This, there can be no doubt, is a great miracle. This property of blood saves the life of every human on Earth. Were it not for that coagulating ability, then even the tiniest scratch would end in death. However, people never think about this miracle that lies right before their very eyes and so preserves their lives.
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| Blood flowing in your capillaries immediately beneath the skin leaks out as the result of the slightest scratch or cut (top). Shortly afterward, blood around the cut begins to coagulate (middle picture). Fibrin with its soft structure begins to dry after stopping up the wound, and forms a hard shell to protect the wound until the healing process is complete (bottom). |
So, how does this miracle come about? How does blood coagulate? As the answer to this question is pursued, a very clear miracle of creation emerges.
Coagulation is reminiscent of the first aid provided by ambulances called to the scene after an auto accident.
When bleeding takes place anywhere in the body, blood platelets known as thrombocytes hasten to the site. Thrombocytes are distributed throughout the bloodstream, so wherever bleeding occurs there will inevitably be thrombocytes somewhere near. A substance known as the von Willebrand protein acts rather like the traffic police, indicating the site of the accident and requesting first aid. It halts the thrombocytes when it detects them and causes them to halt at the scene.
The first thrombocyte to arrive on the scene emits a special substance, just as if it were calling for back-up, and calls other teams to the site. A microscopically small cell realizes that there is a problem and is able to communicate with others, which understand the message being sent out and do what is requested of them. Tiny entities invisible to the naked eye thus communicate with one another and organize themselves.
At this point, some 20 enzymes in the body combine and together, begin producing a protein called thrombin over the wound. The absence of just one of these enzymes would mean that the system would not function, and death would be the result. However, everything has been planned, and the system has been constructed in a flawless manner.
Thrombin is produced only at the site of an open wound. This resembles the first-aid team providing the necessary medicine for the patient at the scene. In addition, that production of this protein must be in just the right quantity, and moreover, it must start and end at exactly the right time. The enzymes responsible for manufacturing the protein issue among themselves the commands to start and stop.
Once a sufficient quantity of this protein has been produced, tiny fibers known as fibrinogen form, serving a very important purpose: They form a web over the wound, to which arriving thrombocytes adhere and accumulate. As more and more thrombocytes accumulate, the bleeding slows. Afterward, once the wound is completely healed, the scab dissolves by means of similar processes.15
Consider that these enzymes and proteins consist of strings of inanimate, blind, unconscious atoms. Yet each one of these assumes a function right from the outset once an injury has occurred. They swiftly hasten to the scene, organize themselves to halt the bleeding, produce the requisite proteins as if filling an order, communicate with others to call for assistance, understand the messages received from one another, and fulfill their functions.
The system functions flawlessly, right down to the finest detail. Now, consider what would happen were there to be any flaw in this vital system: If blood began to coagulate in the absence of any wound, or if the scab that formed over the wound peeled away from it, or if the proteins that play a role in coagulation had trouble communicating—if any one of these occurred, then we would face clotting in the vessels leading to such vital organs as the heart, lungs or brain, and death would ensue due to loss of blood.
Your body does not need coagulation to take place only around visible wounds. We also need a clotting system to repair the breaks in capillaries, which happen very frequently but of which, of course, you are generally unaware. When you bang your knee against a table or chair, a large number of these capillary vessels rupture, leading to internal bleeding. But thanks to the clotting system, the bleeding immediately stops, to be followed by the healing process begins.
If no clotting occurred, the result would be the disorder known as hemophilia. Hemophiliacs need to be protected from even the slightest blow, because particularly in the advanced stages of the disease in even the smallest bleeding cannot be stopped, and that leads to the patient’s death from blood loss.
It is essential that the clotting property in our blood exist, but it also needs to be subject to strict supervision. As you can clearly see from the information provided, such a system can definitely not form in the living body by chance. This system, whose every detail is the product of planning and calculation, is an indication of the Allah’s infinite knowledge, intellect and power. To maintain that this system came about by chance in fact expresses the logical collapse of Darwinism.
Is He Who creates like him who does not create? So will you not pay heed? (Surat an-Nahl:17)
THE MAGICAL SUBSTANCE THROMBIN
Thrombin is a protein that coagulates the blood. However, although thrombin is present in the bloodstream it does not lead to clotting in the capillaries it moves through, thereby halting the normal flow of blood. So how does thrombin suddenly acquire its coagulating property in moments of need?
Thrombin is widely present in the bloodstream but in the form of the inactive protein prothrombin. Since prothrombin is still inactive, it cannot enable the formation of the substance fibrin which is necessary for the clotting process by putting the fibrinogen into action. Living things are thus protected from deadly uncontrolled clotting.
Consider that if only fibrinogen and prothrombin assumed duties in the blood clotting system, this could have deadly effects. In that case, when a person was injured, the prothrombin would roam aimlessly through the bloodstream, not affecting the fibrinogen, and the person concerned would die from loss of blood. Since prothrombin lacks the ability to turn fibrinogen into fibrin, there is a need for some mechanism to set prothrombin into action—and such a system actually does exist.
During the clotting process, another protein called Stuart factor affects the prothrombin, converting it into the active thrombin. Thrombin in turn converts fibrinogen into fibrin, and blood clotting thus takes place.
However, if the Stuart factor, prothrombin and fibrinogen were the only proteins to play a role in coagulation, the Stuart factor would immediately start working and the organism’s blood would solidify. For that reason Stuart factor is not present in the blood in an active form, but needs to be activated in order to start working.
At this point, coagulation displays more striking properties. It is not enough for the active Stuart factor to set the prothrombin in motion. You can mix Stuart factor and prothrombin together in a test tube, but after it takes time thrombin to form, any individual will already have died of blood loss. Yet another protein, known as accelerin, is needed to set the Stuart factor in motion. When all of these come together, the accelerin and Stuart factor immediately act on the prothrombin, turning it into thrombin and halting the bleeding.
To summarize, two separate proteins are needed to activate one proenzyme.
Yet the processes involved in coagulation go still further. Initially, in fact, the accelerin is in the form of the inactive proaccelerin. So what activates the proaccelerin? Thrombin! As you will recall, however, thrombin is further along than proaccelerin in this chain reaction. This means that thrombin, which plays a role in the production of accelerin, is rather like a grandchild appearing before the birth of its own grandparent. Yet since the Stuart factor acts on the prothrombin at a very slow rate, there is always some thrombin in the bloodstream. (Michael Behe, Op cit., pp. 85-90.)
All this is a rather superficial account of the coagulation process. Yet from this brief description, you can still see how blood clotting, which we encounter frequently in our daily lives—is actually exceedingly complex, a marvel of creation. This system functions by means of dozens of components working together, and could not function properly in the absence of any one of them. To suggest that it came into being by chance is a most illogical and irrational claim.
Moreover, evolutionists claim that living things evolved in stages. But as you have seen, all proteins and enzymes in the clotting process depend on one another for clotting to occur. In the absence of any one, the others serve no purpose, and will even lead to the death of the body concerned. Therefore, the living organism will have no time to wait for all the components to be present, and will thus die. Whatever appearance it now displays, and whatever physical and chemical features it now possesses, it must have had them all since it first appeared. This is one of the proofs that Man was created by Allah in a single moment.
Say: “Have you thought about your partner deities, those you call upon besides Allah? Show me what they have created of the earth; or do they have a partnership in the heavens? Have We given them a Book whose Clear Signs they follow? No indeed! The wrongdoers promise each other nothing but delusion.” (Surah Fatir:40)
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