Curing deprivation

Fossil fuels, which fed this amazing economic growth, were the medicine to cure deprivation. But it was an untested medicine, at that. As the planet Earth consumed more and more fossil fuels, two important predicaments started to emerge (1) the fossil fuels would be depleted in a foreseeable future, and (2) the fossil fuels and their combustion products were causing global environmental problems. 

Nickel is considered essential to animals because it is present in the fetus or newborn, is homeostatically regulated, the metabolic pool of nickel is specifically influenced by hormonal substances or pathologic processes, certain metalloproteins contain nickel, and because nickel deficiency has been induced experimentally in certain species of birds and animals (NAS 1975 USPHS 1977 Kirchgessner and Schnegg 1980). In general, the nickel deficiency syndrome can be cured or prevented by trace amounts of nickel (NAS 1975). However, nickel administration may not be successful in reversing all abnormalities produced by nickel deprivation (USPHS 1977). 

In other words, it takes about the same length of time to kill an animal with sleep deprivation as it does to cure a person with those drugs that restore sleep to normal for the duration of their administration. Some of those alterations are variations on the theme of sleep deprivation. The total suppression of REM by isoniazid and other MAOIs is a particularly striking example. Successful treatment of depression may thus depend upon pushing the two sides of the reciprocal interaction system to such extreme limits that REM sleep is impossible. 

The cure lies in kindness and consideration, not in humiliating, punitive measures and deprivations typical of institutional psychiatric treatment, then and now. 

Once you identify the cause, curing an environmental problem may be fairly simple. If the soil is dry, soak the ground slowly and deeply to restore soil moisture, A 5- to 10-minute blast from a hose may make the tx of the soil look wet, hut it s probably still dry a few inehes below the surface. A soil that is too wet, depriving plant roots of oxygen, is more difficult to fix. The best solution is to remove damaged plants and replace them with plants that are better adapted to wet soil. 

The answer is c. (Murray, pp 123-148. Scriver, pp 2367-2424. Sack, pp 159-175. Wilson, pp 287-317.) The most likely cause of the symptoms observed is carnitine deficiency. Under normal circumstances, long-chain fatty acids coming into muscle cells are activated as acyl coenzyme A and transported as acyl carnitine across the inner mitochondrial membrane into the matrix. A deficiency in carnitine, which is normally synthesized in the liver, can be genetic but it is also observed in preterm babies with liver problems and dialysis patients. Blockage of the transport of long-chain fatty acids into mitochondria not only deprives the patient of energy production, but also disrupts the structure of the muscle cell with the accumulation of lipid droplets. Oral dietary supplementation usually can effect a cure. Deficiencies in the carnitine acyltransferase enzymes I and II can cause similar symptoms. 

When we treat medicine as a science, similar to the hard sciences, the implications are far reaching. Just as physical science deprived the popes of their authority regarding the movement of planets, so medical science deprives patients—as well as priests and politicians—of their authority regarding the definition, nature, cause, and cure of disease. This development is not something to regret, but something to celebrate. Authority over the scientific definition of disease must not be confused with authority for judging the ethics of medical interventions or the power to provide or prohibit such interventions. 

Although historically potatoes were introduced into the Western World comparatively recently, the nutritional importance of the potato has frequently been underestimated. Many of us think of potatoes as the food which has to be cut down on in a diet to lose weight because of their high carbohydrate content. Carpenter and other authors have pointed out the importance of this humble vegetable in the prevention and cure of scurvy. Prisons in the nineteenth century were, next to hospitals, places to keep away from if you wished to remain healthy. At that time it was part of the philo.sophy of the treatment of criminal behaviour (and perhaps still is) that the wrongdoer should suffer, not just by loss of liberty, but by the deprivation of... 

They [his medical colleagues] seem mad themselves, rather than disposed to cure their patients, when they compare them to wild beasts, to be tamed by deprivation of food and the tortures of thirst. Doubtless led by the same error, they want to chain them up cruelly, without thinking that their limbs may be bruised or broken, and that it is more convenient and easier to restrain them by the hand of man than by the often useless weight of irons. They go so far as to advocate personal violence, the lash, as if to compel the return of reason by such provocation. ... 

One of Rush s favorite remedies was terror, which, he believed, acts powerfully upon the body, through the medium of the mind, and should be employed in the cure of madness. To terrorize the patient properly, it was necessary to remove him from his home and incarcerate him in a madhouse. This Rush considered therapeutic The effect of thus depriving a madman of his liberty has sometimes been of the most salutary nature. . In Rush s day, such incarceration was easily accomplished. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the American physician had uncontested power to compel the medical detention of any individual whom he considered in need of care for mental disease. To arrange for the admission of a patient, all Rush had to do was to write, on a chance scrap of paper, as Deutsch tells it, that James Sproul is a proper patient for the Pennsylvania Hospital, and append his signature. ... 

The mechanisms of many modern therapeutic drugs affect enzyme actions. Some drugs work by inactivating essential enzyme action, thus depriving microbes of necessary metabolic steps. Other drugs use the enzymes to produce products toxic to unwanted cells. Discuss the possibilities to influence enzymatic actions to cure diseases. 

A vitamin is defined as an organic compound that is required in small amounts for the maintenance of normal metabolic function. Deficiency causes a specific disease, which is cured or prevented only by restoring the vitamin to the diet. This is important — it is not enough just to show that the compound has effects when added to the diet, as these may be pharmacological actions unrelated to the maintenance of normal health and metabolic integrity. The metabolic fimctions of all the vitamins are now known. Therefore, before a new substance could be accepted as a possible vitamin, there must be not only evidence that deprivation causes a specific deficiency disease that can be cured only with that compound, but also definition of a clear metabolic function. 

High teriteri death rates and high consumption of rice, occurring in the same areas, are not the result of coincidence. The kind of rice most of the people prefer is white the kind that deprives them of the natural food sutetances that would prevent or cure teriteri. 

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