The new movie "Lorenzo's Oil" tells how the parents of a child with a rare illness overcame indifference in the medical establishment and, by themselves, invented a cure.
The message is that medical science has become detached from the needs of those it serves, but that individuals can leap bureaucratic impediments to find new cures with their own faith and efforts ...
According to the movie and the account of the parents, Augusto and Michaela Odone of Fairfax, Va., they refused to accept doctors' advice that there was no hope for their son, Lorenzo, after they were told in 1984 that he was suffering from a rare hereditary disease known as adenoleukodystrophy ...
... they defied the medical establishment's pessimism, read obscure medical journals and figured that a mixture of two natural oils, known as erucic and oleic acids, would correct an important symptom of the disease ...
Dr. Rizzo began the first pilot study of the oil in August 1987. Six of 8 boys in the study deteriorated rapidly. The other two seemed to stabilize for a time, but one has now had a relapse and investigators have lost contact with the other.
In a study by Dr. Hugo Moser of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 70 children with the rapidly progressing disease used the oil from the time of their first symptoms until they lost sight and movement. The oil, Dr. Moser concluded, "did not make any difference."
Dr. Moser said that so far he had seen no evidence that Lorenzo's disease could be prevented in boys who were otherwise destined to get it ...
Results of an Academic Promotion and Career Path Survey of Faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
