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  However, if your immune system responds weakly, you will contract the multibacillary (or lepromatous, or cutaneous) version—and will be much more severely affected by the disease.

  In this case, the skin is badly affected. The bacteria are not walled off in your tissues. They spread widely, travelling along the nerves, but do not stick to them (as they do if your immune system responds strongly). In the face, the bacteria make the skin thicker and corrugated, giving you what are called ‘leonine facies’. The nose is overloaded with bacteria, which can destroy the wall between the two nostrils, causing the nose to collapse.

  The Myth

  Leprosy can attack skin and nerves, causing areas of skin to lose both pigment and sensation. This is the key point about the myth.

  The nerve damage results in loss of sensation and motor function. It is this lack of sensation that results in the most tissue damage. If you don’t have feeling in your hands or feet, you are more likely to injure them—and then neither notice nor treat the damage. It is this frequent trauma that results from lost sensation that causes the tissue damage, not the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae rotting the flesh.

  Leprosy does not rot flesh.

  Treatment

  Treatment for leprosy first became available with the drug dapsone in the 1940s. However, the bacteria soon became resistant to it, making it virtually useless by the 1960s. Today’s multi-drug regimes are effective, and are used to try to avoid the problem of drug resistance. Prolonged courses of treatment are needed because leprosy is a chronic infection. Unfortunately, delivery of antibiotics is still a problem in many poor countries where leprosy is a public health issue.

  In 1991, the World Health Assembly stated its aim of reducing the numbers of people who needed treatment for leprosy to fewer than one per 10 000 population—about 600 000 people in the world. But today the number of people with leprosy is somewhere between two and 15 million people.

  For the World Health Organisation to achieve their goal in reducing these figures, it is our duty to overcome the stigma associated with the disease and its sufferers—and for us to stop treating people with Hansen’s Disease like lepers.

  Two or 15 Million?

  The range of people with leprosy seems awfully wide—from two to 15 million. How come?

  First, leprosy can take 50 years to develop. This means that many people infected with the bacterium do not have any symptoms yet.

  Second, when the symptoms do appear, they are initially nonspecific. The symptoms could be indicative of many diseases, one of which is leprosy. Therefore these people are not diagnosed with the disease either.

  Third, because of the social stigma and public revulsion directed at people with leprosy, sufferers will successfully hide the disease for many years. In the past, people with leprosy were not just feared, ostracised and shunned—they were also shot, flogged to death, buried alive, poisoned and burnt at the stake.

  References

  Gordon, Briscoe, ‘Disease, Health and Healing: Aspects of Indigenous Health in Western Australia and Queensland, 1900-1940’, ‘Chapter 6: The Great Fear’, A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University, September 1996.

  Navon, Liora, ‘Beggars, metaphors, and stigma: a missing link in the social history of leprosy’, The Society for the Social History of Medicine, 1998, Vol 11, No 1, pp 89–105.

  Rinaldi, Andrea, ‘The global campaign to eliminate leprosy’, PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine, December 2005, pp 1222–1225.

  Wood, S.R., ‘A short history of leprosy in postage stamps’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, August 1974, Vol 67, pp 717–719.

  Where Did the Day Go?

  There has long been a spurious claim that a NASA computer ‘proved’ that a miracle from the Bible actually happened—the so-called ‘Missing Day of Joshua’ or ‘Long Day of Joshua’.

  Science and religion are often seen as being on opposite sides of the fence, i.e. one is based on ‘proven facts and data’ while the other is based on ‘ancient fables, faith and belief’. However, occasionally, the gap is said to be breached, as in the case where a computer supposedly supported the biblical miracle of the ‘Missing Day of Joshua’.

  I first saw this particular, supposed collusion of science and religion in the mid-1970s—as a badly typed chain letter in those days. Since then, it has resurfaced in widespread emails, religious internet forums, newslist groups and from the mouths of preachers. I have even seen it engraved on wooden plaques hanging on the wall in people’s homes. And it is still sent to me via snail mail or email about once every fortnight.

  The Miracle

  The specific miracle referred to is in Joshua 10: 12–13. Fighting the Forces of Evil, Joshua sets off from Gilgal, defeats the enemy (with some divine help) and returns safely.

  Josh. 10:9 After an all-night march from Gilgal, Joshua took them by surprise.

  Josh. 10:10 The Lord threw them into confusion before Israel, who defeated them in a great victory at Gibeon. Israel pursued them along the road going up to Beth Horon and cut them down all the way to Azekah and Makkedah.

  Josh. 10:11 As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the Lord hurled large hailstones down on them from the sky, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites.

  Josh. 10:12 On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel: ‘O Sun, stand still over Gibeon, O Moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.’

