From the Ashes Comes the Pheonix

Surfing the internet recently I came across this very interesting article on how innovations to health care have come out of war.  Personally I feel that medical innovation is no excuse to have a war, but if you are going to have one, any good that can come of it is a good thing.

It did however get me thinking about what other atrocities may have lead to proper therapeutic medical treatments that may add quality to peoples lives.  So that lead to the try and find the answer to another question I had asked myself in the past.  How did they figure out that DBS could help pacify movement disorders?

I mean it's not like someone simply said "lets stick a needle into someones brain, connect it to a car battery and see what happens?"  No ethics committee or patient in their right mind would agree to that.  So I did some digging.  DBS was clearly a natural progression from other brain procedures like a thalamotomy, which involved destroying a specific part of the brain to arrest a selected movement disorder.

But where did the thalamotomy come from?  Now I have a theory, but I have not got any evidence to back it up, so you are welcome to agree or disagree, call me full of $%#&, whatever.  But I have been thinking about it and I would like to share.  My theory is that the origins of the thalamotomy were born from the lobotomy.

Now I have no evidence to back this up , but if you were a doctor pioneering thalamotomy or DBS would you want your work being linked to lobotomies?  Over all, about 40,000 lobotomies were performed in the USA between 1935 and 1960.  It is a really scary thought, and I believe that what doctors like Walter Freeman did was become so obsessed in their work, they clutched to any positive they could and ignored the negative.

What they should have been doing was dismissing lobotomy and trying to find a better way of doing something to help these people.  I mean, if you think about it a thalamotmy and a lobotomy have some similarities.  They are both used to destroy parts of the brain to improve the patients life.  The main difference is a lobotomy is extremely crude, like trying to cure a headache by shooting someone in the face and as a result, destroys a great deal of brain tissue.  A thalamotomy is much more precise and targeted and every effort is made to preserve good brain tissue.

So if (and I do say if because I have no evidence) DBS was born from lobotomy, do I feel guilty for having it? The answer is no.  Would I feel guilty having an emergency procedure done to me that was born on the battlefield.  Again no.  Many might have had to suffer and die to develop these techniques that are now used to help people, but I don't think that having a procedure would dishonour them.  In fact, the opposite.  Turning our back on what we have learnt would mean that their pain and suffering or death would have been for nothing.

On a personal note I think what was done in regard to lobotomy was abhorrent.  The fact that the practice was allowed to go on for so long was a travesty and a complete failing of the medical system.  It is the most extreme case of egos, arrogance and complacency destroying lives in the name of medicine and healing.  It is also one reason why my number one rule is take charge of your own health care.  I feel if people in the 1940's and 50's knew what was going on other than the spin from their doctor, they never would have agreed to the procedure.

On a side note, I think that the doctors that are practising and pioneering DBS are doing an amazing job.  Personally, it has made a massive difference in my life and I urge them to continue the good work.    Until next time, stay well:)