Diseases and Cures in the Wings of Houseflies: Difference between revisions

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Apologists sometimes make absurd claims - like the fly wing hadith. http://mac.abc.se/home/onesr/h/hof.html  

To bring the layperson up to date, bacteriophages (“phages”) are viruses that infect bacteria. It is a generality that all natural bacterial populations are limited by phages and environmental conditions, but it is a leap to suggest that these elements are antidotes. Mammals, too, are limited by pathogens, but it is foolish to suggest these pathogens are antidotal to mammals.  

Dissection of the fly wing hadiths is as follows:  

Ibn Hajar wrote in his commentary on the hadith:  

A. They assume that bacteriophages are antidotal to bacteria.  

The ability to design antibiotics that might utilize bacteriophage infection pathways does not prove that phages are antidotal to bacteria. Antibiotics are not phages. Further, these antibiotics are likely to be ‘artificial’ and do not reflect the natural state of fly-human disease interactions.  

“Only in modern times was it discovered that the common fly carried parasitic pathogens for many diseases including malaria, typhoid fever, cholera, and others. It was also discovered that the fly carried parasitic bacteriophagic fungi capable of fighting the germs of all these diseases.”  

B. There is no such thing as bacteriophagic fungi. This term may sound impressive to non-scientists, but bacteriophages are viruses and fungi are, surprise, fungi.  

“These fly microbiota are bacteriophagic or "germ-eating". Bacteriophages are viruses of viruses. They attack viruses and bacteria. They can be selected and bred to kill specific organisms. The viruses infect a bacterium, replicate and fill the bacterial cell with new copies of the virus, and then break through the bacterium's cell wall, causing it to burst. The existence of similar bacteria-killing mechanisms in two bacteriophages suggests that antibiotics for human infections might be designed on the basis of these cell wall-destroying proteins. Science 292 (June 2001) p. 2326-2329.”  

B. Not all bacteriophages encode cell-wall destroying proteins to lyse host cells.  

"Gnotobiotic [=germ-free] insects (Greenberg et al, 1970) were used to provide evidence of the bacterial pathogen-suppressing ability of the microbiota of Musca domestica [houseflies] .... most relationships between insects and their microbiota remain undefined. Studies with gnotobiotic locusts suggest that the microbiota confers previously unexpected benefits for the insect host."  

Yup, you’ve just proven the existence of bacteriophages. What you haven’t proven is whether these bacteriophages protect humans against human pathogens carried by flies.  

“The fly microbiota were described as "longitudinal yeast cells living as parasites inside their bellies. These yeast cells, in order to perpetuate their life cycle, protrude through certain respiratory tubules of the fly. If the fly is dipped in a liquid, the cells burst into the fluid and the content of those cells is an antidote for the pathogens which the fly carries." Cf. Footnote in the Translation of the Meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari by Muhammad Muhsin Khan (7:372, Book 76 Medicine, Chapter 58, Hadith 5782).  

Now it’s not only phages on the right wing, but the yeast cells inside fly stomachs and respiratory tubules. I assume it’s the yeast antibiotics they’re referring to. The presence of tiny amounts of antibiotics (produced by fungi) do not protect humans from enteric diseases. Islamists are confused about antibiotics – they do not understand how antibiotics work. Dosage is important. Modern antibiotics are artificial and highly purified. Treatment of bacterial infections involves ‘massive’ doses of purified antibiotics that are not found in the natural environment.  

“Bacteriophagic medicine was available in the West before the forties but was discontinued when penicillin and other "miracle antibiotics" came out. Bacteriophages continued to flourish in Eastern Europe as an over-the-counter medicine. The "O1-phage" has been used for diagnosis of all Salmonella types while the prophylaxis of Shigella dysentery was conducted with the help of phages. Annales Immunologiae Hungaricae No. 9 (1966) in German.”  

B. Bacteriophage therapy was subsumed by antibiotic therapy in the 1940’s because it was largely ineffective. Before antibiotics, physicians were desperate for cures – they’d try anything, even bacteriophage therapy – but that doesn’t prove bacteriophage therapy works. In any event, one would need massive doses of phages to treat each case – which doesn’t occur in the natural environment. A fly dipping its right wing, left wing, or its entire body, will not be sufficient.  

“However, researchers in eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union, continued their studies of the potential healing properties of phages. And now that strains of bacteria resistant to standard antibiotics are on the rise, the idea of phage therapy has been getting more attention in the worldwide medical community. Several biotechnology companies have been formed in the U.S. to develop bacteriophage-based treatments - many of them drawing on the expertise of researchers from eastern Europe."  

B. Even if some biotechnology companies want to develop bacteriophage-based treatments, it doesn’t prove the hadith to be correct. These bacteriophage-based treatments involve the use of genetic engineering and other advanced scientific techniques to utilize bacteriophage pathogenesis for the treatment of human diseases. Naturally-occurring bacteriophages are useless for this purpose.  

The scientific facts do not support the fly wing hadith. Islamists continuing to make this claim open themselves to ridicule.

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