Bad Design or Abuse of the Body?

We recently received a letter from a lady whose husband had just died from Parkinson’s disease. The letter berated God for bad design in humans that allows diseases like Parkinson’s to exist. Is the cause really bad design or abuse of the body?

I have followed the research on Parkinson’s for quite a few years because my closest friend in the high school where I taught for 41 years died of Parkinson’s, and so did my brother just a few months ago. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do have a suggestion if you have lost a loved-one to Parkinson’s or similar diseases. I suggest that most of those diseases are caused in one way or another by human error, greed, or abuse, and not because of God’s bad design.

A new study suggests that Parkinson’s has a direct relationship to TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). Researchers studied the health records of 325,870 veterans age of 31 to 65. After 12 years, 1,462 had been diagnosed with an incurable neurological disorder, and 65% of these had been treated for a TBI. Researchers concluded that 71% had an increased risk of Parkinson’s and those who had received severe head injuries had an 83% higher risk. The study says that injured brain cells trigger a build-up of fibrils of a protein called alpha-synuclein which is a hallmark of Parkinson’s.

We know that cigarettes have a strong causal relationship to cancer. Now it appears that some other major health maladies are not due to bad design in our bodies, but rather what has happened to us. It might be accidental head injuries in sports or due to our carelessness in what we do with our bodies. Psalms 139:14 states a truism, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” So is Parkinson’s a function of bad design or abuse of the body? It is obvious that failing to take adequate care of our bodies can lead to all kinds of problems.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Reference: The Week, May 11, 2018, page 19.