“Say: Travel through the Earth and deeply observe how God did originate the creation; then God produces the next creation; surely God has power over all things” (Qur’an 29:19-20)
Welcome and May the peace and blessings of God be upon you.
Photo: PDPics / Pixabay
“We will be questioned about the opportunities we were given, and how did we make the best of them."
- Dr. Samir Iqbal
There are few words in our political climate that are non-partisan and can’t be easily manipulated: cancer. Whether or not you like the color pink, you likely know someone who has experienced breast cancer. You may not be a Democrat or a Republican, but can you see the impact John McCain and Beau Biden had on America after they both passed away from Gliobastoma (1). It’s a deep, life-changing, humbling word, that more than 1.7 million people will hear from their doctor this year, that more than 600,000 people will die from in the United States. (2)
But what is cancer, really? Cancer is a mutation of the very thing that makes us...us. We are made up of cells, we are antibodies, we are DNA. Whether or not you believe in a God or evolution, this is what we physically are. Cancer is a breakdown in those normal regulatory systems; a gene mutation, an epigenetic miscalculation (3), the immune system failing in surveillance and correction. Are these breakdowns similar to a dormant volcano, waiting for the right time to awaken or are random cells turned into rogue agents by these defense system failures? Motives are easier to characterize for humans than cells. But can we get to a point where we can identify individual properties of individual cancer cells within a group of cancer cells? Some researchers are already doing that with cell profiling.
Image: CancerResearchUK
Dr. Samir Iqbal is an electrical engineer at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He loves reading and having open discussions. That drive to read was instilled by his mother, and has helped him throughout his career in electrical and computer engineering. Encouraged by a mentor, who is also Hindu, Dr. Iqbal pursued studies in cell structure/biology and nanotechnology, learning more about cancer and the importance of research. It is through research that he and other researchers have discovered different physical properties of individual metastatic cancerous cells (cells that travel outside of where the cancer first started) within a group of malignant (cancerous) cells.
This means they are able to actually identify those cancer cells that are likely to spread to other parts of the body before they actually spread to other parts of the body. It also makes us look at cancer differently, that it’s a group of cells that are not all the same. Currently, doctors use imaging scans, like CT/”cat,” MRI and PET scans, or biopsies to see where there are clusters of cancer cells and if the cancer has spread. However, the imaging scans can’t tell the difference between cancer cells and especially those that are metastatic or not (going to travel to other places). They also can’t tell us if the cancer has spread because the cancer cell clusters may be too small to detect on imaging scans. The work Dr. Iqbal and his team are doing will be very helpful in discovering cancer cells hopefully before they spread to other parts of the body. This work is still in trial phases and further research will need to be done to see how this can be rolled out in the clinical setting in an easy, practical way.
We still don’t know the motives of these cells and why they mutate, but what is the motivation for researchers, like Dr. Iqbal, to spend their time working to fight cancer? Dr. Iqbal notes that research and knowledge can be used to help equip people with abilities to do more than what they can or thought they could do. “We have been sent to use what we have been given to help others," Dr. Iqbal says. “We need to equally excel in receiving all knowledge of this world, and of course that spans the knowledge of religion as well.” He believes his faith teaches him to help others and that if you are not in the pursuit of helping others, then what are you doing? He identifies as a Muslim and a scientist. Islam has a long history of Muslim scientists.
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
– Albert Einstein
While Europe was in the Dark Ages, the Muslim world was looking pretty bright. The Muslim world was thriving not in warfare, but in science. Muslims were advancing the fields of astronomy, medicine, technology, engineering, etc. (Disclaimer, the Muslim world wasn’t made up of the nation states that exist in the 21st century. There wasn’t a formal Iraq or Iran, etc. There were caliphates led by different rulers (4). Back in the 2nd century, Galen (5), a prominent Greco-Roman physician-philosopher, theorized that cancer was associated with black bile humor (6). With knowledge at the time, he offered certain treatments to remove black bile from the body; however, Muslim physicians during the 4th-12th centuries advanced the science of medicine and cancer to better characterize properties of certain cancers that were “ulcerative” and to offer more appropriate treatments, like zinc oxide or no treatment to maintain quality of life (6). Ibn Sina (or Avicenna), one of the most influential and famous Muslim physicians, wrote “The Canon of Medicine” (al-Qanun fi al-Tibb), of which he dedicated an entire chapter to cancer, where he discussed the progression of cancer, when surgical resection (removal) is indicated. “Modification of food and organ strengthening” were also emphasized to prevent cancer progression (6). Another prominent scientist, Al-Razi (Rhazes), found ways to distinguish between cancerous and non-cancerous swellings in the body (6).
Ibn Sina
Image: 1001 Inventions
The pursuit to cure cancer still wages on. The Nobel Peace Prize just awarded the Prize in Physiology or Medicine to two scientists who demonstrated the immune system’s ability to target cancer cells (7). This has led to a greater understanding of our bodies and how we can use our body’s own machinery. I wonder that as we learn more about our bodies and the cells that make it up, will we learn more about what makes us human. Are we like cells, similar to others in our groups or stand-out individuals blending in with the others? What will our impacts be, on our bodies, on science, on the world?
“Read in the name of your Lord, who created man from a clot. Read, and your Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the pen.” (Qur’an 96:1-4).
“Love is metaphysical gravity” (Buckminster Fuller)
Buckminster Fuller holding a Geodosic dome
NOTES
1. Glioblastoma: https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2017/glioblastoma-research-making-progress
2. American Cancer Society: https://www.cancer.org/research/cancer-facts-statistics/all-cancer-facts-figures/cancer-facts-figures-2018.html
3. Epigenetics: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/howgeneswork/epigenome
4. Caliphate: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/medieval-times/spread-of-islam/a/the-rise-of-islamic-empires-and-states
5. Galen: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/howgeneswork/epigenome
6. Emami SA, Sahebkar A, Tayarani-Najaran N, Tayarani-Najaran Z. Cancer and its Treatment in Main Ancient Books of Islamic Iranian Traditional Medicine (7th to 14th century AD). Iran Red Cres Med J. 2012;14(12):747-757. Accessed on: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3587862/pdf/ircmj-14-747.pdf
7. Nobel Peace Prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2018/press-release/
For more information:
https://www.NanoBioLab.org/
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=v9QIiy0AAAAJ&hl=en
International Institute of Islamic Medicine http://www.iiim.org
1001 Inventions: the Enduring Legacy of Muslim Civilization: http://www.1001inventions.com