  Josh. 10:13 So the Sun stood still, and the Moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The Sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.

  Josh. 10:14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!

  Josh. 10:15 Then Joshua returned with all Israel to the camp at Gilgal.

  Although Joshua seemed to be winning on the battlefield, he called for divine help. The Lord answered Joshua’s pleas, prolonging the sunlight by ‘about a full day’ so that Joshua had enough light to win the battle. This is the famous ‘missing day’.

  Joshua

  Joshua was appointed leader of the Israelite tribes after Moses died. A brilliant, courageous and charismatic warrior and leader, he overwhelmed Canaan and distributed its lands among the 12 tribes of Israel.

  The book of Joshua, the sixth book of the Old Testament, tells his story in three main parts. The first part relates how he conquered Canaan, the second covers his distribution of the Canaan lands to the Israelite tribes and the last part is about his farewell speech and death.

  The case of the missing day

  The Scientists

  What’s so special about this miracle?

  Well, the story goes that this miracle can resolve the ongoing problem that some NASA scientists still have, even today. These particular scientists work at the Greenbelt Goddard Space Center in Maryland. Their computer calculates what’s called the ‘ephemeris’—a catalogue of what goes on in the heavens. It’s a list of the locations of the Sun, Moon, planets, stars and satellites etc., with respect to any given reference point. They need this information as a reliable navigation aid to guide their various spacecraft to their destinations. They usually run their computers only forward in time, to make sure that their spacecraft will go where it’s intended.

  The story continues that on one occasion, purely as a test exercise, the NASA scientists ran a computer simulation back in time, covering thousands of years. It ground to a halt with a pathetic blaze of flashing red lights, having come across an unbreakable logic error. According to the story, the computer had found ‘The Missing Day’.

  This was supposed scientific proof of the miracle in which God had stopped the world turning so that Joshua could better slay his enemies.

  History of Myth—Part 1

  Th
is myth began back in 1890 when Charles Adiel Lewis Totten published his book, Joshua’s Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz—A Scientific Vindication. Charles Totten was not a scientist of standing but an Army lieutenant who had been palmed off to Yale University from 1889 to 1892 to teach military tactics and science. An anti-Semite, he was obsessed with Ayrian racial purity and the imminent apocalypse. He ‘showed’ (using very dodgy methodology) how Joshua’s miracle neatly explained a one-day gap in the supposedly 6000-year age of the Universe. (You can see one problem right away—the Universe is many billions of years older than 6000 years.)

  In 1927, a certain US Creationist, Dr Harry Rimmer, published his book, Harmony of Science and Scripture. He devoted an entire chapter, ‘Modern Science and the Long Day of Joshua’, to how Lieutenant Totten converted an agnostic astronomer who had come across this missing day, by showing him Joshua’s exploits in the Bible.

  Surprisingly, Totten did not even write this story—it was a total fabrication by Rimmer.

  History of Myth—Part 2

  Now computers enter the story.

  In the 1960s, Harold Hill, who claimed that he was a consultant to NASA, began telling this same tale about Joshua’s miracle and the missing day. Around this time, NASA was very much in the public eye because of the race to the Moon, so claiming a link to NASA was very hip. Hill suitably modernised his fable by adding some newfangled impressive technology called ‘computers’. One of his talks was taped, transcribed and then passed on to the journalist, Mary Kathryn Bryan. She then published the story in her regular Mary Kay’s Kollum in the Evening World newspaper (in Spencer, Indiana) on 10 October 1969, a few months after the first landing on the Moon. Although the story attracted incredible interest at the time, it then faded away only to find new life on the Internet.

  But there are still problems with the truth of the story.

  First, various newspaper journalists tracked down Harold Hill and interviewed him face to face. He was never able to provide them with any documentation confirming that the computer had found the missing day.

  Second, NASA at Greenbelt released a statement denying the incident. They wrote in a press release that they had ‘no knowledge of the use of its computers supposedly by Mr Harold Hill, and attributed to our scientists. Goddard does not apply its computers to the task of projecting thousands of years into the future or the past, as this would be irrelevant to the operational lifetime of satellites, which rarely exceeds a dozen years’.

  Third, NASA also denied that Hill had even been a consultant for them. They wrote that Hill ‘worked briefly at Goddard early in the 1960s as a plant engineer, a position which would not place him in direct contact with our computer facilities or teams engaged in orbital computations’.

  The Answer

  Dr Rimmer lied in 1927 as did Harold Hill in the 1960s. Hill was never a ‘consultant’ to NASA, but President of the Curtis Engine Company in Maryland. His company maintained diesel engines for NASA.

  But ignore the lies and exaggerations and just think about the concept of a missing day.

