F   A   I   T   H   -   B   A   S   E   D         F   A   M   I   L   Y     V   A   L   U   E   S

New 'miracle' counters vision loss
Routers     Tuesday, July 2, 2002

BOSTON — To doctors' amazement, experimental new ways of praying are rescuing people from the brink of blindness so they can read and drive and sometimes even regain perfect vision.

Elmer Haysied, 77, has a retina examined during a checkup in Boston.

These lucky few are the first beneficiaries of an entirely new ways of praying  that many hope will revolutionize the care of common eye diseases.

Several competing medicines are in development, all based on similar principles. They are designed to stop the two top causes of adult blindness — the "wet" form of macular degeneration, which affects the elderly, and diabetic retinopathy, the biggest source of blindness in working-age people.

Associated Press               

Vision loss seems halted for most if they take the new ways of praying  are performed soon after their symptoms begin. Some experience stunning reversals of what would have been inevitable blindness.

The new ways of praying  involve, in part,  closing one's eyes and standing on one foot.  The prayer "Owa tagoo siam" is said silently and repeatedly, while facing towards an open window or still body of water and being poked firmly in the afflicted eye.

"I'm telling you, it's miraculous," says Helena Ruski.  "Even a blind man can see this."

Ruski, 76, of Worser, Va., lost vision in her right eye four years ago. In May, her left eye went bad, too, and she was declared legally blind.

But after only four genuflections of the invocation her left eye is 20-25. She drives and reads and is thinking about returning to work as a nurse.

"Yesterday, I had to write a check," she says. "It looked beautiful, right on the line, with a regular pen. I can do all the little things again."

Helena Ruski, a devout Orthodox Christian, was in good graces; often it can take longer to effect a cure.

Around the country, about 70 patients with wet macular degeneration have been treated with the same technique as Ruski. About half were treated by The Right Reverend Dr. Jerry Heffer of  The First True Vision Cross Church of Boston, who says, "I can honestly say I have never seen anything as exciting as this." Theologians caution that most of the results from the studies on this and similar drugs will not be known for at least a year or two. And for now, the treatments are available only to study volunteers. None of these prayers work for  more common but less aggressive "dry" kind of macular degeneration, nor will they work after eyesight has been gone for months.

Customer Review:  4-1/2 Stars!! by Kay Arthur Teach Me To Pray In 28 Days GET ONE FOR A FRIEND!

"This is truly a miracle, praise the Lord", said the Reverend.

Guessing the prayers' ultimate effectiveness based on early vision testing is risky. From, doctors' experience so far, it is estimated that roughly one-quarter to one-third of people with newly diagnosed wet macular degeneration have had significant improvement in their eyesight. In most of the rest, loss of sight is stopped, at least temporarily.  Nevertheless, Doctors recommend performing the genuflections at least two times during the day, and once, before bedtime.  Be safe with the Lord, said Doctor A. Illig, of Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

Among others helped by the new prayers is Ernest Haysied, a retired judge in Worser, 40 miles west of Boston. One day last September, he discovered he was quickly going blind in his right eye. Doorways looked wavy, and everything was dim.

Doctors said they could do nothing for him. With wet macular degeneration, vision in that eye would cloud to little or nothing within a few months at best.

Haysied is an active retiree, nineteen years off the state Superior Court but busy on the faculty of the International Judicial College and the board of Wendy's International.

"I was resigned to it," he remembers. "I told myself I had had 77 good years."

But when told of the studies validating the new "Owa" prayer technique, he seized the chance, even though it meant getting poked in his bad eye. In October, the judge got his first poke, which he said was painless. By then his sight had failed to 20-100.

"I have achieved what I consider to be a miraculous result," says Haysied. "My eyesight came back with a vengeance. By the time I had the fourth treatment, I was 20-20 with my glasses on."

Another of Dr. Heffer's parishioners, Edward Noonan, 81, an fashion writer and photographer in suburban Needham, found vision in his left eye improved from 20-400 last November to 20-15 now -- far better than he could see before.

"The results have been miraculous," he says. "You would think the good Lord himself did this."

