Understanding Testing

The world of COVID-19 testing and our understanding of the virus has caused many of us to read science and health articles laden with new terminology that may be challenging to understand. One of the areas of knowledge that is difficult to understand is COVID-19 testing. Let’s take a closer look at some of the work presently being done.

When it comes to viruses and the diseases they cause, there are two basic types of testing. One, testing to see if the person being tested has virus in their system; and two, testing to see if the person has developed antibodies against the virus. We will look at each in turn with regard to the COVID-19 disease and the SARS-CoV-2 virus[1] which causes the disease.[2]

Virus testing in this first case, is done almost exclusively by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). This is the recommended initial test to see if a person is carrying the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the deep parts of the nasal passages.[3] This test detects the rna of the actual virus by transcribing its rna into DNA and amplifying the DNA (making more of the DNA). This is a highly sensitive test and is capable of detecting as few as one virus particle. The test relies on the concept that if a virus particle is detected deep in the sinus cavity of the patient, the patient’s body is likely manufacturing the virus particles in the cells of their respiratory system[4] and shedding them out into the world around them through moisture in their breath.[5] This article will not assess the tests but rather describe the tests (some of the readers of this article may already be seeing the pros and cons of this testing method). Spartan Bioscience in Ottawa has just received approval to sell their rapid detection kit to the Canadian market.[6] It is exciting to see this new made-in-Canada solution to testing for SARS-CoV-2.

In the second type of testing, the clinicians initiating the test are looking for antibodies against the virus. Normally, when our bodies are introduced to a new virus in our cells, our immune system goes through a system of activation and biochemical cascades which result in the production of antibodies against the novel virus.[7] These antibodies are part of a healthy person’s biological response to a virus and the beginnings of how we fight off this new challenge to the integrity of our cells. We want our cells to exclusively make proteins for our own use and we do not want them making more viral rna or viral proteins. Therefore, our immune system must initiate its own biological warfare against the invading army of viruses. Antibody testing relies upon this ability of the body to make antibodies against a foreign particle in our system. If our body has experienced the new virus and has had sufficient time to mount a response, there will be antibodies in our blood to indicate that this has happened. Antibodies such as this may last for a matter of months or many years. Thus, one can test for specific antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 while the person is in an active COVID-19 disease state or even after they have recovered. This type of testing may be invaluable in determining who has survived the disease and may possibly be a source of antibodies that could potentially be transferred to another person to give them immunity to the disease.[8]

This second type of testing is more of a classical immunological test. A molecule capable of binding to the antibody, something that bears a resemblance to the binding portion of the viral particle, is bound onto a substrate (perhaps a paper inside a testing cassette) and then a blood sample is placed in contact with the detection molecule. After an appropriate wash, to cleanse the cassette of any unbound particles, the one performing the test looks for evidence of bound antibodies. This is most often a colour change on the substrate (think of how an early pregnancy detection stick works) to indicate the presence of the antibody against the virus. (Again, there are pros and cons of such a testing regime, but for now, we will forgo any assessments.) Tests such as this are in development in Canada as well. The test manufactured by BTNX is approved for sale in the US and UK but is not yet approved for the Canadian market.[9] This type of testing will be critical to further research and for such important tasks as testing donor blood at Canadian Blood Services. We can applaud such active and rapid research into both of these areas of testing.

Post a comment or send an email if this article has created further questions. I will do my best to research the questions and provide answers.

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[1] The virus itself is a simple little biological entity, less alive and more machine-like. It consists of only 30,000 base-pairs of rna and just a few proteins. Perhaps I will write more on that later.

[2] This virus is also sometimes referred to as “the coronavirus” (but of course it is simply one of many coronaviruses) or the 2019 novel coronavirus or 2019-nCoV.

[3] "Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2020-03-21. Retrieved 28 March 2020.

[4] For that is what virus particles do, they get inside a host cell and use the cell’s machinery to make more virus particles.

[5] Notice I avoided saying, “by speaking moistly.” This is out of respect for our Prime Minister and the great job he is doing each day keeping the Canadian public informed. It is so easy to stumble over one’s words in such settings. We all need to give him a break.

