| EASIER FOR THE CAMEL TO PASS THROUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE THAN FIND ANYONE CURED OF SICKLE CELL BY DIVINE INTERVENTION! By Our Staff LAGOS, HOUSEHOLD ON THE ROCK, 2 January 2011. It was the first Sunday of the year and the Household OnThe Rocks, shepherded by Pastor Paul Adefarasin was packed full. It was testimony time. After a few testimonies had been given, Rosa Ogunbor, 29 (not her real name) stepped forward to relate the amazing hand of God on her own life. Brandishing a piece of lab paper on which was written her new blood genotype, she told the astounded gathering that God had changed her genotype from being with sickle cell to AA! Shouts of ‘Halleluiah! Praise The Lord’! rent the air. ‘I have been praying and fasting for this miracle for quite some time,’ Ogunbor says, ‘and last December, God answered me.’ A medical doctor, a member of the church who witnessed the startling testimony approvingly informed Sickle Cell News of the incredible outcome of faith, the visible and direct hand of God in human affairs. Together with the doctor, now donning the empirical robe of science, we investigated the matter further. We needed to probe and verify Ogunbor’s claims, scrutinize her lab results before and after. To be sure, her most recent lab results, the one she waved in church, said that her blood genotype was AA. On inviting Ogunbor for an interview, the first thing we discovered was that she was not with sickle cell, but only carried the trait! A graduate, she erroneously believed that her proneness to joint pains and predisposition to illness qualified her as a ‘sickler’. Her genotype before divine intervention, she said, was AC, and that C meant that she was having sickle cell; now God had changed it to AA. If true and provable, a change of genotype from AC to AA is no less miraculous, no less divine. So we proceeded. A little disappointed, but no less excited, with our enquiry. With the petite young lady’s permission, the doctor took blood samples, which he sent to a competent laboratory for electrophoresis. The results came, showing that Ogunbor’s genotype remained AC! Other laboratories also confirmed AC. The whole church had been made to believe God had intervened again in the affairs of man and the news had spread. Ogunbor had gone on radio and television, proclaiming the same. There was no going back to say it was all a huge mistake and a hell of a joke! *not her real name ……………………………………………………………………………………………… Reports abound of people being led to false conclusions by incorrect laboratory reports on the one hand, and religious faith on the other. During two recent sickle cell events in Ogun State of Nigeria, renowned haematologist Professor Olu Akinyanju cited the case of a young adult with sickle cell who stopped taking his medication on the conviction that God had cured him. He died after complications set in. To demonstrate that it was not only uneducated people who would believe anything, Professor Akinyanju told of a couple, the husband an engineer, the wife a lawyer, whom a pastor talked into a similar line of action. During a so- called deliverance and healing service, Akinyanju said, the pastor (name withheld) delivered the message that God had cured the woman of her HIV. There was no need, the pastor commanded, for the woman to continue taking her medications. That was tantamount to doubt, he said. Sheepishly, with the husband’s acquiescence, she hauled her entire prescription of ARVs into the refuse bin. Read More |
ISSN 2141-1093
| TOP STORIES |
| Remembering Adeseun Ogundoyin: 1940 - 1991 |
 | |  | |  | |  | |  |