Miracle of the Shroud / Blood on the shroud

[Jabba]

Thanks for going that extra mile, Squeegee Beckenheim.
It'll be fascinating to know what response dr Merriwether gives you!

Squeegee,
- Thanks from me, also.
--- Jabba

 

[IanS]

Hmmm
"...The DNA from the blood has been tested and shows that it is from a human being but is too badly degraded to determine more than that. The blood is also AB Positive but most blood that is that old all tends to type AB+. All we can really say is that the blood is human blood. The Vatican has banned all future DNA testing for fear that some wacko from a renegade laboratory would try to clone Jesus. You probably won't hear much on the DNA front until the Vatican changes its position. Microbiologist, Leo Garza-Valdez, had access to some samples and was able to do some preliminary DNA tests showing that the blood is from a human male."
http://shroud2000.com/FAQs.html

hiliting by pakeha

"...A Team in Texas led by Leoncio A. Garza-Valdes have questioned these results, but the origin of their samples have been challenged. The Archbishop of Turin, Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini, has publicly challenged the sample's authenticity, and he says that he and the Vatican "declare that they cannot recognize the results of the claimed experiments." Walter McCrone, who has "examined thousands of fibers from 32 different areas of the 'Shroud,'" contends that the fibers shown in the team's photomicrographs "did not come from the 'Shroud' of Turin." (For more details see New "Shroud" Claims Challenged as Spurious.

Garza-Valdez has claimed to have found human DNA supposedly of Jesus. He wrote The DNA of God? (1999). The Vatican has refused to authenticate his samples. Anyone who has touched the shroud, cried over it, or a hair has fallen on it, can leave traces of human DNA on the shroud. ..."
http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/shroudturin.htm

So this appears to be a rehash of Garza-Valdez' (he of the bioplastic polymers, IIRC) stuff from 1999.

I know you don’t believe this sort of stuff (ie claims of finding what might be the blood and DNA of Jesus), but just to be clear - the above appears to be yet again just more stuff written on shroud websites and similar religious sites, right?

I don't see any reference there to real science papers from independent expert scientists, do I?

As almost everyone here has commented much earlier in the thread - after 800 years in existence, all sorts of debris such as skin, saliva, blood, and all sorts of fibres etc., must have fallen onto the shroud. So a positive test for anything like that is quite irrelevant.

Tests of that sort would only be relevant if they were (a)independently published in a mainstream journal, (b)showed that all the red areas of the shroud are composed of huge quantities of blood and DNA, and (c)that all that vast mass of blood and DNA could be positively dated to the 1st century AD ….. but afaik, there are no papers saying anything remotely like that.

 

[Sherman Bay]

...(b)showed that all the red areas of the shroud are composed of huge quantities of blood and DNA, and (c)that all that vast mass of blood and DNA could be positively dated to the 1st century AD ...

(bolding mine)

RED areas? Then it could not be human blood. Blood turns brown very quickly and never reverts to red. It doesn't take a doctor to know this. Why is this not considered?

 

[Slowvehicle]

Squeegee,
- Thanks from me, also.
--- Jabba

...you don't think Merriwether is in on the conspiracy of bias?

 

[IanS]

(bolding mine)

RED areas? Then it could not be human blood. Blood turns brown very quickly and never reverts to red. It doesn't take a doctor to know this. Why is this not considered?

It has been considered. We've discussed it to death earlier in the thread.

Actually the "blood" areas are more like a red-ish brown colour, but often just referred to as being "red", which is a reference to the fact that all those parts are usually said to be far too "red" in colour to be real blood.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I know you don’t believe this sort of stuff (ie claims of finding what might be the blood and DNA of Jesus), but just to be clear - the above appears to be yet again just more stuff written on shroud websites and similar religious sites, right?

Well, the link I originally gave was of a Shroud website which was quoting an independent expert. That's why I've emailed him in order to find out what he really said and, if possible, to get my hands on the original write-up of the tests.

 

[John Jones]

(bolding mine)

RED areas? Then it could not be human blood. Blood turns brown very quickly and never reverts to red. It doesn't take a doctor to know this. Why is this not considered?

