated in other fish and amphibians, but never before in a mammal. Recently, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center showed that a newborn mouse’s heart can fully heal itself.

Sadek’s group at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas showed that the mammalian heart demonstrates a temporary regeneration capacity in newborn mice. After slowing down the body functions by cooling the body of a mouse, they performed a very delicate heart surgery, removing about 15 percent of the apex of a 1-day-old newborn mouse heart. Within a short period (three weeks), they showed that heart had healed and the function of heart had returned to normal. But when mice are a week old, this remarkable ability of regeneration disappears, and damage to the heart results in the thinning of the heart wall at the site of injury, and the loss of the pumping capacity of heart, also known as heart failure. There seems to be a barrier to regeneration after 7 days. This 7-day window in mice could correspond to a few months after birth in humans. Several reports suggest that human heart may also have some ability to regenerate in infancy.

If newborn animals and infants are able to regenerate their hearts, there could be ways to remind the heart how do this or restart this ability in adulthood to allow regeneration in a broader window. Could there be means to induce regeneration by gene therapy, using small molecules, drugs or hormones? This new discovery brings new approaches to study heart disease and hopes that one day, heart disease — the number one killer in the world — could be treated. More studies are needed and a number of labs have already started to invest in this new model of heart regeneration.

Human heart cell turnover and regeneration

The heart is the least regenerative organ in our body. Once cardiomyocytes are damaged through heart attacks, the heart heals by scar formation instead of regeneration. This results in a loss of contractile function and often ends in heart failure. Lack of regeneration in an adult heart is associated with the complexity and inability of cardiomyocytes to divide, along with the absence of adequate muscle-producing cardiac stem cells in the heart.

Cardiomyocytes proliferate extensively during embryonic development but slow dramatically around birth. The growth of heart continues after birth through the increase in cardiomyocyte size, known as hypertropy. This allows DNA synthesis and nuclear division and results in binucleated cardiomyocytes.

Increasing evidence strongly suggests that the human heart shows a degree of cardiomyocyte repopulation (introduction of new cardiomyoctes). It is always challenging to study human heart cellular homeostasis, as it is limited in the availability of human samples and the means to work on it. Who knew nuclear testing during the Cold War would help to uncover dynamics of human cardiomyocyte turnover? Using a technique based on radiocarbon dating of DNA with carbon-14, released from nuclear tests, Bergmann and his colleagues from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed that the cardiomyocyte turnover rate is about 1 percent per year at age 20, with a decline to 0.4 percent per year at age 75. This is based on the idea that people born during nuclear tests following World War II until the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), any cardiomyocyte repopulation should result in lower carbon-14 concentrations. These findings imply that around age 50, about half of the cardiomyocytes in the human heart are generated after birth. However, another study puts emphasis on the importance of cell deaths (apoptosis) for heart cell turnover, asserting that these rates could be much higher (7-40 percent per year). Those findings bring new hopes to heart disease. If the repopulation potential of heart could be therapeutically targeted, the rate of turnover could be extended to overcome the inability to recover cardiomyocyte loss and cardiac contractility after heart attacks.

The better regenerative capacity of fish and amphibians, compared to that of mammals, seems to stem from the presence of species-specific differences. It has been suggested that the limited regeneration potential of mammalian hearts following injury increases survival by prioritizing homeostasis and fibrosis (scar formation by excess connective tissue). Bleeding from the heart in a high-pressure circulation probably favors the more rapid fibrous healing, instead of regeneration, whereas small animals have a low-pressure circulatory system and oxygenation isn’t needed all the time. This phenomenon probably applies to the regeneration of the newborn mouse heart, which also made the removal of the apex of the newborn mouse heart possible.

Cardiac stem cells for regeneration

The heart is a mosaic of various cell types including valvular, arterial, smooth muscle, pacemaker, endothelial, autonomic ganglia, fibroblasts and cardiomyocytes. Those cells have essentially the same genetic makeup but they show a great diversity. Could there be a common cardiac stem cell that gives rise to all those cell types in the heart? There are a number of studies suggesting the presence of such stem cells, though why they fail to regenerate the heart following heart attacks remains unknown.

There have been a number of attempts to discover cardiac stem cells. Some stem cells have been studied in animals and even considered as possible therapies in human trials. Sources of those stem cells could be classifies as resident and non-resident (exogenous) cells of heart. Exogenous stem cell types include skeletal myoblasts, hematopoietic stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow and circulating endothelial cells. Many approaches to identify resident cardiac stem cells are based on knowledge from hematopoietic stem cells. Using surface proteins on the cells known to enrich bone marrow stem cells, several types of resident stem cells are shown to exist in the heart. There are limited improvements in cardiac function using those cells, but the benefits of those cells are thought to be through other mechanisms instead of replacement of dead tissue in the damaged heart.

A study demonstrating the renewal of a newborn mice heart does not completely rule out resident cardiac stem cells as a source of new beating heart cells, but points out the likelihood of their originating from cardiomyocytes by dedifferentiation. Along with a number of attempts to treat heart failure by using stem cells, recent findings offer hope that researchers and doctors will one day able to cure heart disease. Knowing that “there is no disease that God has created, except that He also has created its treatment,” our duty is to study hard and to develop new technologies to find the prospective treatments for heart failure to serve humanity.

References

• Porrello et al. 2011. “Transient Regenerative Potential of the Neonatal Mouse Heart.” Science 25 February: 1078–1080.
• Bergmann et al. 2009. “Evidence for Cardiomyocyte Renewal in Humans.” Science, 3 April: 98–102.
• Charles E. Murry and Richard T. Lee. 2009. “Turnover after the fallout.” Science, V324.
• O.Bergmann et al. 2009. Science 324, 98.
• Simonetta Ausoni and Saverio Sartore. 2009. “From fish to amphibians to mammals: in search of novel strategies to optimize cardiac regeneration.” JBC. 184 (3).
• Martin-Puig et al. 2008. “Lives of a hear cell: Tracing the origins of cardiac progenitors.” Cell Stem Cell 2. April.
• Nevada Nuclear Testing Site: http://mason.gmu.edu/~kcherrix/atomichome.html
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 7, Book 71.

All the organs functioning in your body have a direct or indirect relationship with me. I can be compared to a kind of “chemical brain.” All metabolic activities are among my duties, including the control of excretions, digestion, and the composition of blood. You would be stupefied if I listed every single function I carry out, but let me tell you this much: biochemists have discovered that I am directly included in more than 80 different activities and related to more than 5,000 chemical reactions taking place in your body. Surprised? But this is only what they’ve learned so far; you do not know me in detail yet. My plain appearance is in contrast with my numerous functions. My size is about one-tenth of the body of a six-month-old fetus; now that you have become a young man, I weigh about one fiftieth of your body weight. Since I am the largest excretory organ in your body, I am firmly strapped with mesentery so you can run, jump, and make other movements without trouble.

Most people see me merely as a bile-producing organ, which happens to be among the simplest of my duties. Let me explain it another way: the heat I produce while working is equal to one-third of the heat your body produces while resting. I have a special circulatory system. Since I am located at a “junction,” the blood coming from the intestines which bear nutrient molecules come to my vein first together with the blood from the spleen, before joining the rest of the bloodstream. It can be compared to an obligatory customs check. The amount of blood I supervise within 24 hours is about 2,000 liters. With every heartbeat, almost 28 percent of the blood being pumped passes through me.

I adjust the level of blood sugar in a very sensitive balance. If you eat desserts or pastries I convert excess sugar into glycogen (animal starch) and store it. If your blood sugar decreases from hunger, I break down glycogen into sugar (glucose) and come to your help so that you do not come to a halt, like a car out of fuel.

I use various protein molecules to synthesize numerous enzymes. I also play a role in blood coagulation, red blood cell production, and storing the iron you need. You know, nothing is wasted in the divine system of nature. So how can I waste anything? When the aged red blood cells die, I help the spleen to break them down and store the iron they contain. My job in fat metabolism is no less important. Thanks to the bile I produce, the fatty food you eat is broken down to smaller molecules to be absorbed in a way similar to detergents remove oily remnants from dishes. Naturally, the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) are also absorbed along the process. I store the excess of both these vitamins and fats. Fats are an important fuel particularly for your heart muscles. I excrete an average of 600–700 grams of bile a day. Two minutes after oily foods pass to duodenum the walls of my gallbladder are operated. Through contractions of 2–6 times a minute and a pressure of 25–30 mmHg, the bile is passed to duodenum in a time span of 15 to 90 minutes. What gives bile its yellowish-green color is the substance named bilirubin, which appears with the breaking down of the old red blood cells and disposed of through the bowels.

The Kuppffer cells—as you name them—have the duty of checking out newly produced blood cells one by one in addition to producing antibodies against germs. If any ill-formed blood cells come up, I must detect and destroy them. Otherwise they corrupt your blood. Thanks to the Kuppffer cells, the ill-formed blood cells are destroyed as soon as they are detected.

The average longevity of my cells varies between 150-180 days (220 days maximum). New cells are produced immediately to replace the dying ones and the system works smoothly. In each of these cells there are 1,000-3,000 mitochondria and millions of ribosome. An average of 180 new ribosome are produced every second. Although none of my cells have consciousness or intelligence, thousands of them come together to form little lobes resembling hexagons. The number of these lobes varies between 50,000 to 100,000.

