Hi there-
Has any one of you held a very sick child or a dying animal in your arms? Any one of you stayed up all night with a fretful feaverish, very ill child? In other words, have any of you dealt with life and death and the real world?
I had a brother and a sister who died around 30 years ago in their 20s/30s. They were born with cystic fibrosis (CF), which is the most common genetically-transmitted condition amongst people of western European descent. Although they died young, what is remarkable is that they were amongst the earliest CF patients who did not die in early childhood of a horrible lung and wasting disease or of its complications. This was entirely due to increasing scientific knowledge of the disease, and the improvements in diagnosis, treatment and care that the increased knowledge made possible. It may be that CF children born now will have the chance of living into middle age, or even longer.
Various aspects of the disease had been recognised as far back as the 1700s (apparently, there was a warning “Woe to the child kissed on the brow who tastes salty, for he is cursed and soon must die” referring to what was later recognised as CF), but the first full clinical and pathological characterisation of CF was made in the late 1930s. When I came to start a family I went to see a geneticist, but at that time he could give me no more than general advice about my chance of passing on the disease. The mutations on a chromosome, and later the gene that is responsible, were identified in the 1980s, so now concerned intending parents can seek informed genetic counselling. No contribution from homeopathy is evident.
In the UK, CF patients are now helped (on the NHS) by a whole set of measures, from early diagnosis, through dietary supplements (including the pancreatic enzyme that is deficient in CF patients), antibiotics and other treatments to control the infections that CF sufferers are liable to, physiotherapy to keep the airways clear, and intensive care when managing the disease fails, to genetic counselling for CF patients and their relatives who may carry the defective gene. Perhaps one day gene therapy may remove the threat of the disease. I’m sure that CF suufferers are not the only people whose lives have been immeasurably improved by advances in medicine.
Then, on the other hand, we have charlatans who simply prescribe a fake pill based on 18th century magic to credulous middleclass hypochiondriacs and witter on about ‘holistic treatment’. The irony should be obvious.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: holistic, homeopathy, medicine