I know that nobody actually claimed it, but it's strongly implied that the DNA is in the alleged red blood cells. Red blood cells don't contain DNA.

 

[tsig]

It has been considered. We've discussed it to death earlier in the thread.

Actually the "blood" areas are more like a red-ish brown colour, but often just referred to as being "red", which is a reference to the fact that all those parts are usually said to be far too "red" in colour to be real blood.

If there was blood on the shroud then that would be evidence against the resurrection, since dead bodies don't bleed, Jesus would have to be alive in the tomb so no "dying on the cross for sin" or glorious resurrection.

Looks like if the shroud is authentic the central myth of Christianity will have to be rewritten.

 

[catsmate]

Just to pick up on the issue of publication in specific journals - although in that Horizon program iirc they said something like "Nature is the most prestigious of all science journals", that is emphatically not true.

As I remember it (and it's a while since I've been in active science research) - Nature is a very general and non-specialised journal which tends to publish papers of a wider & more general interest. And, don't quote me on this but iirc I think it has in the past occasionally made the mistake of admitting papers which later turned out to be seriously flawed.

When I was publishing stuff in the general area of solid state chemistry and physics, we would never have chosen Nature as our preferred journal. It was far more prestigious to publish the best work in either J.Am.Chem.Soc (for chemistry stuff) or Phys. Rev. (for the more physics based and theoretical stuff). Other Journals we used a lot were J.Chem.Soc, J.Phys.Chem., J.Chem.Phys., Phys. Rev Lett., and Chem Commun. But we would not have submitted, what we would have at the time regarded as really serious chemistry and physics, to Nature.

I suppose the reason that the C14 was published in Nature (rather than what might have seemed the more obvious choice of the journal "Radiocarbon") was precisely because Nature has that wider and more generalised readership, which is perhaps more suitable for a internationally famous artefact like the Shroud.

Nature is an immensely prestigious journal; using Impact Factor, PageRank and combined assessments it's the only journal to appear in the top ten of each, beating Science, JAMA, The Lancet, Cell, the Physical Reviews et cetera.
That said it's very much a generalist publication, covering pretty much every area of scientific enquiry and is aimed not just at professionals but also the educated laity.

Thanks for your summary, catsmate. That was very useful for someone like me who hasn't been following this thread.

My pleasure.

 

[Aepervius]

Nature is an immensely prestigious journal; using Impact Factor, PageRank and combined assessments it's the only journal to appear in the top ten of each, beating Science, JAMA, The Lancet, Cell, the Physical Reviews et cetera.
That said it's very much a generalist publication, covering pretty much every area of scientific enquiry and is aimed not just at professionals but also the educated laity.


My pleasure.

Interresting , from all the article I read, in physic ,mostly, I never saw nature quoted.

If you had asked me for example in Physic, I would have said, Physical review , or similar ilk.

Rereading what you wrote i would not be surprised that it appears in the top ten, but never the top3 or top 5 , so that if you concentrate on a speciality, you never see it much.

 

[catsmate]

Interresting , from all the article I read, in physic ,mostly, I never saw nature quoted.

If you had asked me for example in Physic, I would have said, Physical review , or similar ilk.

Rereading what you wrote i would not be surprised that it appears in the top ten, but never the top3 or top 5 , so that if you concentrate on a speciality, you never see it much.

Nature was actually the highest IF journal in 2011 (the latest I have data for). It's various research and review journals (e.g. Nature Communications, Nature Immunology, Nature Neuroscience) are generally (>66%) in the top three IF journals in their fields.
It is, as I've said, a generalist publication and tends to publish more general articles than the specialist journals. It's one of the few journals that's read widely in both the scientific and non-scientific worlds, along with Science, Scientific American and some others.

 

[IanS]

Nature is an immensely prestigious journal; using Impact Factor, PageRank and combined assessments it's the only journal to appear in the top ten of each, beating Science, JAMA, The Lancet, Cell, the Physical Reviews et cetera.
That said it's very much a generalist publication, covering pretty much every area of scientific enquiry and is aimed not just at professionals but also the educated laity.

Sure. Of course Nature is a very important and well known journal (since Victorian times). But I don't think we are really disagreeing in the above.

