What does ‘Our Father in heaven’ mean to you? To me, one effect of God is as a creative progenitor, an inspiration of good, like an acorn of good, which grows into an oak tree of good. As Jesus says, a mustard seed that grows into a bush where the birds of the air can take shelter. Let me tell you how the acorn of the inspiration of molecular medicine has grown into an oak tree. 

In 1915, during the horrors of the First World War, Sir William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their work developing X-ray crystallography. They shone X-rays through crystals onto a screen. From the patterns produced on the screen they could deduce the molecular structure of the crystals. That is genius. 

Over the next one hundred years countless scientists used X-ray crystallography to work out the molecular structure of cells in the human body. This work gave rise to 27 Nobel Prizes.  In 1962 Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize for deducing the structure of DNA and subsequently it became clear that cancer is due to mutations or errors acquired in the DNA code. You can see what I am getting at here, there is a golden thread of good running through these 100 years of work, showing us the molecular structure of our bodies, and I call that golden thread God.

Molecular science also revealed that many large molecules sit across the cell surface or membrane, protruding into the inside and the outside of the cell. These are molecular switches called tyrosine kinases. These enzyme molecules can be activated by hormones like insulin or erythropoietin which can bind to their specific receptors on the outside of the cell to activate the cell to divide or to undertake a specific function. In cancer these tyrosine kinase molecules can be mutated into the ‘on’ position so that they continually make the cell divide and grow into a tumour. In the 1990s Nicholas Lyndon designed a molecule called Imatinib which would fit into a cancerous molecular pathway and switch off the mutant tyrosine kinase molecules in chronic myeloid leukaemia. Working in the NHS we could give the patients Imatinib tablets and over the next few weeks this had the apparently magic effect of making the disease melt away. This was control not cure. 

In my mind, this wonderful work is the work of God. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.