In
Message 3 kuresu happened to mention that
Alan Alda died. I may be wrong, kuresu, but I don't think so. At least I hope not. I have enjoyed him a lot. We are genrational cohorts”he was born in 1936 and I in '39. This all brings me to my proposal for a new thread (but I'm not sure where). I will call it "Alan Alda's polio" because I heard him explain how Sister Elizabeth Kinney came to his house once and cured him of it.
I believe it was on NPR where I hear Alda talk about his life and how he was struck down by polio as a kid and then cured of it by an Australian bush nurse named
Sister Elizabeth Kinney. He spoke of the controversy surrounding her credentials and her methods of treatment of polio. When Alda’s desperate mother appealed to Sister Kinney, who happened to be traveling through their town at the time, Kinney came over to their house, examined him and performed her treatment on him. He described it as very “uncomfortable and lasted and long time.” He went on the explain how his mother helped Kinney apply woolen blankets soaked in very hot water on his inflicted hips and legs. His family continued this treatment over a period of weeks. Before she left Sister Kinney also instructed his family on a regime of physical-therapy treatments to use after the inflammation and partial paralysis from his polio had subsided. He eventually recovered.
Now, the medical establishment in Sister Kinney's own country hated and vilified her. Wiki says:
quote:
Between 1935 and 1940 she traveled extensively throughout Australia helping to set up clinics. She also made two trips to England where she set up a treatment clinic in St. Mary's hospital near Carshalton where there is a rehabilitation facility to this day. In 1938 the Health Department of New South Wales subjected her work to a medical Royal Commission whose findings condemned her unorthodox procedures as 'dangerous', 'damaging', 'costly', and 'cruel'.
The medical establishment in the United States also hated her, sniping at her credentials and discouraging her approach to treating polio. Instead the US medical establishment joined up with the US pharmaceutical establishment to lead the fight against polio and find a drug to cure it or develop a vaccine. Of course this was an epic milestone in sainthood of American medicine.
And yet, as a biologist, I have to ask a simple question: Why isn’t it entirely possible that the polio virus could have been attacked timely with heat? Obviously, the virus could not withstand Sister Kinney's timely heat treatment, and this was tested over and over in different countries. (Yeah, but who's going to make any money on heat?) Why wasn’t Sister Elizabeth Kinney exalted instead of scorned? Why wasn’t her treatment encouraged at that critical time of our history. (btw: I also I grew up in that frightening shadow of polio.)
And more to the heart of the matter: Has the medical/pharmaceutical complex (not to be confused with the military/industrial complex) truly served the cause of relieving human suffering? Or has it served the treasuries of capitalism, thus becoming a commodity rather of a service?
”HM
™ Version 4.2