Dear Peter, you intake various toxic substances together with the foods you eat. You don’t even realize that food has been corrupted by bacteria and fungi until its taste changes. Frankly, you should not have lived very long with so much toxic intake; Providence has given me an important duty to protect you from such harm. I capture these toxic compounds released into your bloodstream and neutralize them. The same goes for different medicines you take; I try to neutralize their toxic effects as well. But I have my own limits of tolerance; if I am faced with more toxic substances than I can handle, then I give signals of danger. You wonder how. Well, I shout “help” through red spots in your hands and itchy spots on your skin. You should be more careful about what goes down your throat.

Given that I fulfill various important functions, the littlest failure in me reveals itself as a health problem immediately. Hepatitis is among the common diseases heralding my failure. Excessive increase of bilirubin in your blood causes the white of your eye and your skin to turn yellow. I fear viruses most. Particularly hepatitis B and C viruses destroy my tissue. And alcohol, as you know, is my sworn enemy. I have to exert myself to neutralize even a tiny amount of alcohol. And if the hepatitis virus is added, I become knocked down and contract cirrhosis. It does not happen suddenly, though. Along the process which you know as liver failure I give various signals: skin eruption, digestion problems, sleepiness, and headache after meals, and so on. Since these symptoms are not serious problems, most people ignore these signals I give. Due to my various functions, the lab tests about me are more than a hundred.

Talking about my enemies may have upset you a bit, but it’s not all doom and gloom. After all, I am the organ with the highest capacity to renew itself. Sounds good, right? Otherwise I would have been finished off long ago, so this ability is a real blessing. Let me give you an example: although 90 percent of my cells are destroyed during hepatitis, I can help you survive with the remaining 10 percent if you rest well and control what you eat. If you ignore the disease, it might lead you and me to the grave. Do not ever believe those who take this lightly and say: “This doctor says that a small amount of alcohol is good for health.” Tell it to the marines. Those who say that should visit hospitals first. I’m sorry, Peter, but it really gets on my nerves. If they could only appreciate a work of art like me. Anyway, that’s all for now, please take good care of me.

Original Article: Ramirez G. et al., Science 331, 211 (2011).

We have had to deal with tests and exams in academic and professional life from childhood on. Though we are motivated to perform our best, the pressure-filled situations generally cause us to perform below our abilities. University of Chicago researchers were interested in finding an intervention that would improve performance under such conditions, especially for those students who do not do well on exams because they are blocked by anxiety. Their study showed that simply writing down our thoughts and concerns immediately before a high-stress event can increase performance from 5–12 percent when it matters most. The simple brain-focusing exercise of writing down feelings for ten minutes before an exam reduces anxiety and increases exam scores significantly. The researchers concluded that writing allows individuals to reexamine the situation and revaluate concerns, reducing anxiety and increasing one’s ability to focus. This type of writing may help people perform their best not only on tests but also in variety of high-stress situations—a big presentation to a client, a speech to an audience, or even a job interview.

2- Life Without Starlight

Original Article: Hooper, D. & Steffen, J.H. (arXiv:1103.5086v1).

Liquid water is considered the common solvent to catalyze carbon-based life on planets. This assumption defines a rather tight region around stars, which is called the “habitable zone.” The energy absorbed from the host star through its light allows planets in the habitable zones to melt water into liquid. Water would either evaporate or remain ice if the planet is too close to or distant from the star. A recent study suggested that starlight may not be the only energy source that can convert ice into liquid water and maintain it in that state. Dark matter annihilation may produce enough heat in special circumstances for planets that may not be sufficiently heated by their host star. Ordinary matter constitutes only about 20 percent of the matter in the universe, while dark matter makes up about 80 percent of all matter. It is believed that dark matter weakly interacts with atomic nuclei. Therefore, one of the leading models for dark matter is called “weakly interacting massive particles” (WIMPs). In cases where dark matter interacts with nuclei, WIMPs can transfer momentum to the nucleus. Then they can get gravitationally captured and subsequently decay as energetic particles. This process can produce heat as a consequence. On Earth, the concentration of dark matter at its center is not sufficient to produce observable contributions to the planet’s total heat budget. However for planets around stars that are closer to the centers of their galaxy, where the concentration of dark matter is significantly higher, just enough heat may be produced by gravitationally captured and annihilated dark matter. The abundance of planets detected by NASA’s satellite mission-Kepler suggests that perhaps life in the universe might be more abundant than we thought.

3- How Much Digital Information Can Mankind Store?

Original Article: Hilbert, H. & López, P., Science 332, 60 (2011).

Have you ever wondered how much total information is stored by human beings? We store information in two different forms: analog storage such as books, printed photos, and audio cassettes, and digital storage such as hard drives, CDs, DVDs, and the like. A recent paper analyzed how the total information storage and processing ability of human beings changed between the years of 1986 and 2007. The study estimated that the total information stored as of 2007 is 295 exabytes. An exabyte is equal to one million terabytes or one billion gigabytes. If all this information was stored on CDs, this stack of CDs would reach beyond the moon. If it was stored in books, it would be enough to cover the entire United States with 13 layers of books. Interestingly, the information stored by DNA in one single human body is about 300 times larger than the entire amount of information stored by humanity. In 2000, only 25 percent of known information was stored in digital form; this ratio increased to 94 percent in 2007. The area in which the “information revolution” is most evident is computation. The study found that the global computing capacity increased by 58 percent per year during this time. But even at this fast rate of growth, in 2007 the total instructions per second that humankind can carry out on its general-purpose computers were about the same as the maximum number of nerve impulses executed by one human brain per second.

4- Tricking the Brain to Attack Alzheimer’s Disease

Original Articles: Atwal, J. K. et al., Science Translational Medicine 3, 84ra43 (2011) & Yu, Y. J. et al., Science Translational Medicine 3, 84ra44 (2011).

Alzheimer’s disease affects many people, especially in later stages of life, and as the lifespan of humans increases, it becomes much more prevalent everyday. The primary cause of Alzheimer’s disease is unknown, but scientists generally associate the disease with the appearance of plaques and tangles in brain cells, often caused by a protein called amyloid. Hence, a natural strategy would be to attack these proteins that form these plaques. Yet, the biggest obstacle in our brain is the blood-brain barrier, which prevents viruses and other unwanted visitors from entering our most delicate organ. Scientists have tried to overcome this barrier with many different drugs and strategies, but there is no clear winner yet. Two recent studies reported in Science Translational Medicine journal give us a new hope in our fight against Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists devised a clever strategy to trick the gatekeepers of the blood-brain barrier into escorting antibodies against the Alzheimer’s-associated proteins. This method reduced the levels of amyloid by up to 50 percent inside mouse brain cells. Designed antibodies had two arms—one arm to target the enzyme, BACE1, which produces the amyloid, and the other arm to bind to the transferring receptor, which in turn deceived the endothelial cells from the blood-brain barrier to internalize the antibody. There are many other brain disorders that we have a limited arsenal against because of the blood-brain barrier. Hence this new method can be used for these diseases, which opens up a whole new venue of targeting strategies.

The world hypertension statistics

Almost a quarter (26 percent) of the world’s adult population suffers from high blood pressure. It is estimated that this number will reach 29 percent by the year 2025. These average statistics based on the adult population of the world includes people of various age groups and from different countries. The risk of hypertension increases with age. While the figure for 20–29 year old males is 13 percent, it increases to 40 percent between the ages of 50–59, and reaches over 60 percent after the age of seventy. Although there are slight variations in women, many of the figures are almost the same (Figure 1).

These figures are quite striking; one out of every two people over the age of sixty suffers from high blood pressure. As for those in their seventies, the figures have already reached almost 70 percent and are expected to increase even further as this group ages. Many diseases in the adult population remain at 1–2 percent; therefore, these figures convey just how common and serious hypertension really is.

The regional distribution of hypertension figures

In contrast with the estimated numbers given above, the figures for hypertension in the different regions present significant variations. Statistically, the number of hypertension cases increases according to the welfare status of the society. In economically developed countries, 37 percent of the adult population has high blood pressure, which is a considerably elevated number in comparison with the world average of 26 percent. Furthermore, 70 percent of the males and 80 percent of the females over the age of seventy living in economically developed countries suffer from high blood pressure. However, in economically underdeveloped countries, the number of hypertension cases is very low.

The hypertension rates in China and India are well below the world averages, with males at 17 percent and females at just 14 percent (Figure 2). In some societies, for example in the Amazon’s catchment areas, the Yanomami Red-Indians, and tribes in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, few cases of hypertension can be found, and blood pressure among these groups does not tend to increase with age.

The reasons for the increase in hypertension

There is a genetic disposition to develop hypertension. The recent studies reveal that high calorie foods, a high level of salt intake, the lack of physical activity, and alcohol intake all play a significant role in the increase of hypertension. By examining these reasons alone, we clearly see how important the prohibition of alcohol is and the Prophet’s words of wisdom advising us to eat less bear on our lives and prosperity in both this world and the hereafter.

