Part of a physician's duty, one could argue, is to help protect the vulnerable--whether that means reporting child or elder abuse, ensuring informed consent, or preventing the possible leak of someone's HIV/AIDS status. Currently, health care workers (among other social service personnel) are busy in Tanzania, trying to provide safety and care for albino individuals. See here and here.
There are two main threats to albinos in East Africa: one is skin cancer (what happens when you take a phenotype already prone to cutaneous malignancy and add tropical doses of UV light); the other is 'poaching,' a term usually reserved for animals, but which seems to capture the brutality of the attacks on these people. Local...um...I don't think there's really a PC word for witch-doctor...local animist and Voudoun practitioners claim albino body parts are powerful charms for luck and riches; others use albino blood in their spells. The world is a wide and strange place. But lest we assume that these people are (to quote a commenter on one of the sites) "superstitious, bestial savages," let's remember that--killing aside--a lot of people in the US still wouldn't want to shake hands with an HIV positive person, or someone with psoriasis. Suprisingly, albinism is exponentially more common in Tanzania than in the US.
What got me started on this train of thought? Why, studying vitiligo for my dermatology exam, of course.
Showing posts with label rare disease. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rare disease. Show all posts
Friday, December 4, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Fun stuff: Wegener's granulomatosis.
When someone has had what seems like allergic rhinitis for fifty thousand years, despite pouring on the Flonase and all but mainlining cetirizine, one begins (if one is as obsessed with rare diseases as I am) to think about Wegener's granulomatosis. It's an inflammatory condition--not a cancer, not an allergy--that eventually leads to extensive vasculitis (ie, inflammation of the blood vessels). It can cause problems especially in highly vascular organs--kidneys and lungs particularly. On microscopic examination, clumps of white blood cells are visible: granulomas. Hence the name.
However, there's now pressure to rename the disorder, in part because eponyms don't actually tell you very much about the condition itself (though I have to say the alternative proposed in this case--ANCA-related granulomatous vasculitis--doesn't tell me much more) and also because of Dr. Wegener's past. Apparently he was wanted by Polish officials after the end of WWII. Apparently he was, for at least a short period of time, associated with the operation of the eugenically-minded killfest that was Lodz in the late 30s.
How do I know this? Because the aforementionedly awesome Dr. W. brought it up in class.
"Haven't you heard Dr. L's tirade about this?" she asked one of the co-instructors. "I remember hearing him go on and on about this Nazi granulomatosis." Which made me imagine clumps of white blood cells wearing little olive drab uniforms and goose-stepping all over the body.
When someone has had what seems like allergic rhinitis for fifty thousand years, despite pouring on the Flonase and all but mainlining cetirizine, one begins (if one is as obsessed with rare diseases as I am) to think about Wegener's granulomatosis. It's an inflammatory condition--not a cancer, not an allergy--that eventually leads to extensive vasculitis (ie, inflammation of the blood vessels). It can cause problems especially in highly vascular organs--kidneys and lungs particularly. On microscopic examination, clumps of white blood cells are visible: granulomas. Hence the name.
However, there's now pressure to rename the disorder, in part because eponyms don't actually tell you very much about the condition itself (though I have to say the alternative proposed in this case--ANCA-related granulomatous vasculitis--doesn't tell me much more) and also because of Dr. Wegener's past. Apparently he was wanted by Polish officials after the end of WWII. Apparently he was, for at least a short period of time, associated with the operation of the eugenically-minded killfest that was Lodz in the late 30s.
How do I know this? Because the aforementionedly awesome Dr. W. brought it up in class.
"Haven't you heard Dr. L's tirade about this?" she asked one of the co-instructors. "I remember hearing him go on and on about this Nazi granulomatosis." Which made me imagine clumps of white blood cells wearing little olive drab uniforms and goose-stepping all over the body.
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