[6] “Everyone wants them: Rapid COVID-19 test kits made in Canada approved for use,” CBC News, 2020-04-13, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/spartan-covid19-test-kit-new-1.5530669.

[7] People who are immune-compromised for various reasons may not be fully capable of mounting such an immune response against the virus.

[8] I am intentionally using a number of conditional words and clauses here. The research has not yet shown whether or not it might be possible to transfer immunity via this method. But, it is a hopeful plan.

[9] “Health Canada says rapid blood test for COVID-19 remains under review,” CBC News, 2020-04-12, https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/health-canada-rapid-blood-tests-under-review-1.5529590

Something Rather Than Nothing

Perhaps one of the biggest philosophical questions ever asked is “Why is there something rather than nothing?” When we look at the earth, the moon, the stars, our galaxy, the universe, gravity, light, and energy, we are struck with the immensity and complexity of this place in which we find ourselves. It is natural to ask questions about this universe and to ask how it is that this place actually functions and stays in motion. Science has done a good job of exploring and explaining much about our world. But we might also ask how it is that the universe exists at all. Philosophers have worked on a satisfying answer to this question for decades and still the question persists. We know that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz spent much time thinking about this question and had what I would still consider the most satisfying answer to the question.

Leibniz who lived from 1646–1716 was one of the great thinkers and philosophers of his time but for many years was sadly overlooked. He was a contemporary of Isaac Newton and both of them discovered calculus independently of each other. Many of the notations and symbols used by Leibniz as he developed calculus are still used today. He was an inventor of mechanical calculators, refined the binary number system which is used in computers, and was a philosopher who specialized in rationalism and logic. He was devoted to his work yet known for his imagination, friendship, and good manners. I will save his answer to the big question until the end of this article but let us first look at a few of the other answers people have come up with.

Lawrence Krauss, a current author and physicist posits that gravity and the quantum vacuum worked together to generate the initial particles which resulted in a universe. He believes that it was inevitable that the universe would arise given gravity and the quantum vacuum. Stephen Hawking suggested a very similar argument in his 2010 book, The Grand Design. Although this answer may seem logical and satisfying to these two physicists, at a philosophical level, we would then want to ask, “Why must we assume gravity or a quantum vacuum or particles?” Why is there anything at all? Ultimately, this kind of answer remains highly unsatisfying to many.

Others answer Leibniz's question by saying that the universe has always existed. This was a common assumption until the early 20^th Century when Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lemaitre noted that the universe was expanding and Lemaitre suggested that the expansion could be traced back to a “single primeval atom” or “cosmic egg.” This was the beginning of the concept of The Big Bang. Lemaitre, a faith-filled Catholic priest, was very much involved in convincing Albert Einstein and others that the universe had a beginning. Of course, the Big Bang model has gone on to be the prevailing model of the community of physicists seeking to describe our known universe. It elegantly describes the beginning of all things including matter, time, gravity, and the universal constants that have been detected.

Still others would suggest that our universe is a mystery and its origins are lost to us. In other words: we simply do not know why there is something rather than nothing. Bertrand Russel famously took this stance in a 1948 radio debate with Frederick Copleston. Such an answer has the effect of sounding clever and somehow satisfying but most would find that the satisfaction quickly fades. Some will be satisfied with answering a big question with a big shrug of the shoulders; most of us will not.

Leibniz also found such non-answers unsatisfying and searched his whole life for a better answer. He toyed with Russell’s response and worked to make more sense of it. In the end he found that such an answer would not satisfy his own intellect. He eventually came to an answer that was substantial and pleasing but was one that would ultimately contribute to his falling out of favour in the philosophical and scientific communities. His answer was one that took courage to voice. It was an answer that was both elegant and simple as science demanded, yet one which resulted in a major paradigm shift which many other thinkers are unwilling to make. His answer shifts one’s entire thinking process and causes one to consider the entirety of life. Leibniz’s simple answer to the question of why there is something rather than nothing was, “God wanted there to be a universe.” It is a simple answer yet results in a lifetime of introspection and development, for if there is a great creator God behind the beginning of the universe, we will want to know more about God and how he communicates with his world. We will spend the rest of our lives seeking to know him.