Excess of body fat (obesity)

Another recent health phenomenon is the huge increase in people suffering from obesity, mainly due to excessive eating and the lack of exercise. Studies related to disease outbreaks (epidemiological studies) show that obesity is clearly associated with hypertension. These studies also reveal a significant increase in people suffering from both obesity and hypertension. According to these studies, 78 percent of the male and 65 percent of the female cases of hypertension are connected to obesity. Similar studies carried out in various countries confirm that a large number of people with high blood pressure were overweight and that losing weight substantially reduced their blood pressure levels. In fact, the blood pressure in some was reduced by losing weight alone, without the need of any medication.

Many studies also evaluated the connection between obesity and hypertension by measuring the level of the leptin, the hormone that controls the appetite, in the body. High levels of leptin induce stimulation in the sympathetic nervous system and shrink the veins (causing an increase in blood pressure). Another reason for the increase in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system of overweight people is the rise in insulin levels, which in most people can be controlled by diet. Finally, the kidneys of overweight people retain greater levels of salt and water, which causes an increase in blood pressure. These conditions, which on many occasions can prove to be very serious, are in fact contrary to the intended physical state of human creation, as the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, declared in these words of warning: “What I fear most for my followers is a large stomach, excessive sleep, idleness, and the lack of certainty (in faith).”

Excessive salt and alcohol

Evidence from both experiments on animals and clinical studies proves that the excessive intake of salt increases blood pressure. In animal experiments, a high intake of salt in the diet of rats showed a rise in blood pressure, which resulted in strokes. In another experiment, more than 0.50 ounces of salt was added to the diet of several chimpanzees for a period of twenty months. The studies showed an increase of 33 mmHg in the systolic blood pressure and 10 mmHg in the diastolic blood pressure, and when the salt was removed from the diet, the chimpanzees’ blood pressure returned to normal levels. Indeed, salt is an important nutrient for the human body. Sodium, potassium, and calcium salts are essential for all nerve cell activity, for muscle movement, and for the osmotic balance of body fluids. Medical science of today stresses the importance of natural foods, and bread, an important part of our diet, meets the body’s daily requirement of sodium. Thus adding salt to our food and exhausting the kidneys is not necessary.

Various clinical studies on humans have shown that excessive salt in the diet increases blood pressure levels. Salt has been used in the human diet for the past 8000 years, since the beginning of agriculture and animal farming. A human’s normal requirement of sodium is 8–10 mmol/per day. However, in economically developed countries, the daily sodium intake of most people has risen to 140–150 mmol per day (8–9 grams), almost 14–15 times more than the normal physiological requirement. In a study carried out on the subject, 10,000 blood pressure sufferers in 32 countries were closely monitored, and the results showed that as the salt intake was reduced, blood pressure levels dropped. In another study, 24 hour urine samples were analyzed, and here too, a low sodium diet showed a decline in blood pressure.

One of the many health risks of alcohol is its serious affect on blood pressure. Clinical studies have proved that the excessive intake of alcohol causes high blood pressure. The frequent cases of high blood pressure in societies of the former socialist countries and economically developed countries of the present are mainly connected to the excessive intake of alcohol.

As a result, the number of high blood pressure cases in the world has exceeded that of contagious diseases, and this is closely connected to our eating and drinking habits. If humans continue to excessively eat and drink as they are at the present, most people will be suffering from high blood pressure in the very near future.

Let me give you some everyday examples. For instance, most customer complaints (eighty percent) stem from a very few reasons (twenty percent). Eighty percent of problems in a company are caused by twenty percent of the employees. This idea is often applied to data such as sales figures: twenty percent of clients are responsible for eighty percent of sales volume. Eighty percent of our expenditure, stems from twenty percent of the items we buy. If we can differentiate cheap items from expensive items, then, we can develop ways to save on our shopping. We need to realize that we make eighty percent of our phone calls to the same twenty percent of our acquaintances. If we look at the clothes we wear, we realize that eighty percent of the time we wear the same twenty percent of them. We can also use this principle to plan our daily schedule and to order things according to their importance. For example, we may calculate the length of the time to do something and determine the importance of the thing we are to do. We calculate the percentages according to all the things waiting to be done. Later, with twenty percent of our time, we put our attention and energy into the things which carry eighty percent of the importance. We leave the things with twenty percent importance to later because those things require eighty percent of our time. What needs to be observed here is that quality is preferred over quantity. Some of us postpone tasks which can be done in a short time, due to the belief that we can somehow do it later. According to the Pareto Principle, it is not a good idea to delay things which are important in terms of quality even if they take a bit of our time to carry out.

Bediüzzaman used this rule very intelligently in his works in terms ofat explaining the wisdom behind seeming realities. manay-Ii harfi. For example, in the answer to the second question under the Twelfth Letter, Bediüzzaman uses the Pareto Principle persuasively as an answer to the following question: “As sending Prophets has caused many or even most people to become unbelievers because of Satan’s seduction, how can you say that creating evil things and acts is good, that raising Prophets is a mercy for humanity?”

In this answer, Bediüzzaman emphasizes the importance of quality over quantity. According to him, quantity has no importance in relation to quality. Moreover, Bediüzzaman shows that it is not an evil to lose atheists and hypocrites, who are many but less important in terms of quality, when you compare them with prophets, saints, and the righteous who are few, in terms of quantity. It is interesting that he uses a twenty percent to eighty percent ratio in each of his two examples:

“As quality is always far more important than quantity, we should consider only qualitative values in making our judgment. To cite an example: 100 date-stones are worth only 100 cents until they are planted and grow into palm trees. But if only 20 grow into trees and the remaining 80 rot because of over-watering, how can you say it is an evil to plant and water them? Everyone would agree that it is wholly good to have 20 trees at the expense of 80 date-stones, since 20 trees will give 20,000 date-stones.

Again, 100 peacock eggs are worth maybe 500 cents. But if she sits on the eggs and only 20 hatch, who can say it is an evil that 80 eggs were spoiled in return for 20 peacocks? On the contrary, it is wholly good to have 20 peacocks at the expense of 80 eggs, because the 20 peacocks will be worth far more than the eggs and will lay more eggs.”

In another example, Bediüzzaman explains why he remained distant from politics in the Thirteenth Letter as a response to the third question:

“…We are travelers in this world. Basing myself on the Qur’an’s light, I say that humanity has reached a marsh in this century. Whole caravans of humanity are trying, with great difficulty, to advance in this putrid marsh. A small minority follow a safe way and some have extricated themselves, but the majority continues to flail around in the dark. Although 20 percent of this majority seems quite happy with this struggle, mistaking its dirt and filth for musk and ambergris, whereas the other 80 percent knows that it is in a filthy marsh but cannot see the safe path (leading them out). We must bring that majority out of the marsh. To do so, we must use a mace to knock the 20 percent back to its senses or provide the 80 percent with a light to see a way to safety. I see that most people hold maces, but almost no one gives light to the helpless 80 percent. If some still have light, they are not trusted because they also carry maces. People are afraid of being beaten after being drawn to the light. Besides, the light may be extinguished

if the mace is broken.”

In this example, Bediüzzaman states that the first thing that needs to be done for those who have deviated from the right path is to show them the Qur’anic truths instead of helping them through politics which is associated with hitting someone on the head. Again it is interesting to see that Bediüzzaman used the Pareto Principle to explain the example. Bediüzzaman considers human beings to be walking in a dark swamp. Moreover, he believes that the priority is to enlighten most of the people’s road (eighty percent) with a small (twenty percent) effort, rather than to help a small number of people (twenty percent) with a large amount of political power (eighty percent of effort).

In the Twenty-Eighth Letter’s seventh matter, Bediüzzaman emphasizes that twenty percent of scholars surpasses the other eighty percent in terms of quality while he is examining how strong truths seem weak in the hands of weak people: “Eighty percent of mankind are not investigative scholars who can penetrate to reality, recognize reality as reality and accept it as such. They rather accept matters by way of imitation, which they hear from acceptable and reliable people, in consequence of their good opinions of them.”

Therefore, it is possible to say that Bediüzzaman, an investigative observer, found the Pareto Principle without using any contemporary methods such as surveys. Besides being known as an eminent Islamic Scholar and Saint of Islam admired by most of the people, Bediüzzaman use of mathematics, physics, astronomy, and sociology in the Risale-i Nur show us how to contemplate the universe using modern science.

Persuasion through Probability in the Risale-i Nur

Bediüzzaman often uses mathematical logic and probability in his works which were written to save the faith from evil (thought). For instance, under the section on the stratagems of Satan in the Twenty-Ninth Letter, Bediüzzaman states how harmful it can be if you use the feeling of fear against its purpose of creation. He gives an example of how he persuaded a person, who had to fear of drowning, to embark on a boat willingly without any fear through giving an excellent example of probability:

An important man (may God’s mercy be upon him) was afraid to travel by boat. One evening, we went to Galata bridge to take the ferry to Eyup.

He did not want to get on, saying that he feared he would drown. When I asked him how many boats were in the Golden Horn, he replied that there might be as many as one thousand. When I asked him how many boats sank each year, he replied usually one or two, and sometimes none.

I made this analogy: “Since a year has 365 days, your chance of drowning is 1:365,000. Why does such a small chance scare you?” I asked: “How much longer do you expect to live?” He answered: “Maybe 10 years; I am old already.” I contunied: “As there are 3,650 days in 10 years, your chance of dying today is 1:3,650. But since we do not know when we will die, you could die at any time. So repent and weep! Write your last will and testament!”