I really wrote that as an brief aside mainly for the interest of Pakeha who earlier expressed an interest in knowing what actually happens inside science research (and because iirc the Horizon program clearly told the viewers that Nature is THE journal for science research).

But I think we are agreeing that, in subjects like physics, chemistry and maths, most specialist research scientists would not choose Nature to publish their most important work. Simply because, as I think we both agree, Nature is better known as a journal with wider and more general interest. And I suppose that wider public interest in the Shroud would be the main reason why radiocarbon physicists would choose to publish in a journal like Nature, rather than in say Radiocarbon. Ditto for C14 dating of other historically important artefacts or for dating Hominid fossils etc.




ps. Scientific American is not a research journal of course.

 

[John Jones]

Sure. Of course Nature is a very important and well known journal (since Victorian times). But I don't think we are really disagreeing in the above.

I really wrote that as an brief aside mainly for the interest of Pakeha who earlier expressed an interest in knowing what actually happens inside science research (and because iirc the Horizon program clearly told the viewers that Nature is THE journal for science research).

But I think we are agreeing that, in subjects like physics, chemistry and maths, most specialist research scientists would not choose Nature to publish their most important work. Simply because, as I think we both agree, Nature is better known as a journal with wider and more general interest. And I suppose that wider public interest in the Shroud would be the main reason why radiocarbon physicists would choose to publish in a journal like Nature, rather than in say Radiocarbon. Ditto for C14 dating of other historically important artefacts or for dating Hominid fossils etc.




ps. Scientific American is not a research journal of course.

I can agree with this. I read Nature more frequently, but my work was published in the Journal of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists International (JAOAC) because it applied to Analytical Chemistry.

 

[pakeha]

I know you don’t believe this sort of stuff (ie claims of finding what might be the blood and DNA of Jesus), but just to be clear - the above appears to be yet again just more stuff written on shroud websites and similar religious sites, right?

I don't see any reference there to real science papers from independent expert scientists, do I?

As almost everyone here has commented much earlier in the thread - after 800 years in existence, all sorts of debris such as skin, saliva, blood, and all sorts of fibres etc., must have fallen onto the shroud. So a positive test for anything like that is quite irrelevant.

Tests of that sort would only be relevant if they were (a)independently published in a mainstream journal, (b)showed that all the red areas of the shroud are composed of huge quantities of blood and DNA, and (c)that all that vast mass of blood and DNA could be positively dated to the 1st century AD ….. but afaik, there are no papers saying anything remotely like that.

Absolutely, IanS.
That's why I called it a rehash.
And why I hilited Garza-Valdez' name, because his ideas about bio-plastic polymers was picked apart, rebutted and ridiculed in this very thread.

I know that nobody actually claimed it, but it's strongly implied that the DNA is in the alleged red blood cells. Red blood cells don't contain DNA.

Yes, we've discussed that, but it's great to have you say it again.

Sure. Of course Nature is a very important and well known journal (since Victorian times). But I don't think we are really disagreeing in the above.

I really wrote that as an brief aside mainly for the interest of Pakeha who earlier expressed an interest in knowing what actually happens inside science research (and because iirc the Horizon program clearly told the viewers that Nature is THE journal for science research).

But I think we are agreeing that, in subjects like physics, chemistry and maths, most specialist research scientists would not choose Nature to publish their most important work. Simply because, as I think we both agree, Nature is better known as a journal with wider and more general interest. And I suppose that wider public interest in the Shroud would be the main reason why radiocarbon physicists would choose to publish in a journal like Nature, rather than in say Radiocarbon. Ditto for C14 dating of other historically important artefacts or for dating Hominid fossils etc.




ps. Scientific American is not a research journal of course.

Thanks for clearing that up, IanS. I appreciate the energetic honesty of so many posters here- I have learned much more than I bargained for when I started following this thread back in the day.

And catsmate1, for you

 

[Olowkow]

I'm not sure whether this is an inane question or not, but I have always pictured the claims of the shroud-ists to be that the image was on the side of the material which was not in contact with the body. That is, the image was formed somehow through the linen surface appearing on the outer visible part. If this is in fact the hypothesis, then any blood would have had to penetrate the cloth in order to become part of the image in question, and the largest blood quantity would have been on the "inside" or the portion actually in contact with the flesh. Can we see the reverse side? Can we sample blood there? Maybe the DNA is better?