References and Further Reading:

Hawking, Stephen, and Leonard Mlodinow. 2010. The Grand Design. Bantam Books.

Look, Brandon C. 2017. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/leibniz/.

Strickland, Lloyd. 2019. Answering the biggest question of all: why is there something rather than nothing? 08 08. https://theconversation.com/answering-the-biggest-question-of-all-why-is-there-something-rather-than-nothing-65865.

Wikipedia. 2019. "Copleston-Russell Debate." Wikipedia. 08 11. Accessed 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copleston%E2%80%93Russell_debate.

—. 2019. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. 08 08. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz.

—. 2019. Lawrence M. Krauss. 08 08. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss.

The Arc of Evolution

“The arc of evolution is long and bends toward human beings.”^[1] When I speak of evolution, and my conviction that God used evolution to create our universe, I am not speaking of a godless or deistic process. I am suggesting that “in the beginning” God created the heavens and the earth, and that he created all that we see and do not see. I am saying that God started this process over 13 billion years ago and continues to shape and mould the entire universe by processes that, from our perspective, seem slow, appear random, often resulting in dead-ends and extinctions, and may even look inefficient. Yet, God, the Master Creator, in his great wisdom, is behind it all and the three persons of the Godhead or Trinity were all there from the beginning in their creative work (Colossians 1:15, 16; Genesis 1:2, 26, 27). 

The arc of this process spans a vast time scale that is beyond our comprehension. We struggle to imagine what life on earth would have been like, 100, 500, 2000, or 4000 years ago. Our minds are much better suited for the comprehension of a few decades at a time. When we drive west on the Trans-Canada Highway from Winnipeg to Vancouver, we do not notice the curvature of the earth as we drive the ups and downs of rolling hills and mountain roads, but it is there none-the-less. The same could be said of our perception of the long arc of evolution. Many billions of years ago it started with what has been described as the Big Bang or Primordial Atom. Father Georges Lemaître (a faithful Catholic Priest) was the first to describe this dramatic start to the universe. According to this understanding, it took several billion years for the universe to develop to the point where our solar system and its planets would be recognizable and several billion more before life would develop on Earth. The earliest life would have been something like self-replicating membranes, bits of ribonucleic acid (RNA), and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). These would change over time and go on to form primitive viruses, single celled bacteria, multi-celled organisms, plants, animals, and humans. 

Through this entire process, and including developments going on in our present time, the trinitarian God of Genesis was there making sense of it all. God was there ensuring that the arc of evolution would continue to be bent toward the creation of the most advanced being in all of creation, humans. He had a plan toward which the arrow, which He had released billions of years ago, was gliding. He allowed the processes to reach their ultimate end of a creature created by Him, for communion with him.

As Douglas Wilson has said,

God knew that we were going to need to pick up dimes, and so He gave us fingernails. He knew that twilights displayed in blue, apricot, and battle gray would be entirely astonishing and beyond us, and so He gave us eyes that can see in color. He could have made all food quite nourishing, but which tasted like wadded up newspaper soaked in machine oil. Instead He gave us the tastes of watermelon, pecans, oatmeal stout, buttered corn, apples, fresh bread, grilled sirloin, and 25-year-old scotch. And He of course knew that we were going to need to thank Him and so He gave us hearts and minds.

Douglas Wilson, Is Christianity Good For the World: A Debate, Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson, 2008.

This is the God, and this is the kind of evolution, of which I am convinced. 

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[1]Here I have created a variation on a statement made by Martin Luther King Jr. He said,“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Martin Luther King Jr., Baccalaureate sermon, 1964, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. King, in turn had abbreviated the words of Theodore Parker, “Of Justice and the Conscience,” sermon, 1853, in which he said, "Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."

Do Faith and Science Conflict?

Many are asking the question, "Do faith and science conflict?" and many would say they know the answer. In this message delivered at Bow Valley Christian Church on January 7, 2018, I offer the answer of one who has worked in and studied the sciences while also living and studying a life of faith. I pray that it might be a helpful voice in the midst of much confusion. To hear this message, select the links embedded in the text.