Seeing the truth in my words, he got on the boat even though trembling. On the boat, I told him: “God Almighty placed fear in our nature so that we might preserve our life, not ruin it. He did not give us fear to make life an unbearable burden full of pain and torment. If there is a risk of 1:2 or 1:3 or 1:4, or at most 1:5 or 6, it may be permissible and tolerable to fear and avoid the risk. But to fear a chance of 1:20, 1:30, or 1:40 is groundless suspicion, a sort of paranoia that changes life into a torment.”

Despite the plethora of predictions for centuries by prominent scientists and intellectuals regarding the disappearance of belief in God, today it is evident that the secularization thesis has failed. In addition to supporting the claim that religion is as vital today as it was centuries ago, this article will try to provide a spectrum of the ideas and predictions great thinkers have conveyed about the prognosis of religious belief in human history and try to indicate some essential questions they have neglected, as well as some fallacies involved in these ideas.

In the nineteenth century, trapped in his nihilism, Nietzsche sends his God into the graveyard and declares “God is dead!” Then, he makes his madman cry out, “We have killed him-you and I. We are his murderers.” Despite his boldness and frenzy, Nietzsche is not celebrating, he is mourning. He feels abandoned in his dark cave of nihilism and loses hope. God is not there anymore watching over him above the clouds, and his despair makes him weep on behalf of humankind. Nietzsche suffers intensely because even if we are mistaken and God is actually not dead, we have killed Him and now we are doomed to live our lives without Him; Nietzsche realized that God is dead in the hearts of modern men-killed by rationalism and science.

Everyone was astonished at Nietzsche’s audacity; however, he was certainly not the first one to pronounce or predict God’s death. Voltaire, as early as the eighteenth century, had predicted that the end of religion would arrive within the next fifty years. Less than a century later, the French thinker Auguste Comte announced that, as a result of modernization and the emergence of the science of sociology, human society would soon outgrow the theological stage of social evolution and moral judgments would be based on social science rather than religion. Similar to the claim of Enlightenment thinkers, great names such as Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud, as well as the pessimistic intellectuals of the post-World War II era, predicted the decline of religion and proposed that the secularization of the world was imminent.

Moreover, attempts to send God to the graveyard have continued in recent history, perhaps becoming even more impudent. The debate on the issue has gone so far as to feature on the cover of Time Magazine in 1966; the question “Is God dead?” was written in bold red on a black cover, leaving a lasting impact on peoples’ minds. During the psychedelic 1960s, a student magazine in Atlanta even ran a satirical obituary of God in newspaper style: “ATLANTA, Ga. , Nov. 9-God, creator of the universe, principal deity of the world’s Jews, ultimate reality of Christians, and most prominent of all divinities, died late yesterday during major surgery undertaken to correct a massive diminishing influence. Reaction from the world’s great and from the man in the street was uniformly incredulous.” During such a time of non-theology, the students were apparently not mourning the loss of God anymore; on the contrary, they were elated to send a disturbingly mighty authority to the grave. The striving, self-centered generation of the new era was denying its need for belief in God. Feeling a newfound power through scientific advancement and an unprecedented knowledge about everything imaginable, it was a fierce rebellion, a cry of freedom that would eventually end in despair.

Today, one cannot help but wonder if humankind is still rebelling against the existence of its creator or have we gone through a catharsis and found the God we had once lost? Have the rumors of God’s death reached the rest of the world? Could gigantic machines and tons of pages of knowledge stuffed into encyclopedias have made belief in God unnecessary? When meteorologists gained a more profound knowledge of the causes of thunderstorms and achieved the ability to predict them a week before they happened, did that disprove the existence of God? Could people live their lives overlooking the questions about existence that have always intrigued their minds?

It appears not.

Today, it looks as if everything has not turned out, in any way, to be as predicted. A contemporary sociologist of religion, Rodney Stark, points out that the number of people who believe in God is very high today; this number is considerable, even in Europe where secularization originated.² To support his claim, he gives the example of Iceland, which was claimed to be the first fully secularized nation. Based on the 1990 World Values Survey report, 81 percent of Icelanders expressed confidence that there is life after death, 88 percent said that they believe humans have souls, and 82 percent reported that they pray to God. The survey also reveals that in Iceland only 2.4 percent of the population describe themselves as “convinced atheists.” Moreover, recent studies report empirical data which show that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God and that proportion has never dipped below 94 percent³ (Hadden 1987). In Religious Change in America, Andrew M. Greeley⁴ reports that in every Gallup Poll that has asked whether the respondent believes in God, more than ninety percent say they do. In addition, ninety percent of Americans pray to God, three-fourths believe in the possibility of life after death, and about seventy percent think that “people who have led good lives” receive some reward in the hereafter, while more than fifty percent also believe in hell. Importantly, neither of these percentages has changed significantly in the last fifty years. In addition to the statistics in the U.S., a study conducted among European scientists has found that the scientists who believe in God outnumber those who do not. In a 1996 study, Larson and Witham found that only 14.5 percent of eminent scholars in Europe said that they had no definite belief in God.⁵ The sociologist Peter L. Berger, who, after being a strong advocate for the secularization thesis during 1960s, felt compelled to recant his earlier claims and acknowledges that “the world today, with some exceptions, is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever. This means that a whole body of literature by historians and social scientists, loosely labeled the ‘secularization thesis,’ is essentially mistaken.”⁶ Similarly, sociologists Rodney Stark and Roger Finke suggest it is time to bury the secularization thesis: “after nearly three centuries of utterly failed prophesies and a misrepresentation of both present and past, it seems time to carry the secularization doctrine to the graveyard of failed theories and there to whisper ‘requiescat in pace.’”⁷

In light of all these failed predictions and current statistical facts, one cannot help but wonder where those early scholars and their many followers were mistaken, and why and how belief in God is still so high today all over the world. From the very beginning of the debate, the predictions of the secularization thesis were twofold: since the Enlightenment, a decline in both individual piety and religious influence in state affairs has been expected by the intellectuals. As far as the influence of religion in the social system is concerned, the predictions have turned out to be partially true. The church lost its once secure and absolute authority in state affairs and accordingly its power in society also diminished. Europe then went through a metamorphosis and apparently emerged as a giant power that had grown too fast to be caught up with. This temporal relationship made many scientists speculate that it was God who had handicapped human advancement on earth. Marx claimed belief in God was the opium of the masses, which made people sedated, numb, pacified, and too content with the world. For him, belief in God made people accept their lot in life and it caused a lack of drive to succeed in a world which was mortal and worthless compared to eternal life in heaven. Consequently, once the opium were taken away from the miserable men, human advancement and the evolution of society would follow.

This mentality that linked the birth of science and technology to the disappearance of God introduced science as the antonym of religion. As a result, the predictions that a decrease in belief in God would cause an increase in scientific advancement, while an increase in knowledge would bring about a decline in religion were supported by many. In other words, the assumption was that once the ignorance was eradicated, the opium would be unnecessary, and the secularization of the world would be imminent.

There was a major fallacy in their way of thinking as far as the origin of religion was concerned. Many thinkers assumed that religion and the idea of “God” were fabrications by the human species; they served as a vehicle for humans to make sense of the mysteries of natural and supernatural incidences. For them, religion was a solace for human suffering and powerlessness. According to their view, if God was nothing but a consolation in times of suffering, a safe harbor in times of powerlessness and scarcity, and a meaningful explanation for everything that happens out of our control, then God could just as well disappear and be replaced by knowledge and science. For instance, in the past it was understandable that when ancient tribes could not comprehend why their fellow tribesman had started to act strangely they had only one explanation: he was possessed by evil spirits.

The supporters of the secularization doctrine incorrectly imagined that once humankind had attained more information about neurotransmitters, hormones, and acquired the ability to interpret magnetic resonance imaging of brain waves, such advancements in science and technology should eradicate the need for supernatural explanations and also the need for god/s. Yet, it is apparent that science has not succeeded in replacing the belief in God in peoples’ lives.

In his famous book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute since 1993, suggests that the main deficiency with these predictions was the fact that they did not take into account the kinds of questions we humans ask, such as “Why am I here?” “Where did I come from?” and “What happens after I die?” From an evolutionary perspective, on which the predictions about the end of religion and particularly belief in God relied, these existential questions were unnecessary since all existence and life in the universe started by chance after the Big Bang. Accordingly, there was no specific purpose to existence in this world and thereby no such possibility of a Hereafter. All human distress, fear and weakness in this regard were the result of ignorance, and thus only a full knowledge of the universe would be able to eradicate them. However, despite enormous advancements in science and technology, people in the modern world do not seem to be fully satisfied with such answers. It is evident that the great steps that have been taken to eliminate human ignorance have not been able to prevent high rates of suicide, depression, or new searches for meaning, even in the most developed countries.

One of the reasons why belief in God has survived, whereas the idea of the secularization of the world has not, lies in the fact that, contrary to the cold and cruel answers of the materialistic perspective which dooms people into nonexistence forever, belief in God attributes a purpose for life and existence in this world by virtue of the afterlife. Death, a primal fear of human beings, in this regard, is not non-existence: things do not go into nothingness, they rather pass from one sphere of reality to another; they go from the manifest world to the world of the unseen; they turn from the world of change and transience to the world of eternity. Moreover, since the material aspect of the world is transient and mortal it is full of pain for humans. We human beings are endowed with a desire for immortality and an intense love for existence.

