Miracles?

There it was on my television screen. A concerned grandparent voicing the opinion that her grandsons, who were co-joined at birth, had been separated by surgery were the embodiment of a miracle. We hear this all of the time. We hear it to the point of the claim becoming nonsensical.

I know that Grandma is happy for her grandsons, daughter and son-in-law. I am sure that the outcome was a long shot from a medical standpoint. The decision to even attempt the surgery must have been fraught with fear and uncertainty. People can believe, if they wish, that the prayers of everyone enlisted by the constant TV coverage and publicity surrounding the young boys surgical separation was a factor in the success. Faith of that kind is a powerful thing.

However, calling every close scrape with death a miracle is just silly. Branding events such as this a miracle is flagrantly ignorant of the facts and the true events. I have to be honest it's beginning to make me unreasonably angry to have the efforts of fine doctors and medical workers brushed aside so cavalierly. It demeans the sacrifice made by all of the patients that didn't survive in the natural acquisition of knowledge that medical science requires. It minimizes the dedication and skill of all of the talented people that contributed to this successful operation.

When something happens we can't explain or understand, we pull out the miracle rationalization. Why do some live and others die? We often don't know for sure, but blaming every success on a miracle is a two sided coin. As a society, we are more than willing to blame the doctors, hospitals and medical industry for their failures by suing them. Maybe the next time a surgery doesn't turn out the way that we hope it should we should just pat the doctor on the back, tell him he tried his best and admit that the miracle wasn't in the cards for this patient.