Dr. Ajay Seth, a surgeon who created a prosthetic limb that allows his patient to feel, credited God for the “miraculous” scientific advancement. He said the intersection between faith and science explains this miraculous breakthrough. The amputee he helped can now feel heat and cold, a Styrofoam cup, and even her husband’s touch.
Dr. Smith gave all the glory to God.
The surgeon described miraculous circumstances where a patient’s cancer has no cure but he or she recovered anyway. “And everybody’s like ‘God, help me figure this out,'” Dr. Ajay Smith told CBN News’ Lorie Johnson in an interview aired Tuesday. “Then one day I sat back and started looking at everything that happened. And that’s where you see that faith and science came together.”
“There’s no way that I’m this phenomenal surgeon who could accomplish putting nerves together and making her feel,” Dr. Seth said. “It’s almost as if we got her to a certain point and then the faith-based portion took over, who had been leading us and now I will finish this journey for you.”
The surgeon spoke about his new book Rewired: An Unlikely Doctor, a Brave Amputee, and the Medical Miracle That Made History. The book came out in January. It tells the story of Melissa Loomis, who lost an arm after a raccoon bite became infected.
Dr. Seth, a local orthopedic surgeon and the son of immigrants from India, performed his first-ever amputation on Melissa Loomis’s arm. According to the book’s description, “In the months that follow, divine intervention, combined with Melissa’s determination and Dr. Seth’s disciplined commitment and dedication to his patients, brings about the opportunity for a medical breakthrough that will potentially transform the lives of amputees around the world.”
According to the book, Dr. Ajay Seth’s “revolutionary surgery … allows Melissa to not just move a prosthetic arm simply by thinking, but to actually feel with the prosthetic hand, just as she would with her natural arm.”
Dr. Ajay Seth is now working on advancements in prosthetics at Johns Hopkins University and through his company, Bionic Miracle, LLC.
“There’s so many instances of where a physician gives you statistics on research,” Dr. Seth told CBN. “You hear people say, ‘Well, they have this type of cancer. The doctor said they have three months to live.’ And three years later, that person is still here. In science, we always want to give justification on how it happened.”
Sometimes there is no mere scientific explanation, the surgeon suggested. The case of Loomis was nothing less than a miracle, and God should be credited as much as he is, the surgeon said.
Last August, scientists with Johns Hopkins partnered with Quartz to release a video about electronic skin that allows amputees to feel. Dr. Seth revealed the miraculous roots of such breakthroughs.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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