It is belief in God that fulfills this desire and love for existence by guaranteeing an afterlife. In addition, belief attributes purpose and meaning to all beings and events on the earth. The denial of an afterlife turns human existence into worthlessness and human nature can never be satisfied by such emptiness. Yet, without belief in a merciful Creator, all beings are condemned to meaninglessness. This meaninglessness produces a feeling of loneliness for humans, as all calamities and acts that incur evil or harm are attributed to chance alone. Belief in God, however, saves human beings from loneliness; the fears and grievous sorrows that loneliness produces can only be eliminated through reliance on God’s mercy. That is, believers know that there is One who listens to them, who is aware of their most trivial needs, and whose power encompasses everything with His boundless mercy.

Contrary to the unkind path that non-belief offers to people, belief in God appeals to the spiritual side of humans, a side that has been widely ignored for so long by Enlightenment thinkers, as well as by modern intellectuals and scientists. While science helps people partially to understand the questions of how, it falls short in explaining why: why I am here, why things happen the way they do, why they all end. Because these existential questions are perennial and the solutions are beyond rational determination, people today, as in the past, will find those answers in another realm: the realm of the Unseen.

Notes

1. Tillich, Paul. (1957). Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper & Row.

2. Stark, Rodney. (1999). “Secularization, R.I.P” Sociology of Religion. 60(3):270.

3. Hadden, J.K.1987. Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory. Social Forces 65:587-611.

4. Greeley, A.M.1989. Religious Change in America.Cambridge,MA.:Harvard University Press.

5. Larson, E.J., and L. Withan.1997.Belief in God and immortality among American scientists: A historical survey revisited. Nature 386:435.

6. Berger, Peter L (1999) The Desecularization of the World. Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center.

7. Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke. 2000. Acts of Faith. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. P.79

Enron in only the poster boy for the type of greed running rampant in today’s multinational corporate world. Despite the rhetoric spilling over the airwaves of the world media, the truth cannot stay hidden for very long in this age of information. The world’s current level of violence is tied directly to the greed of such corporations and so-called leaders who care nothing for the people’s general welfare. They have sold their souls, as the cliché goes, joined hands with Satan, and are ready to ride off into the sunset.

I am not referring to any particular country, people or hemisphere. The greed that we see today exists among all races, religions, and nations. Granted, some may be guiltier than others, especially in light of current world events, but the evil force of greed does not discriminate. Satan has used greed to dupe many people, even Muslims. As Abdullah Yusuf Ali comments in his Qur’anic translation: What an evil choice he makes in committing treason against his own Benefactor (Allah) by going after the petty baubles of this world’s wealth of fleeting gains. How eloquent and true. Greed is nothing but selling our fate in the akhirah (the Hereafter) for this world’s temporary cheap thrills “ often at a tremendous expense to others.

Some facts you should know

So just how bad has it gotten? To what degree has greed enveloped the entire world? The following provides a shocking glimpse:

– In a statement by the Institute for Policy Studies, the group said that 497 billionaires registered a whopping collective wealth of 1.54 trillion dollars. This is way above the combined gross national products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa, which stands at only 929.3 billion dollars, or those of the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North Africa 1.34 trillion dollars.1

– This collective wealth of the 497 is also greater than the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity, says IPS.2

– Last week, the U.S. government announced that it was building the biggest-ever war machine. Military spending will rise to $379 billion, of which $50 billion will pay for its ˜war on terrorism.’3

– The wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans grew an average $1.44 billion each from 1997-2000, for an average daily increase in wealth of $1,920,000 per person ($240,000 per hour, or 46,602 times the U.S. minimum wage).4

– Funds in the hands of U.S. money managers grew from $1.9 trillion in 1980 to $17 trillion in 2000. While those funds were under the control of fiduciaries (half the funds are due to tax incentives), the pay gap between top executives and production workers in the 362 largest U.S. companies soared from 42:1 in 1980 to 475:1 in 1999.5

– The financial wealth of the top one percent of U.S. households now exceeds the combined household financial wealth of the bottom 95 percent.6

– The top fifth of U.S. households claims 49.2 percent of national income while the bottom fifth gets by on 3.6 percent.7

Of course, these all refer to the U.S. However, the U.S. and the western world are not alone in being the culprits of such distorted wealth distribution and inequality. For example,

– In Indonesia, 61.7 percent of the stock market’s value is held by that nation’s fifteen richest families. The comparable figure for the Philippines is 55.1 percent and 55.3 percent for Thailand.8

The impact of such greed is devastating for the rest of the world. Consider these facts:9

– Eighty countries have per capita incomes lower than a decade ago. Sixty countries have grown steadily poorer since 1980.

– In 1960, the income gap between the fifth of the world’s people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest countries was 30:1. By 1990, the gap had widened to 60:1. By 1998, it had surged to 74:1.

– From 1995 to 1999, the world’s 200 wealthiest people doubled their net worth to $1,000 billion.

– Three billion people presently live on $2 or less per day, while 1.3 billion of those get by on $1 or less per day. With the global population expanding by 80 million each year, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn cautions that unless we address the challenge of inclusion, 30 years hence we may have 5 billion people living on $2 or less per day.

– Two billion people suffer from malnutrition, including 55 million in industrial countries. Thus, in 3 decades, neoliberal-style globalization could create a world where 3.7 billion people suffer from malnutrition.

– The UNDP’s assessment: Development that perpetuates today’s inequalities is neither sustainable nor worth sustaining.

Although the above facts offer just a glimpse of the big picture, it is quite clear that the current policies of nations and their corporate entities are destructive, oppressive, and barriers to peace and justice. Such policies are making a select few rich beyond comprehension while the vast majority either barely survives or literally starves. This is our world’s hard and cold reality “ a reality that goes largely unchecked even among the educated masses of the developed world. Unfortunately, those same educated masses seem content to be brainwashed by a corporate-controlled media that tells them next to nothing about the world’s true condition. According to those who control information, people are on a need-to-know basis, and most of what is truly important the people simply do not need to know!

A worldwide epidemic

This is truly a worldwide epidemic, for it can be found in the third world as much as (if not more than) the developed world. It is a problem, however, that can be addressed only at its roots. While living in both the U.S. and Southeast Asia, I have learned that these problems all stem from the same place. The appearances (e.g., people, cultures, and religions) may be different, but ultimately everything that ails us has the same root causes, as mentioned in the Qur’an. Greed is greed, whether it is that of Enron or some other corrupt entity somewhere else. It may look different and the people may speak a different language, but the ailment is the same, because underlying it all are the same diseases of the heart. This is precisely why the Qur’an is for humanity “ because we have so many fundamentals in common with our fellow human beings.

All of us are capable of harboring some of these booby traps of the soul (e.g., greed, injustice, envy, and hatred). This is why we cannot point fingers at one nation, person, or corporation. The diseases of the heart are killers, and they are killing, starving, and oppressing millions of innocent people. Thus we have to deal with the sickness’ cause, not just its symptoms. More war and destruction may eliminate some of the culprits, but it certainly will not rid the world of the problem, which is, ultimately, sickened human hearts feeding on ignorance.

Globalization

We must be wise at such times and seek out wisdom, not just information as to how the world works. Globalization, which is actually just a fancy innocuous-sounding term for the westernization and materialization of the entire planet, is not in most people’s best interests. In fact, some less well-known world leaders have been brave enough to acknowledge this. Malaysian prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamed has consistently spoken out against the dangers of globalization in its current guise. He considers it to be nothing more than the developed nations leveraging its huge capital advantages in order to exploit developing and underdeveloped nations.

By lining the pockets of weak, corrupt government leaders, multinational corporations are free to wreak havoc on the people, economies, and lands of weaker nations. Dr. Mahathir has said that capital must be equalized first if the current form of globalization is to have a truly equalizing effect on all nations’ economies. Developing countries must be protected and their own economies nurtured until they can compete on an even playing field. However, this is far from the case today. Thus, globalization in its current form allows developed nations to strip developing nations of their resources while spreading a culture of consumerism and materialism through their huge multinational corporate media and advertising machines.

A Qur’anic perspective

To further understand greed from a Qur’anic perspective, we should understand why God banned usury: Those who devour usury will not stand, except as stands one whom the Evil One has driven to madness by his touch (2:275). When referring to this verse in his Tafsir al-Qur’an, Daryabi says: According to the socialist writers of today, money is lent by them who have abundance and returns to them to increase that abundance, the increase being the unpaid dues of labor, which is the only source of wealth “ the rich are thus made richer and the poor poorer, by every fresh act of taking interest, and the stability of social organism is disturbed. This analysis is perfectly consistent with the world economy today. Look around “ interest is everywhere, wealth is in the hands of a few, and the gap between rich and poor is growing ever wider. The result? The social organism is grossly disturbed.

This is why the Book is called Al-Qur’an al-Hakim (the wise Qur’an). It is a book full of wisdom. The evils of usury, greed, and their ugly companions are forces that have destroyed entire peoples throughout history. They are problems that humanity cannot shake, especially when we turn away from the Creator’s wisdom and guidance.