Einstein on Faith and Religion

Albert Einstein had a complicated relationship with faith and religion. Some of the things he said show that he had faith that guided him toward truth and understanding. For Einstain, faith was a source of feeling and rationality. Yet, his concepts of faith were not organized as a particular faith such as faith in Jesus. He seems instead to believe in a much more generic faith that guides the scientist.

“Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up.  But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion.  To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” – Albert Einstein^[1]

Other things he said certainly pointed away from historic Christianity:

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me.” – Einstein in a letter written in 1954.

and,

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission.[2]

I am not here to make judgements on Einstein’s faith, work, or philosophical bent; God is the only true judge, full of grace and truth. It seems to me that Einstein was a seeker: a seeker of knowledge wherever he might find it. Certainly, he had his own cultural biases and blinders which kept him from looking in certain directions. Despite the high pedestal on which he sits in our culture, he was human like everyone else. He has taught us much about science and I believe he can also teach us something about the way we seek knowledge. Knowledge may be found in any area of life: science, religion, philosophy, faith in the ways of the Bible, and faith in Jesus Christ. I will choose to seek truth in every area of life.

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[1] “Science and Religion,” Ideas and Opinions, pp.41 – 49; published in Out of My Later Years, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. http://einsteinandreligion.com/scienceandreligion.html

[2] “Science and Religion,” Ideas and Opinions, pp.41 – 49; published in Out of My Later Years, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. http://einsteinandreligion.com/scienceandreligion.html

Life As We Know It

The combined information in two articles within a recent edition of Science News Journal[1] can lead to some intriguing speculation. One of the greatest assumptions of the search for extraterrestrial life is that we will likely find life where there is water. This is a valid hypothesis, for we know that life, as we know it on earth, requires water as a starting point. Single-celled life on earth is thought to have first developed in the sea in structures resembling soap bubbles,[2] bacterial cells are approximately 70% water, and humans are known to be 50-60% water.[3] So, life forms with which we are familiar require large quantities of water.

But, what might we find on other worlds? A recent article entitled, “Potential ingredient for alien life found on Titan,”[4] suggests that life might be possible in places where the predominant chemicals are liquid methane and vinyl cyanide. One can readily guess from the names of these chemicals that such life would be incompatible with life as we know it on earth, but might be possible in other forms. Primitive cell structures based upon water and proteins can form on earth and it is possible that such cell structures might also form, given the right conditions, in oceans of methane with vinyl cyanide. Poly-vinyl linkages of such compounds could form protein-like structures that encase other molecules that, in turn, act like RNA and DNA equivalents. Titan, a moon orbiting around Jupiter has such chemistry and could harbour some form of primitive life.

The other article in the same edition of Science News reports on the discovery of the first exo-moon. An exo-moon is a moon which orbits a planet which, in turn, orbits around a star in a distant solar system. The existence of such exo-moons expands our knowledge of potential environments where life might be possible. There are very few exo-planets that have been found to be in what are known as habitable zones. This exo-moon discovery suggests that there may be a great many more potential habitable zones in which liquid water exists. Couple this finding with the possibility of vinyl cyanide-based life forms, and the field in which to search for other life forms expands significantly.

Is life a once in a universe happening? Is Earth the only place in this universe where replicating, auto-sustaining, growing, and dying creatures exist? The search will go on as we continue to speculate about what might be possible. Earth is one small planet in a vast galaxy within a vast universe. The mind of the Creator is unfathomable when it comes to questions regarding why he created so much space. Are there other patterns of life out there? Did they spontaneously evolve? Was there a Master plan? Let us continue to ask good questions.

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[1] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/potential-first-exomoon-hubble and https://www.sciencenews.org/article/potential-ingredient-alien-life-found-titan?tgt=nr

[2] Partitioning may have begun from cell-like spheroids formed by proteinoids, which are observed by heating amino acids with phosphoric acid as a catalyst. They bear much of the basic features provided by cell membranes. Proteinoid-based protocells enclosing RNA molecules could have been the first cellular life forms on Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cells

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_water

[4] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/potential-ingredient-alien-life-found-titan?tgt=nr