Following the science of medical miracles

The Catholic Register, 03 March 2021

Duffin was fascinated, as a scientist and atheist, that the Vatican gave such enormous weight to her medical opinion.

This is the 250th anniversary year of the death of St. Marguerite d’Youville, the founder of the Order of Sisters of Charity of Montreal. The first Canadian-born saint, she was canonized in 1990 by St. John Paul II.

The anniversary year got off to a great start with the news that Professor Jacalyn Duffin was named a member of the Order of Canada in the New Year’s honours.

The Queen’s University philosopher also holds a chair in the history of medicine. What’s the connection between Professor Duffin, an atheist, and the foundress of the Grey Nuns? Let her explain it in her own words.

“There was no mistaking the diagnostic significance of that little red stick inside a deep blue cell: The Auer rod meant the mystery patient had acute myelogenous leukemia. As slide after slide went by, her bone marrow told a story: treatment, remission, relapse, treatment, remission, remission, remission,” wrote Duffin in The New York Times in 2016. “I was reading these marrows in 1987, but the samples had been drawn in 1978 and 1979. Median survival of that lethal disease with treatment was about 18 months; however, given that she had already relapsed once, I knew that she had to be dead. Probably someone was being sued, and that was why my hematology colleagues had asked for a blind reading.”

Duffin completed the blind reading — not knowing the patient or the reason for the analysis. She wrote her report and waited for a summons to testify.

“Imagining an aggressive cross-examination in court, I emphasized in my report that I knew neither the history nor why I was reading the marrows,” Duffin wrote. “After the work was submitted, I asked the treating physician what was going on. She smiled and said that my report had been sent to the Vatican. This leukemia case was being considered as the final miracle in the dossier of Marguerite d’Youville.”

It wasn’t a malpractice suit. It was a miracle inquiry.

Continue reading at The Catholic Register.