Our world’s current course, with the haves and the have nots growing apart at an exponential rate, cannot be sustained. Somewhere, somehow, and at some point there will be a monumental adjustment. A world economic system that is so unequal, so unjust, and so divisive cannot last for long. The powers-that-be currently controlling the world economy are deluded if they think that they can continue their corrupt policies while 95 percent of the world sits back and does nothing. Sooner or later, it will come to a crashing halt.

Islam provides a straightforward solution to this problem. Yet history has proven that until humanity can tackle the evil that lies within each person, we will never address the evils around us effectively. The solution is called fairness (justice) and cooperation. In our present capitalist-dominated world, such terms seem utopian. Unbridled competition is the name of the game and, moreover, there is no indication that this will change any time soon. Such over-competitiveness seeps into every aspect of life until entire societies distrust one another, become antisocial, and are completely dysfunctional from a social perspective. This is already the case in much of the western world.

Conclusion

Islam encourages people to come together, rely on one another, and commune. It already has the built-in, well-formulated systems to do it in an inclusive way one that is neither elitist nor harsh. Islam says that when people unite to build and do good works out of a desire to achieve goodness for all and His approval, they will earn His pleasure. When humanity is granted God’s succor, the sky is the limit in terms of what can be accomplished. The glorious history of Islamic civilization proves this.

This is how the Prophet erected the perfect society in seventh-century Madinah. In that society, people worked, lived, and worshipped together. Muslims, non-Muslims, and different peoples and tribes co-existed peacefully, all agreeing to live under one leader in a perfectly just system. That leader was a man who desired nothing for himself and only the best for his fellow believers and neighbors. Until those with envy and hatred in their hearts spoiled the peace, Madinah showed the world how belief in God, cooperation, and living for the common good are the keys to peaceful coexistence. This can never happen again until humanity is willing and able to fight the sicknesses lying deep within each person’s heart.

Footnotes

1. Steve Smith, World Billionaires Still Richer than Half of Humanity. Online at Islamonline.net, 2002.
2. Ibid., 2002
3. John Pilger, The Colder War, The Mirror 20 (30 January 2002).
4. Online at www.forbes.com.
5. Business Week (7 April 2000), 100.
6. Edward N. Wolff, Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership (paper for the Benefits and Mechanisms for Spreading Asset Ownership in the United States conference, New York University, December 10-12, 1998.)
7. Online at www.census.gov [Table H-2].
8. Stijn Claessens, Simeon Djankov, and Larry H. P. Lang, Who Controls East Asian Corporations? (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1999).
9. Jeff Gates, Modern Fashion or Global Fascism, Tikkun: A Bi-Monthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture, and Society (Jan.-Feb. 2002).

Enviromnental damage ramains a growing concern. Despite rigorous energy efficiency programs and research and development (R&D) efforts on cleaner energy technologies in most developed countries, no developing country views these as priorities. And they have a case: Developed countries, which enjoyed high economic growth for decades by ignoring the environmental consequences, are hindering developing countries’ economic growth. On the other hand, representatives from developed countries say that we are all in the same boat and will sink together if developing countries do not pay attention to environmental consequences.

In December 1997, world leaders gathered in Kyoto to address the problem of global warming and to decide which countries should cut emissions and to what extent. Not surprisingly, developing countries objected to any restriction that might limit their economic growth. Such discussions will become more intense in the aftermath of the Kyoto Protocol.

This article will not address the issue of environmental reparations. Rather, it will discuss the energy markets’ current situation and short-term future trends.

Basic Properties of the Energy Systems

Present-day energy systems have several basic characteristics. All policy makers dealing with energy systems should know these basics by heart.

First, energy systems develop slowly because they require significant capital and infrastructure that can be replaced only gradually. There are two important consequences resulting from this fact:

•Intense capital requirements are a strong barrier to average-sized firms. Thus, energy systems are seldom run by private enterprises. In most countries they are constructed and run by the state, and a separate government body deals with energy issues. Energy systems have been dominated by heavy regulations even in most market-oriented economies. The recent trend of deregulation is an exception rather than the norm.

•Even if a state realizes that current energy systems can be improved significantly (e.g., switching to other fuel types or deregulating the market), making changes to a huge, functioning infrastructure is a slow and painful process. It is relatively easy to make changes during the initial stages of an energy system. But as time passes, this becomes more difficult.

As in most cases, good planning is essential. A state must be very careful when building its energy systems, and should pay attention to underlying energy market trends. Important lessons can be learned from the long history of mistakes committed by developing countries. And if a developing country fails to keep up with recent trends, it may find itself trapped by its own hands in an inherently inefficient system for decades.

Second, energy systems are heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Historically, coal has been a prominent energy resource in most countries. Despite its widely acknowledged negative impact on human health and the environment, it still dominates energy systems in such developing countries as India and China. In most countries, oil is the primary energy source.

Oil was one of the most influential key factors of the twentieth century. Just by looking at the traffic on our teeming highways or the modern political landscape, we can understand how profoundly oil has changed the way we live and handle international politics. In the light of the oil crises of 1973 and 1980, the reverse-shock of 1986, and another crisis during the Gulf War of 1990, the need to diversify away from oil becomes abundantly clear.

Environmental concerns also support the case against oil. This is how natural gas, a slightly cleaner fossil fuel, gradually entered the picture. Given the current energy systems’ dependence on these fossil fuels and the fact that energy systems change slowly, oil, coal and natural gas will continue to be dominant for years.

Third, the driving force behind the dynamic of switching from one fuel type to another is economics. Fuel types with smaller unit costs survive in the long run. Oil, for example, now has the lowest unit cost (cost per unit of energy) in most regions of the world.1

Given this, cleaner fuel (e.g., solar energy) still have a long way to go before becoming economically viable. Why would you pay $5 for what you can get for $3? Countries that use non-oil energy resources do this for a number of reasons, such as they do not have natural resources and so transporting oil ends up costing more, or they have abundant natural energy resources of other types. But, in general, economics is the most important issue here.

Introducing New Fuels

What trajectory does the unit cost follow when a new fuel is introduced? Consider photovoltaic (PV) cells. The term photovoltaic refers to a family of technologies that convert light directly into electricity. PV technology is an appealing alternative-it is a renewable, environmentally benign, and domestically secure energy source. It is modular and can be scaled up to meet demand.2 However, unit cost is currently high compared to fossil fuels.

A new technology’s unit cost is believed to follow a learning (or experience) curve as a function of installed capacity. As shown in Figure 1, technologies may experience declining costs due to their increasing adoption by society. This decline may be attributed to several factors:

• Technology innovation and manufacturing improvements: Costs may decline due to a better understanding of the underlying science, progress in related fields, or via learning by doing as well as learning by using.

• Economies of scale: Unit cost is a function of total production. Products produced in large quantities have lower unit costs. Most new fuel types have high unit costs, and demand is too low to encourage large-scale production. It almost seems paradoxical. But there are ways to break this cycle. Regulations encouraging usage of new fuel types may be enforced, consumers who have priorities other than cost may be targeted to expand the current market, or the cost may drop low enough for the technology to become attractive even for low production levels.

In achieving economies of scale, consumer demand should he considered. A major concern for the end-use consumer is convenience. The value of oil would be much lower if gas stations were not located all over the country. The same issue applies to fuel cells and electric cars. They will not be as convenient as conventional cars until the proper infrastructure exists.

Since 1960s, cooperative investments by manufacturers and governments have resulted in the accumulation of experience within the solar industry and the subsequent cost reduction of PV systems. Significant cost reductions have occurred in both the PV modules that house the solar cells, and the ancillary components (known as balance-of-system). Between 1968 and 1998, the global cumulative installed capacity of PV modules doubled more than thirteen times, from 95 kW to 950 MW, while costs ($/Wp) were reduced by an average of 20.2% for each doubling.4

Trends for Different Fuel Types

After this overview of energy systems, lets look at the trends for specific fuel types. Figure 2 is taken from International Energy Outlook 2000 (IEO2000), an annual report published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).5 It displays projections of energy usage by fuel type up to 2020. The highlights following the figure are summarized from the reports contents.

Coal: Carbon dioxide is a very effective greenhouse gas and contributes significantly to global warming. Since coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel, global climate change debates focus on reducing its use. Coal use also has significant public health consequences, due to particulate matter emissions. Historically, coal has been a major source of energy. Although it has lost market share to petroleum products, natural gas, and nuclear power in the last decades, it remains a key source of energy, especially for generating electricity. In the IEO2000 reference case, coals share of total energy consumption falls only slightly, from 24 percent in 1997 to 22 percent in 2020 (Figure 3). Its historical share is nearly maintained, because large increases in energy use are projected for developing Asian countries, where coal continues to dominate many national fuel markets. China and India are projected to account for 97 percent of the worlds total increase in coal use.

