The Bloody Truth
Those pesky kids!
There was a time when we sortta knew what to expect from them. But that seems to be slipping away with Climate Change.
No matter how close an eye we keep on them, they can wreak havoc!
And they don’t even have real names.
Europeans first encountered him (and his sister) in 1524-1525, when he slowed and ultimately stopped Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro’s southerly sail from Panama along the western coast of Ecuador and northern Peru. Six years later, the little trouble-maker enabled Pizarro to sail far enough south to begin the ultimate destruction of the Inca empire.
Tradition has it that Peruvian fishermen reaped a bounty off the Pacific coast of South America, where north- and west-flowing currents pulled cool, nutrient-filled waters up from the deep – attracting fish and providing bountiful harvests. But, as if on a whim, the currents would stop or turn around and warm waters from the tropics would drive fish away and leave their nets empty. The periodic warm spells were especially noticeable around December and January – Christmas time, giving rise to the name El Nino – the boy child – and the contrasting La Nina - despite the fact they probably began developing somewhere after the last Ice Age.
UCLA Norwegian-American meteorologist Jacob Bjerknes made the final connection between the alternating warm and cool patterns in Pacific waters and the atmospheric circulation and changes originally described by Gilbert Walker, working in India in the 1920s. Walker called his alternating weather patterns “Southern Oscillation,” noting how high pressure over the tropical Pacific coincided with lows over the Indian Ocean, and vice versa. His pattern became known as El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and provides insights into weather conditions and disasters worldwide.
Now, aided by satellites and high-speed computers and building on the work of Walker and Bjerknes and countless other scientists, researchers are able to look further and further into the future and offer science- and fact-based predictions about Pacific typhon and Atlantic hurricane seasons and the potential strength of storms.
They are not prophesying or fortune telling. They are building on science and making predictions and in today’s world that is an important distinction.
In seminary, we were taught that the role of the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures was not unlike today’s hurricane and typhoon scientists and forecasters.
Forecasters examine all of the science available to them - El Nino and La Nina conditions, (rising due to climate change) water temperatures, atmospheric conditions and pressure flows – and then retreat to their computers and map rooms to put it all together, before finally publishing their forecast maps and famous “cones of possibility.”
The prophets read “the signs of the times” – the lives and morality of their people, their faithfulness to the traditions of their ancestors, their relationships with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, then withdrew to prayerfully reflect upon those signs in the context of Word of God, and finally spoke a truth to the People of God that many did not, would not want to hear.
In today’s world, the “signs of the times” come to us in many ways.
In a March 4, 2018 article – “Wounds From Military-Style Rifles? ‘A Ghastly Thing to See’” – The New York Times cited a number of trauma surgeons who have treated the victims of military-style rifle shootings, providing critical grist for the prophetic mill and those who would speak a prophetic truth.
“The tissue destruction is almost unimaginable. Bones are exploded, soft tissue is absolutely destroyed. The injuries to the chest or abdomen — it’s like a bomb went off.” Moreover, victims wounded in an arm or leg may require a dozen surgeries over months. “Some eventually decide to undergo an amputation if there is severe pain in the limb and it is dysfunctional.”
Dr. Jeremy Cannon, the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan
“Because a bullet departs the muzzle of an M16 or AR-15 at a velocity of more than 3,000 feet per second, “You see multiple organs shattered. The exit wounds can be a foot wide… I’ve seen people with entire quadrants of their abdomens destroyed.”
Dr. Martin Schreiber, Oregon Health & Science University, who served in Iraq in 2005 and in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2014
“You will typically see a small penetrating wound. Then you roll the patient over and see a huge exit wound.” High energy bullets create a blast wave and a larger exit would; striking bone can create fragments that cut through tissue in each fragment’s path. “Then the bullet starts tumbling, causing more destruction… If they are shot in the torso, there is not a whole lot we can do… These weapons are meant to kill people.”
Dr. Jeffrey Kerby, the University of Alabama at Birmingham was an Air Force surgeon.
“Muscles and skin and fat surrounding skin can be sheared off. We saw holes in intestines and bladders.”
Dr. Lillian Liao, University Hospital and UT Health in San Antonio, operated on children shot in the Sutherland Spring (Texas) First Baptist Church shooting in which twenty-six were killed and 20 others were wounded by a shooter using an AR-15
The “signs of the times” often included the public idolatry the prophet witnessed immediately outside his front door, as he walked through his town or village, and in his day-to-day working reality. On the issue of gun-related mass shootings, physicians stand in unique roles to see and respond to those realities and to speak to the People of God a truth many may not wish to hear. Among those, reading and speaking about the realities of our day, has been Dr. Heather Sher, a radiologist on duty in a trauma center when student victims of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, were brought in. Writing in The Atlantic on February 22, 2018, Dr. Sher was a prophet:
I was looking at a CT scan of one of the mass-shooting victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, and was bleeding extensively.
One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle that delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. Nothing was left to repair—and utterly, devastatingly, nothing could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.
The bullets fired by an AR-15 are different: They travel at a higher velocity and are far more lethal than routine bullets fired from a handgun. The damage they cause is a function of the energy they impart as they pass through the body. A typical AR-15 bullet leaves the barrel traveling almost three times faster than—and imparting more than three times the energy of—a typical 9mm bullet from a handgun. An AR-15 rifle outfitted with a magazine with 50 rounds allows many more lethal bullets to be delivered quickly without reloading.
The bullet from an AR-15 passes through the body like a cigarette boat traveling at maximum speed through a tiny canal. The tissue next to the bullet is elastic—moving away from the bullet like waves of water displaced by the boat—and then returns and settles back. This process is called cavitation; it leaves the displaced tissue damaged or killed. The high-velocity bullet causes a swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding. Exit wounds can be the size of an orange.
An AR-15 bullet wound to the middle of the liver would cause so much bleeding that the patient would likely never make it to the trauma center to receive our care.
One of my ER colleagues was waiting nervously for his own children outside the school. While the shooting was still in progress, the first responders were gathering up victims whenever they could and carrying them outside the building. Even as a physician trained in trauma situations, there was nothing he could do at the scene to help save the victims who had been shot with the AR-15. Most of them died on the spot; they had no fighting chance at life. As a doctor, I feel I have a duty to inform the public of what I have learned as I have observed these wounds and cared for these patients. It’s clear to me that AR-15 and other high-velocity weapons, especially when outfitted with a high-capacity magazine, have no place in a civilian’s gun cabinet.
It was a strange thing about Jesus. He never seemed to ask “Why?” Perhaps that’s because he looked to the prophets for his inspiration. Jesus would not question the need for reasonable gun and ammunition control laws. He would hear the physicians who have tended the victims and know.
In Mark Twain’s powerful The War Prayer, a stranger “come from the Throne – bearing a message from the Almighty God” describes the horrors of war to a gathering of men and women who had “invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause…” Twain ended his essay by noting “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”
Surely, some will say of these prophetic frontline doctors “there is no sense in what they say.”
Perhaps, just perhaps, it is time for some people to hear the voice of contemporary prophets calling for the reasonable regulation of high-powered guns and death-guaranteeing ammunition. Perhaps it’s time for members of Congress to hear the voices of the People of God and the American people and pass reasonable gun control laws preferred by the majority of Americans.