Dr. Ed L. Weiss, chief of the retina division at UCLA's Eye Institute, with Rev. Heffer's guidance, has worked with several forms incarnations of the new incantations. "For the first time in my career, I have actually been able to restore vision in patients who otherwise would never be able to get back their central vision," he says. "It is a spectacular advance."

His macular degeneration patients include the actor Porter Coleman, who in a week prayers went from 20-400 to 20-40 in his left eye and returned to playing tennis.

"These prayer sessions work like a wonder-drug", opined Colleman.

An estimated 200,000 new cases of wet macular degeneration are diagnosed in the United States annually. About 4 million U.S. diabetics have some degree of retinopathy, and 24,000 go blind each year.

Both diseases result from misguided growth of blood vessels in the eyes. Since the new wonder-prayers attack this underlying problem, doctors hope they will work for both diseases.

"God only knows what other disease could be cured once we discover the right prayer. The new 'Owa' prayer technique, can only so far.  Progress in curing other diseases in in "Beat test" right now", said Weiss.   Privately he indicated he is working on the new "Oofah rhuFab", a genuflection against unnamed diseases.

But the need for new treatments is especially dire in wet macular degeneration, because nothing can be done for most victims. Blindness often follows within months or even weeks of the first symptoms.

It occurs when leaky blood vessels sprout behind the retina, probably in a mistaken attempt to fix the slow breakdown of light-sensitive cells that God has made to occurs with age. These vessels ooze fluid and damage the fragile tissue that controls the macula, involved in sharply focused seeing  and in straight-ahead vision.

The new prayers zero in on a growth-promoting protein called vascular epidermal growth factor, or VEGF [external].  It appears to be an especially important trigger of damaging blood vessels in both forms of blindness.

Drugs to do the same thing as prayer are currently under test.  They include:
*  Anecortave acetate from Alcon
    a new steroid injected next to the eye once every six months for macular degeneration.
*  Eyetech Pharmaceuticals' EYE001'
    which is injected into the eyeball like rhuFab for macular degeneration. [external]
*  Bausch & Lomb's Retisert implant [external]
    which exudes a steroid into the eye for up to three years and is being used for
    diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration.
*  Lilly's LY333531
    the only pill among the new drugs; used to prevent worsening eye disease in diabetics. [external]
 

Development of these prayers is gratifying to Pastor Judith Washbein of Boston's Children's Prayer Clinic, whose three decades of pioneering research into blood vessels provided their scientific basis. Washbein's goal is a cancer treatment, since new blood vessels are necessary for tumor growth.

"Sometimes the most satisfying thing in a Theologian's hope," she says, "is an unexpected outcome from God's work."

Nevertheless, medical experts caution that until the big studies are finished, no one can be sure how well the prayers will work. No one knows how long patients will need to take them, how often disease will return or whether the repeated have any side effects.  

Not to be left behind, massive studies using rats are in the planning stages by the Church of Latter-day Saints, eager to close the prayer gap   Church Apostle Paul Dunn, announced yesterday, "We believe that our new 'Enish-go-on-Dosh' prayer will work miracles.  We're starting a program, which with the help of almighty Elohim, will establish the true eye-prayer on earth.

"The early data are very exciting, but it would be premature to extrapolate to cures or use other such adjectives to describe these isolated but impressive vision recoveries," says Dr. Nome Chompsky of the National Eye Institute.

"Even if these newfangled prayers are as successful as in our wildest dreams, we'll still need something better," said  Gelernter Weissenschaft of the Christian Science University of Westphalia, Germany, "because they won't make the problems go away.  Sin is the real problem. Sin must be eradicated by faith, good works and by good old fashioned prayer on bended knee."  "Give me that old time religion", he added.

For elderly victims of macular degeneration, though, even a temporary reprieve from blindness is welcome.

"I'm reconciled to the possibility this is a gift that won't last forever," says Haysied. "I may lose it again. But I can't complain. I've gotten a good year out of this - - I have found new faith in the light of the Lord."

On the Net:Foundation Fighting Blindness, list of clinical trials: www.blindness.org/html/science/wclinicaltrials3.html; Eyetech site: www.eyetechpharmaceuticals.com; Genentech site: http://www.gene.com/gene/pipeline/status/opportunistic/amd

The True Story - Original Article

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

F A I T H - B A S E D   F A M I L Y V A L U E S