Disabled people are very familiar with this fascination with pioneering medical technologies. Researchers have been promising to make the crippled walk and the blind see for 50 years: the late Christopher Reeve was the most recent high-profile disabled person to have his expectations raised. But many disability rights activists would prefer to see immediate action to remedy inequality and social exclusion, having become frustrated with the promise of cures which are always “five years away”.In other words, it is risky to put our faith in the magic bullet. California alone is investing $3bn in stem-cell research, when there are more than three million illiterate adults in the state. Gene therapy and stem-cell research are the new elixirs, throughout the industrialised world.Most of us are sceptical about visits to Lourdes, television evangelists, or even the reported miracles of the late John Paul II.
But when it comes to rational scientific medicine, disbelief is often suspended. In America, 15 per cent of GDP is spent on health care, while only 6 per cent is spent on education. Now the West’s cultural obsession with youth, health and longevity dominates both news and lifestyle coverage and drives biomedical research and investment. The germ theory discoveries of Pasteur and Koch in the late 19th century, the invention of aspirin in 1897, followed by the development of sulphur drugs and then pencillin, made biomedicine pre-eminent. It took a while for doctors themselves to deliver concrete benefits. Five hundred years before Harry Potter, alchemists were busy searching for the philosopher’s stone that promised eternal life as well as gold, while the masses resorted to holy relics or herbal remedies to combat disease.
And we also learned that Professor Hwang Woo-suk faked his stem-cell research breakthrough in Korea. The news value of medical breakthroughs can go down as well as up.
The quest for miracle cures has a long history. Meanwhile in Holland, a clinical trial has proved conclusively that bee stings are not a cure for multiple sclerosis. There were only six patients in the Alabama study, and four in the Mayo research.
The worried well will feel a wee bit better about our future
It is not all good news. The San Diego research was conducted on mice, and scientists are a long way from proving that it’s relevant to humans. On Wednesday, we learned that mega doses of vitamin D could halve the risk of cancer. Before Christmas, Mayo clinic researchers reported that green tea might cure leukaemia.
In Alabama, research with eye-cell implants reduced twitching in Parkinson’s patients by up to 48 per cent. And in San Diego, a study has identified the genetic mechanism by which insulin metabolism is disrupted by high fat diets, causing type-two diabetes. But as new years go, this really doesn’t look such a bad one. So open the curtains, don’t let the doomsters get you down, and take a cautiously cheerful view of 2006..