Oil: Oil use will grow in absolute terms, but even optimistic oil supply scenarios predict that its share in the fuel mix will decline gradually. Despite efforts to reduce reliance on Middle Eastern oil, as well as advances in technical capability, new oil reserves are not compensating for depleted ones. The experts estimates of vast oil reserves in the Caspian and Tarim basins proved to be somewhat high, and the latest probes have been partially disappointing. According to EIA estimates, the share of the Persian Culf supplies is likely to increase in the coming years. Economic theory says that prices rise as supply declines. Oil prices have been quite volatile and can be expected to remain so in the future, principally as the result of unforeseen political and social circumstances. Without attempting to predict any crisis, the IEO2000 forecast shows a gradual rise in world oil prices. Oil currently provides a larger share of world energy consumption than any other energy source and is expected to remain in that position throughout the forecast period. Its share of total energy consumption declines slightly, however, from 39 percent in 1997 to 38 percent in 2020, as countries in many parts of the world switch to natural gas and other fuels, particularly for electricity generation. World oil consumption is projected to increase by 1.9 percent annually over projection period. Most of the growth in oil use is projected for the transportation sector, where few alternatives are currently economical.

Natural Gas: Natural gas remains the fastest growing component of global energy consumption. Over the IEO2000 forecast period, its use is projected to more than double in the reference case, reaching 167 trillion cubic feet. The natural gas share of total energy consumption increases from 22 percent in 1997 to 29 percent in 2020. It also accounts for the largest increment in electricity generation. Combined-cycle gas turbine power plants offer some of the highest commercially available plant efficiencies, and natural gas is environmentally attractive because it emits less sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and particulate matter than either oil or coal.

World Energy Consumption Shares Type: 1970-2000

In the industrialized world, natural gas consumption has the largest projected increase among the major fuels, increasingly becoming the choice for new power generation because of its environmental and economic advantages. Its incremental use in developing countries is expected to supply both power generation and other uses, such as town gas and fuel for industry. Despite concerns about the extent of natural gas reserves worldwide, current proven reserves suffice for this markets steady development without a substantial price increase.

Nuclear Power: The prospects for nuclear power are uncertain, despite a projected growth rate of 2.5 percent per year in total electricty demand through 2020. In the IEO2000 reference case, global nuclear capacity is projected to increase to 368 gigawatts in 2010 and then gradually fall to 303 gigawatts in 2020. Aggressive plans to expand nuclear capacity, mainly in Asia, lead to a near-term increase. However, plant retirements in America and other countries exceed total new additions worldwide, and produce a decline later in the forecast. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA] is one of the authorities on energy issues.

IIASA projections [which extend until 2100] hold a slightly pessimistic view of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy production has stagnated for several decades, and IIASA suggests that this will continue. Currently, nuclear energy is prominent in only a handful of countries. Not many nuclear plants are being built, and existing ones are being dismantled. With large up-front capital costs, plant safety, and recycling nuclear material after dismantling issues, this option is becoming less and less attractive. Public opposition, already strong in the US and Europe, is growing in Asia. Nuclear safety issues moved to the forefront in Asia in 1999 after several leaks at nuclear power plants in South Korea and China, and the serious accident in a reprocessing facility in Tokaimura, Japan. Such events are likely to raise concerns about Asias aggressive plans for nuclear capacity expansion. IIASA predicts that if a safer and cheaper new generatinn of nuclear plants is introduced, nuclear powers ultimate share in fuel mix will grow. Otherwise, it eventually will come to an end.

Renewables: The development of renewable resources is constrained in the IEO2000 reference case projections by expectations that fossil fuel prices will remain relatively low, and that, as a result, renewables will have a difficult time competing. Failing a strong global commitment to environmental programs, such as the limitation and reduction of greenhouse gases outlined in the Kyotu Protocol, it is difficult to foresee significant and widespread increases in renewable energy use. Modest growth in renewabte energy is projected to continue, maintaining an 8 percent share of total energy consumption. Nevertheless, in the long run, as other fossil fuel types become more expensive due to depletion and R&D efforts push the unit cost further down, new opportunities will emerge. Even conservative estimates predict that the worlds energy will rely considerably on renewables before 2100.7

Conclusion

In this article,we highlighted several basic characteristics of energy systems, and drew attention to some underlying trends for particular fuel types. Based on this information, we can say that:Energy systems are capital-intensive and hard to change once they have been built. Therefore, developing countries should track energy system trends closely and build their energy systems according to their future needs. The most important factor influencing the decision of which energy source to use is economics. Until a resources unit cost is competitive with others, it will not enjoy widespread acceptance and usage. Fossil fuels will dominate energy markets in the short run. The shares of coal and oil in the fuel mix will remain relatively constant until 2020, while the market for natural gas will expand rapidly. Nuclear power will survive only if a new generation of safer and cheaper reactors is introduced. Renewables will be the ultimate choice of the future. Currently, however, they cannot compete successfully on cost with conventional fuels.

Footnotes

1. Although the cost of extraction rises as the amount of oil remaining underground decreases, extraction technology also advances and pushes the cost down. Transporting oil from the field to the marketplace is added to the extraction (or purchasing) cost.
2. Christopher Harmon, Experience Curves of Photovoltaic Technology (March 2000). The entire report is available on IIASA web site: http: www.iiasa.ac.at/Publications/Documents lR-00-014.pdf
3. Netherlands Energy Research Foundation (ECN at Petten), “Endogenous Technological Change in Energy System Models.” Paper presented at the 1999 IIASA conference.
4. IIASA-WEC. 1998.
5. International Energy Outlook 2000 is available on the EIAs Web site: http: www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/index.html.
6. N. Nakicenovic, A. Gruebler, and A. McDonald, Global Energy Perspectives (Cambridge. UK: 1998).
7. Experts differ over what exactly is included in this category. For practical purposes, renewables cover all energy sources except coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. Therefore this group includes, but is not limited to, hydroelectricity, wave, wind, biomass, and solar energy.

But this has started to change. Increasingly, professionals from respected institutions are conducting scientific studies of the effects of faith in healing. Recent conferences at Harvard, the Mayo Clinic, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) signal this change, as does major media coverage on PBS, NBC Nightly News, CNN, and CBS This Morning. Below we give examples of such scientific studies, the people behind them, and their findings.

Dr. Herbert Benson

Dr. Herbert Benson is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the founding president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Boston’s Deaconess Hospital. As the author of 150 scientific papers and six books, Benson has made important contributions to our understanding of the physiology involved in the healing effects of faith.(1)

As a young cardiologist working with people suffering from high blood pressure, Benson noticed that their blood pressure was the highest during office visits. He reached this conclusion after noticing that after treating his patients with anti-hypertensive medicines to lower their blood pressure, they would report such symptoms as fainting. This indicated that the adjusted blood pressure was generally too low. Since doses were set according to measurements made during the visit, the calibration was correct. He concluded that their blood pressure should have been lower before or after the visit.

To establish a model for stress-induced hypertension, he stopped his routine in cardiology and returned to physiology research at Harvard Medical School. Once when he was studying monkeys, about 15 young people involved with Transcendental Meditation asked him to study their responses to stress. Electrodes were attached to their chests and scalps to measure their heart waves and brain waves. Masks collected their breath as they exhaled, so their metabolism and rate of breathing could be measured. Then baseline measurements were taken while they sat quietly for 20 minutes. The same measurements were taken again while they meditated for 20 minutes, and then one last time while they sat quietly without meditating. The individuals had a 17 percent decrease in their metabolism during meditation, and a 20 percent drop in their rate of breathing. Also the frequencies of brain waves were lowered.

Benson identified two basic components of Transcendental Meditation: meditation and prayers involving the repetition of a word, sound, or movement with the out-breath; and passively setting aside other thoughts when they come to mind and returning to the repetition.

When he studied various religions and cultures, he found these essential elements in virtually every one of them. The earliest account was in Hinduism, where there were accounts of individuals focusing on their breathing and repeating a phrase of scripture while disregarding every-day thoughts. The pattern was found in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Shintoism, Taoism, and Confucianism. He posited that this practice may be conducive to improved health perhaps by reducing parasympathetic nervous system responses to stress, known as the “fight or flight response”.*

Benson sees his work not as alternative medicine but rather as one leg of a three-legged stool. In his words: “One leg is pharmaceuticals, another leg is surgery and other procedures, and the third is self-care. That last leg includes nutrition, exercise, and the relaxation response. It’s vital not to neglect the last leg, because 60 to 90 percent of visits to doctors are for conditions related to stress, where employing pharmaceuticals and surgery is not effective.” (2)

Benson also found out that as much as faith inspires prayer, this form of prayer or meditation inspires health. He and his colleagues treated such conditions as hypertension and cardiac arrhythmia with the relaxation response, the common ingredient in his self-care program and prayer/meditation practices. They cured 75 percent of insomniacs, treated symptoms of depression in people with AIDS and cancer, and relieved nausea and vomiting related to chemotherapy. In a fertility program for infertile women that emphasizes self-care through relaxation response techniques, proper nutrition, and re-framing thinking patterns, 34 percent become pregnant in contrast to 15 percent in other programs.

Dr. David Larson

Psychiatrist David Larson is the president of the National Institute of Healthcare Research and author of the teaching workbook, The Forgotten Factor (co-authored with his wife Susan). In this book, he discusses the relationship between religion and health. Numbers supporting his work come from Gallup polls showing that 95 percent of Americans believe in God, and that although half believe in Hell, 80 percent sanguinely trust in a forgiving God. In addition, 40 percent of Americans attend worship services weekly.

