Oleg Savca is a boy in Moldova who had a deadly brain tumor, and was expected do die, because nobody in his area knew how to treat him. His mother, Zina Savca, was reduced to hoping for a miracle from god.

Left alone, the tumor would put Oleg into a coma and ultimately kill him. What happened next Zina Savca can attribute only to divine intervention.

Yes! He has been saved! Because the Savcas sacrificed all their livestock, burning the bones wrapped in fat on an altar, and god sent angels who lofted them all into the air and carried them to a strange, magical land where devout mystics with miraculous powers hummed and prayed and waved their hands over Oleg’s head until the tumor-demon crept out, at which time Jesus himself wrestled with it and finally opened a deep pit into fiery hell, where he cast the monster. Oleg lives!

Oh, wait. That’s not quite right. The divine intervention was a little more mundane.

The Savcas’ doctor, Andrey Plesco, visited Sutter Memorial in late April on a professional exchange. He saw Ciricillo operate and realized Ciricillo could save the boy.

Yeah, the “divine intervention” was finding an American doctor who had the skills to carry out a delicate operation. They did have to sacrifice all their livestock…to raise airfare for the flight to magic miracle land, which happens to be Sacramento. I suppose you could use Clarke’s third law — “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” — with the Savcas as a real world example, but I’m simply not buying the divinity of Sacramento.