How can someone with aquagenic urticaria be saved?
Question:
How can people with aquagenic urticaria be saved? If these people that suffer from this disease were immersed in water would most likely die.
This disease can be traced back before 500 B.C. Although a very low percentage of the population has this disease, one would think that the total number of people who have had this disease would be surprisingly high in the last 2000 years.
This is not an attempt to find a loophole in God's word but a sincere question. How can these poor people that suffer from this disease ever be saved?
Thank you.
Answer:
Aquagenic urticaria is a rare problem. Only 100 cases were known in the world in 2011. People who have this problem develop hives when they touch water. No one knows if it is caused by the water itself or some chemical in the water. Once the body dries, the symptoms disappear in 20 to 30 minutes.
Obviously, people need to contact water in order to survive, so people with aquagenic urticaria take antihistamines when they know they will be in contact with water to limit their reaction. This means that someone wanting to be baptized would need to take antihistamines prior to their immersion. They might break out in a rash, but they certainly would not die from a brief dunking. If they have a severe reaction, the use of an epi-pen would allow them to continue breathing.
Thus, while it is a difficult situation, it is not impossible to baptize someone with this extremely rare problem.