During his psychiatric residency at Duke University, Larson asked a professor for some guidance on how to bring his faith into psychiatric practice. The response was: “Are you the type person who wants people to believe like you do?” Although he said he was not, the professor continued: “It is obvious you are going to hurt your patients.” He recalls that anyone who would bring up that subject would be quickly labeled as a fundamentalist.(3) But his later research and extensive publications have brought attention, which helped fund the National Institute for Healthcare Research. The Faith in Medicine program, which the institution funds, gives $10,000 grants to medical schools for courses on religion and health. Johns Hopkins and George Washington University are among the eleven schools that have received the grants.

Dr. Harold Koenig

Among the pioneers of the study of faith’s healing potential is Harold Koenig, an associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Spirituality, and Health at Duke University Medical Center. Koenig first noticed the significance of faith as a factor in medical recovery when he was a young family doctor. He was consulted about a patient who had been hospitalized for a month after hip surgery. Her husband had died of a sudden stroke, and she had slipped on ice at his funeral and fractured her hip. The surgeon warned him that she was emotionally vulnerable. Indeed, she had experienced events that normally would trigger clinical depression and thus undermine her recovery.

He was therefore surprised to find the old lady cheerful when he entered her room. She said: “What can I do for you, Doctor?” Koenig’s search for obvious signs of depression-fatigue, darkened or tear-reddened eyes, difficulty concentrating-indicated nothing. Upon further conversation, he discovered that she maintained her cheerful mood by reading the Bible. She told him: “If I wake up alone or afraid, I read my Bible or talk to God. He is always there, even when my loved ones are not. It’s the most important thing that keeps me going.”

Koenig was impressed. When she recovered with few complications, he felt compelled to study further the medical significance of such deep faith. Since that event, numerous patients have told him how their faith helped them cope, thus speeding their physical healing. His research team, which has studied thousands of Americans since 1984, has compiled powerful evidence that religious faith not only promotes overall good health, but also helps patients recover from serious illness.(4)

“By praying to God, patients acquire an indirect form of control over their illness.” They believe they are not alone in their struggle, and that God is personally interested in them. This safeguards them against the psychological isolation that batters so many seriously ill people. In a study of 455 elderly hospital patients, Koenig found that people who attended church more than once a week averaged about four days in the hospital. People who never or rarely attended church spent about ten to twelve days of hospitalization.

Dr. Dale Matthews

Dale Matthews is an associate professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC. As a young internist in the early 1980s, he met a patient with strong faith who would make a lasting impact on his life. The man said: “I am a devout Christian. If you’re going to be my doctor, I want you to pray with me” before allowing Matthews to treat him. Matthews had never shared his own faith with his patients, so at first he was reluctant. But nevertheless he joined hands with the man, who he hoped would keep quiet and keep the matter secret. After all, he did not want to be labeled “unscientific.” He was alarmed when the man’s booming voice filled the examination room. But Matthews had a crucial realization that day: His patient was a whole person, not a composite of symptoms and tests forming a “case.” This led him to become sensitive to signals indicating that religion is important to a patient. If someone says: “I hope from God that nothing bad shows up in these tests,” Matthews will say: “Tell me your thoughts about God.” He declares: “We cannot prove scientifically that God heals, but I believe we can prove that belief in God has a beneficial effect.” In his recently published book The Faith Factor, he incorporates religious wisdom, scientific research, and patients’ stories to make a case for the faith-health connection.(5)

Statistical Findings

Health care institutions are beginning to pay attention to the faith-health connection. Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, and the AAAS have sponsored conferences on spirituality and health. Nearly half of all American medical schools now offer courses on the topic. Below we give findings of some published studies on the topic.

• In a survey of 269 doctors at the 1996 meeting of the American Academy of Family Physicians, 99 percent said they thought religious beliefs could contribute to healing. When asked about their personal experiences, 63 percent of doctors said God intervened to improve their own medical conditions. Their patients agree even more enthusiastically that prayer is a powerful tool in healing. Polls by Time/CNN and USA Weekend show that about 80 percent of Americans believe spiritual faith or prayer can help people recover from illness or injury, and more than 60 percent think doctors should talk to patients about faith and even pray with those who request it.

• According to researchers at Columbia University, children whose religiously committed mothers are less likely to suffer from depression later in life.(6) In their study, 60 mothers and 151 children were followed over 10 years to determine if there was any relationship between a mother’s religious commitment and resulting depression in her children. The study found that daughters, but not sons, of women who considered religion to be highly important were 60 percent less likely to have a major depressive disorder at the 10-year followup. A second important factor linked with less depression was the degree to which the children embraced their mother’s religion. When the mother and child were members of the same religious denomination at the followup, daughters were 71 percent less likely to suffer from a major depressive disorder while sons were 84 percent less likely.

• Another significant finding of the study was that highly religious mothers were less likely to be depressed themselves.(7) Women for whom religion was highly important were 81 percent less likely to have major depression at the 10-year followup. This finding is consistent with other studies showing an inverse relationship between religiosity and depression. Several possible explanations exist for these findings. According to the researchers, highly religious mothers also were less likely to be divorced or exhibit poor social functioning—-both of which could contribute to depression in children. Another potential explanation comes from a recent study at the Medical College of Virginia, which found that religion can protect people from depression by buffering them against stressful life events.(8)

• A Dartmouth Medical School study found that heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in group activities and did not find comfort in religion. Within six months of surgery 21 patients died, but there were no deaths among 37 people who said they were “deeply religious.”

• A Yale University study of 2,812 elderly people found that those who never or rarely attended church had nearly twice the stroke rate of weekly church-goers.

• A survey of 5,286 Californians found that church members have lower death rates than nonmembers—regardless of such risk factors as smoking, drinking, obesity, and inactivity.

• Those with a religious commitment had fewer symptoms or had better health outcomes in seven out of eight cancer studies, four out of five blood pressure studies, four out of six heart disease studies, and four out of five general health studies. According to one research analysis, people with a strong religious commitment seem to be less prone to depression, suicide, alcoholism, and other addictions.

• Can others’ prayers help? In a 1988 study by cardiologists Randolph Byrd, 393 heart patients in San Francisco General Hospital Medical center were divided into two groups. One was prayed for by people around the country; the other did not receive any prayers from study participants. Patients did not know to which group they belonged. The group that was prayed for experienced fewer complications, fewer cases of pneumonia, fewer cardiac arrests, less congestive heart failure, and needed fewer antibiotics.(9)

• Researchers studying a sample population of 2,730 drawn from the Alameda County Study—a long-term research project of health and mortality—found that people who both attend religious services and participate in other activities through their place of worship receive protection from the stress of financial burdens, health issues, and other problems.

• In a study of nearly 600 severely ill hospital patients aged 55 and older, researchers measured 47 ways of coping. They discovered that patients who sought a connection with a benevolent God as well as support from clergy and church members were less depressed and rated their quality of life as higher, even after taking into account the severity of their diagnosis. Researchers also found that patients who gave spiritual support to others by praying for them or encouraging their faith also faired better emotionally.

• Another recent study conducted at Duke University revealed more striking results. In the first study to examine the role of religion in recovering from depression, researchers followed 87 patients aged 60 or older who were diagnosed with depressive disorder after being admitted to the hospital for a physical illness. They discovered that religion can help people recover from depression. In fact, the more spiritual the patient, the more quickly he or she recovered.(10)

Conclusion

Can faith really heal? According to some researchers, the answer is a definite yes. The study of the link between religious faith and physical healing is very young. But there are important signs that faith can have significant positive impact on health, complementing such conventional medical practices as pharmaceuticals and surgery. Increasingly, professionals from respected institutions are looking into the relationship of faith and healing via scientific methods. Once considered a taboo, studying the healing powers of faith is now taken seriously in scientific circles. Regardless of its results, the very existence of this effort promises to expand the possibilities of cooperation between science and faith, and lead to a better understanding of human nature. *Fight or Flight Response: Stress has been defined as the perception of threat or danger that requires behavioral change. Stress results in various bodily changes, including increased metabolism, and increases in heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, and blood flow to the muscles. These internal physiological changes prepare us to fight or run away, and thus stress reaction has been named the “fight or flight” response. The fight or flight response was first described by Harvard physiologist Dr. Walter B. Cannon. It is mediated by the increased release of adrenaline and noradrenalin (epinephrine and norepinephrine) into the blood stream.

References

1. Herbert Benson, Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief (Fireside: 1997).
2. “Mindful Healing, Technology Review,” Edited by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 1996.
3. Jessica Cohen, “The Greatest Story Never Told,” Utne Reader, No. 80, April 1997.
4. “Doctors Report: Faith Can Heal You,” Reader’s Digest, October 1998.
5. Dale A. Matthews, The Faith Factor: Proof of the Healing Power of Prayer, Penguin USA, 1999.
6. L. Miller, et al. “Religiosity and Depression: Ten-year Follow-up of Depressed Mothers and Offspring.” J. Am. Acad. Child Adolescent Psychiatry 1997; 36:10:1416-1425.
7. Ibid.
8. K. S. Kendler, et al. “Religion, Psychopathology, and Substance Use and Abuse: A Multi-measure, Genetic-Epidemiologic Study.” Am. J Psychiatry 1997; 154(3):322-329.
9. “Doctors Report: Faith Can Heal You,” Reader’s Digest, October 1998.
10. “Why Doctors Believe Faith is Powerful Medicine,” Reader’s Digest, October 1999.
11. http://www.nihr.org/media2/99_apr_stress.html