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Regenerating ribs
Adam and that ‘missing’ rib
.
The periosteum contains cells that can manufacture new
bone. Particularly in young people, ‘rib periosteum has a remarkable ability to
regenerate bone, perhaps more so than any other bone’. Thoracic (chest)
surgeons routinely remove ribs, and these often grow back, in whole or in part.
A lot depends on the care with which the rib is removed; it needs to be
‘peeled’ out of its periosteum to leave this membrane as intact as possible. A
major reason why the rib is the ideal situation for such regeneration is that
the attached intercostal muscles provide it with a good blood supply.
by
Carl Wieland
The surprise was to have survived it — God
clearly had other plans for me.
During the 5½ months in hospital, and for
years afterwards, I had a series of operations to reconstruct various parts of
me, particularly the bones of my face.
These operations often required using my
own bone for grafting.
I noticed that the plastic surgeon would
keep going back to the right side of my ribcage, through the same horizontal
scar, actually, to get more bone for these procedures.
One day, I asked him why he hadn’t ‘run out
of bone’.
He looked at me
blankly, and then explained that he and his team took the whole rib out, each
time. ‘We leave the periosteum intact, so
the rib usually just grows right back again’.
Despite having trained and practised as a
family doctor, I was intrigued; I had never realised this before.
The periosteum (the literal meaning of
this word is ‘around the bone’) is a membrane that covers every bone — it’s the
reason you can get things stuck between your teeth while gnawing on a leg of
lamb, for instance.
The periosteum contains cells that can
manufacture new bone.
Particularly in young people, ‘rib periosteum
has a remarkable ability to regenerate bone, perhaps more so than any other
bone’.
Thoracic (chest) surgeons routinely remove
ribs, and these often grow back, in whole or in part.
A lot depends on the care with which the
rib is removed; it needs to be ‘peeled’ out of its periosteum to leave this
membrane as intact as possible.
A major reason why the rib is the ideal
situation for such regeneration is that the attached intercostal muscles
provide it with a good blood supply.
When the surgeon
originally told me this, my immediate thought was — ‘Wow, that’s really neat, Adam didn’t have to walk around with a
defect!’
In Genesis 2:21, referring to the creation
of Eve, we read:
‘And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam,
and he slept. And He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh underneath.’
Surprisingly, some Christians have grown up
believing that men have one less rib than women.
They have the same number, of course.
Some anti-creationists have used the fact
that men don’t have any missing ribs today to mock a literal Genesis.
For years before my
accident, when asked about this, I would give a reply something like this: ‘If your father had lost his finger in a
circular saw, would you really expect all his children to have one less finger,
too?
‘Or all of his sons, but not his daughters? Of course
not. The DNA instructions that are passed on from parent to child are in the
form of a code, like writing — removing a rib (or finger) would not change the
instructions on the code, so all the offspring will have all their ribs (or
fingers).’
While all that is still very true and pertinent,
this information about rib regrowth adds a new and fascinating dimension.
God designed the rib, along with the periosteum.
He would certainly have known how to remove the rib in such a way that it would
later grow back, just as ribs still do today — without requiring any sort of
special miracle.
Adam would not have had any permanent area of weakness in his rib cage, but would have had, for all of the hundreds of years of his life, the same number of ribs that you and I have today.
Dr
Carl Wieland M.B., B.S.
Founding
editor, Creation magazine, and one of the pioneers of the modern creation
movement in Australia.
After
41 years of activity and prominence in the creation movement, the last 28 of
them as the fulltime Managing Director of the ministry that eventually became
Creation Ministries International in Brisbane, Australia, Dr Carl Wieland
commenced a well-earned retirement from active creation ministry in early 2015.
His
successor as Managing Director of CMI-Australia, head scientist Dr Don Batten,
said at the time, “These are big shoes to fill, but one of the hallmarks of Dr
Wieland’s decades of exemplary service was a commitment to making sure that CMI
did not focus on individuals, personalities or ‘name recognition’, but rather
on a team approach. One of his enduring legacies is the calibre of the CMI team
that he helped to build. This consists of many talented and committed
individuals worldwide in various roles, with younger scientists and speakers
due to come on board in coming years, in more than one country in which CMI
operates. This longstanding ethos will stand the ministry in good stead in both
the medium and long-term future.”
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