Ultimate causes, illness

More importantly, African cultures define two types of causes for illnesses 21,32). Firstly, a proximate cause, which accounts for how a disease is contracted (30). Infection and contagion from pollutants are examples of proximate causes (26). Secondly, an ultimate cause, which accounts for why a disease is contracted by a particular person. A simple explanation by Green (27) clarifies, a mother may recognize that her infant has diarrhea because flies settled on and contaminating its food (proximate cause), but she will also want to establish who sent the flies to harm her child (ultimate cause) . The material types of treatment (i.e. herbal remedies) are often considered of secondary importance and only complementary. The primary concern of African traditional healing is to discover who, or what has caused the imbalance or illness (i.e. the ultimate cause). 

A further five, dangerously ill patients were treated between February and June and all but one of these were cured. Their other failure was a four-year-old boy who was seriously ill with infected measles spots. He showed a dramatic recovery with penicillin treatment, and all the staphylococci were eliminated unfortunately, he had suffered from neurological damage during the viral infection, and this was the ultimate cause of death rather than the bacterial infection. 

Molecular medicine provides quantifiable, objective criteria that can be used as the basis for treatment, particularly in the use of drugs specifically designed to correct abnormal biochemical processes. Molecular abnormalities in different parts of the body, including the brain, will become the language of neuropathology. Of course, these therapeutic decisions must involve subjective as well as objective criteria. Rather than search for ultimate causes of the patient s illness, we search for antecedent events or findings. Probability theory, particularly the use of Bayes theorem, plays an important role in our model of the diagnostic process. 

Analyze the incident — By analyzing the facts, you should be able to determine the cause of the injury or illness. Many cases will be cut and dried, while others will take a more thorough analysis to determine the root cause. You may have to work your way through a complex series of events or causes and effects to determine the ultimate cause of the injury or illness. 

Because the ultimate cause of an illness is difficult to determine the BLS excluded diseases in their count of workplace fatalities (Toscano and Windau 1993). 

Vibrations on the other hand, where there is a finite movement of the plant, equipment or a pulsing of the air, are much more invasive and can interfere with certain body organs ultimately causing ill health. 

Throughout that whole period of fifteen years when we were so confused and bewildered about what had caused this horrific change in me, my husband always said, I know it s not in your head, I know it s real, and I know that, ultimately, we will find an answer. So I always had his support. But I had a lot of friends who bailed. My birth family never understood about environmental illness. They still don t. Two of my brother s children are mainstream physicians, graduates of Harvard Medical School, and they think I m a kook. 

In patients infected with HIV, many nonspecific and certain specific cellular immune functions can be shown to be altered or decreased, and a number of seemingly healthy individuals may exhibit marked immunological abnormalities without evidence of clinical illness. As the individual begins to exhibit clinical symptoms associated with AIDS, the abnormalities in the immune system become more extreme. A factor that complicates the study of HIV-induced immunosuppression is that many of the infections patients develop may themselves induce marked changes in the immune system. For this reason, it has been difficult to dissociate the fundamental changes associated with prolonged HIV infection from epiphenomena caused by other infections. One basic defect in the immune system of HIV-infected patients has, however, been elucidated. This is the loss of function and ultimate destruction of a proportion of T lymphocytes. 

Herbicides are designed to kill plants, not animals, and in general have lower mammalian toxicity than insecticides. Most herbicides interfere with plant hormones or enzymes that do not have any direct counterpart in animals. The most serious human health concerns have been related to contaminants of the primary chemical herbicide. There is an enormous amount of animal and some human toxicity data on 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, but it now appears that much of this toxicity is caused by the contaminant TCDD. Military personnel exposed to Agent Orange, often contaminated with TCDD, reported birth defects, cancers, liver disease, and other illness. These concerns led to improvement in the manufacturing process to reduce TCDD contamination and ultimately to a reduction in use of 2,4-D herbicides. There is also concern that some herbicides may affect wildlife. For example, atrazine, a persistent herbicide, may adversely affect frogs. Persistence of herbicides may also... 

Powers himself is much more careful to balance his equation. For a start, it is never clear in Gain whether Laura s ultimately terminal illness is really coimected to Clare products at all. As Don presses Laura to sue, she insists that there is no reason to believe that her cancer has environmental causes. When Don tells her that she is part of a cluster centered on Lacewood, she points out that ovarian cancer doesn t cluster . She is... 

And in the exhausted depths of her terminal illness, Laura herself sees that, even if Clare products did cause her condition, that is not ultimately where the problem lies. She is one of the millions who have willed companies like Clare into existence. These companies do no more and no less than make things, and this is what everyone wants them to do. 

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