So, on which side of the shroud is the image claimed to be imprinted? The side contacting the body, or the outer surface of the cloth?

ETA: after all, this is the only extant example of parthenogenesis in humans. It would be earth shaking news to profile a DNA sample with a holy ghost as the father.

 

[catsmate]

Sure. Of course Nature is a very important and well known journal (since Victorian times). But I don't think we are really disagreeing in the above.

I really wrote that as an brief aside mainly for the interest of Pakeha who earlier expressed an interest in knowing what actually happens inside science research (and because iirc the Horizon program clearly told the viewers that Nature is THE journal for science research).

But I think we are agreeing that, in subjects like physics, chemistry and maths, most specialist research scientists would not choose Nature to publish their most important work. Simply because, as I think we both agree, Nature is better known as a journal with wider and more general interest. And I suppose that wider public interest in the Shroud would be the main reason why radiocarbon physicists would choose to publish in a journal like Nature, rather than in say Radiocarbon. Ditto for C14 dating of other historically important artefacts or for dating Hominid fossils etc.

Yes, Nature is high profile but often lacks "crunch" in the material published and is more populist.

ps. Scientific American is not a research journal of course.

Yeah, sorry I meant to include SA as a generalist journal.

And catsmate1, for you
http://www.picgifs.com/smileys/http://www.picgifs.com/smileys/smileys-and-emoticons/flowers/smileys-flowers-823367.gif

Gee thanks.

 

[Sherman Bay]

I know that nobody actually claimed it, but it's strongly implied that the DNA is in the alleged red blood cells. Red blood cells don't contain DNA.

Neither does paint, unless the artist pricked his finger. I'm pretty sure there's a laugh in there somewhere.

 

[Giordano]

If any DNA could be recovered it woul be great to look for the Y chromosome sequences. If there, they represent the Y chromosome of god. If not, then Jesus was a Turner Syndrome female (X0). Turner Syndrome females typically are externally female but have under-developed ovaries and tend to have minimal secondary sexual characteristics such as breasts. However, they certainly do not develop beards like in the Shroud image.

 

[The Norseman]

If any DNA could be recovered it woul be great to look for the Y chromosome sequences. If there, they represent the Y chromosome of god. If not, then Jesus was a Turner Syndrome female (X0). Turner Syndrome females typically are externally female but have under-developed ovaries and tend to have minimal secondary sexual characteristics such as breasts. However, they certainly do not develop beards like in the Shroud image.

Yeah, but no dude could ever grow Farah Fawcett locks as the "guy" on the shroud.

 

[pakeha]

I'm not sure whether this is an inane question or not, but I have always pictured the claims of the shroud-ists to be that the image was on the side of the material which was not in contact with the body. That is, the image was formed somehow through the linen surface appearing on the outer visible part. If this is in fact the hypothesis, then any blood would have had to penetrate the cloth in order to become part of the image in question, and the largest blood quantity would have been on the "inside" or the portion actually in contact with the flesh. Can we see the reverse side? Can we sample blood there? Maybe the DNA is better?

So, on which side of the shroud is the image claimed to be imprinted? The side contacting the body, or the outer surface of the cloth?

ETA: after all, this is the only extant example of parthenogenesis in humans. It would be earth shaking news to profile a DNA sample with a holy ghost as the father.

Odd you would ask that, as I'd done so some time ago. The answer is the side contacting a hypothetical body.

The whole subject of blood has been discussed quite thoroughly here, most notably in the posts of DavidMo, Giordano, catsmate1, Squeegee Beckingham, Dinwar, wollery, zooterkin, Garrette, tsig and many others.

Like the subjects of 'invisible' patching and 'contamination' speculatation about blood remains on the TS continue to resurface periodically.
As far as I can tell, they're always rehashes of previous investigations, since no new samples have been taken from the cloth since 1988, AFAIK.

Worth a reread, in the light of Jabba's renewed claims, is this article by Mme Flury-Lemburg on the subject of the 'invisible patching' http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n65part5.pdf