  You can measure the length of a piece of string only if you can reach both ends of the string. And you can tell if it’s missing a bit of length only if you can measure between both ends of the string.

  In the same way, you can find a missing day in time only if you have known dates on each side of the missing day. We have good calendars today, after the time of Joshua, but what about before his time?

  Eclipses are ideal for this purpose, because they are such well-documented and memorable events. In the 21st century, we now have records of eclipses both after and before the time of Joshua. But at the time of Harold Hill’s lectures, the earliest documented eclipse was in 1217 BC, nearly two centuries after Joshua battled the forces of evil. In Harold Hill’s day there were no eclipses documented before the time of Joshua and, therefore, there was no way to find a missing day. It is mathematically impossible.

  Bert Thompson, an American Creationist and religious man himself, wrote an article on this missing day in the publication Reason and Revelation—A Monthly Journal on Christian Evidences. He wrote: ‘We do a disservice to God’s Word when we attempt to “defend” it with stories like these that with a bit of common sense and a small amount of research, can be shown to have no factual foundation whatsoever.’

  There is no point in telling lies for Jesus.

  More Day Stopping

  There is another example in the Bible of The Lord interfering with the length of the day—in 2 Kings 20: 9–11. King Hezekiah had been promised that his illness would be cured. He was doubtful and asked God to give him a sign.

  9 And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?

  10 And Hezekiah answered, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees.

  11 And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.

  References

  Brunvand, Jan Harold, The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story, ‘Chapter 10: The Missing Day’, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000, pp 137–148.

  Thompson, Bert, ‘Has NASA discovered a “missing day”?’, Reason and Revelation: A Monthly Journal of Christian Evidence, May 1991, pp 17–19.

  Ovarian Cancer and Pap Smears

  About 50% of Australian women over the age of 50 believe that a pap smear will detect ovarian cancer. This is a very dangerous and potentially fatal myth.

  Surprisingly, the survey to find what women thought pap smears would identify was carried out by the National Breast Cancer Centre—but oddly, they’re the ones managing the 2007 National Ovarian Cancer Program. (Yup, that’s three different cancers to think of—ovary, cervix and breast.)

  Cervical Cancer

  A pap smear can pick up early changes in the cells of the cervix. If left untreated, these changes can develop into cancer.

  The cervix is the bottom part of the uterus and sits in the top of the vagina. Because of its location a doctor can take a sample from the cervix relatively easily when women attend for their regular pap smear test. Although I say ‘relatively easy’, there is some discomfort involved.

  In Australia, the Pap Smear Program has been very successful at reducing the rate of cervical cancer in screened women. With regular pap smear testing cell changes are discovered and treated early, hopefully before any abnormal cells develop into cancer. Even so, there are still some women who are not regularly screened and so miss out on the benefits that come with early detection.

  At this stage, I have to mention Mrs Papanicolau, wife of Dr Papanicolau. He did a pap smear on his wife every day for 30 years, and so gave us a baseline for the normal cells of the cervix. Luckily our current pap smear screening guidelines do not recommend a pap smear as often as this. Just one smear every two years for eligible women, who have always had normal smears in the past, is adequate.

  Symptoms of Ovarian Cancer

  The 2007 National Ovarian Cancer Program survey found that over half of the women questioned could not name a single symptom of ovarian cancer.

  The symptoms can include abdominal bloating, unexplained weight gain or weight loss, changes in bladder and bowel habits, abdominal or pelvic pain, indigestion and unusual fatigue.

  As you can see, these symptoms are very nonspecific and can occur for any number of reasons. In fact, in some women these symptoms can be part of their ‘normal’ life. As a result, ovarian cancer is usually diagnosed quite late in the illness.

  Women with new, unexplained symptoms that persist should consult their local doctor. Perhaps nothing will be found, but it is very important to have any symptoms checked.

  Ovarian Cancer

  Although the ovaries are quite separate from the cervix, they are also located in the lower abdomen. These almond-shaped
organs sit on either side of the body of the uterus, and are usually about 3 cm wide. Their job is to produce eggs and secrete hormones.

  Ovarian cancer is more common in older women, usually occurring in women over 50 years of age. The most common ovarian cancer is epithelial ovarian cancer which originates in the covering of the ovaries.

  The Ovaries and Pap Smears

  Pap smears DO NOT detect ovarian cancer. Pap smears pick up early changes in the cells of the cervix. If these changes are left untreated, they could develop into cancer.

  The Pap Smear test

  The cervix is at the bottom part of the uterus and sits in the top of the vagina.

  The ‘most amazing’ Uterus

  The ovaries are quite separate from the cervix and they are also lower in the abdomen. They sit on either side of the body of the uterus, are almond-shaped and usually about 3 cm wide.