Page 168 - The Creation Of The Universe

166 THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

more soluble in water than the least soluble gas is and there are hardly any
gases at all whose solubilities are identical. Carbon dioxide is about twen-
ty times more soluble in water than oxygen is for example. Among the vast
range of potential solubilities however, the one possessed by oxygen is
precisely what it needs to be for it to be fit for human life.
What would happen if the water-solubility rate of oxygen were differ-
ent: a little more or a little less?
Let us take a look at the first situation. If oxygen were less soluble in
water (and thus also in blood) less oxygen would enter the bloodstream
and the body's cells would be starved of oxygen. This would make life
much more difficult for metabolically active organisms such as human be-
ings. No matter how hard you worked at breathing, you would constantly
be faced with the danger of suffocation because not enough oxygen was
reaching your body's cells.
If the water-solubility of oxygen were higher on the other hand, you
would be confronted by the threat of oxygen toxicity, mentioned briefly
above. Oxygen is, in fact, a rather dangerous substance: if an organism gets
too much of it, the result can be fatal. Some of the oxygen in the blood en-
ters into a chemical reaction with the blood's water. If the amount of dis-
solved oxygen becomes too high, the result is the production of highly re-
active and damaging by-products. One of the functions of the complex sys-
tem of blood enzymes is to prevent this from happening. But if the amount
of dissolved oxygen becomes too high, the enzymes cannot do their job.
As a result, every breath we take would poison us a little bit more leading
quickly to death. The chemist Irwin Fridovich comments on this issue:
All respiring organisms are caught in a cruel trap. The very oxygen
which supports their lives is toxic to them and they survive precarious-
ly, only by virtue of elaborate defense mechanisms. 96
What saves us from this trap–from being poisoned by too much oxygen
or from being suffocated by not enough of it–is the fact that oxygen's sol-
ubility and the body's complex enzymatic system have been created to be
what they need to be. To put it more explicitly, Allah has created not on-
ly the air we breathe but also the systems that make it possible to use that
air in perfect harmony with one another.