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Sigh. There are people in this world who are in another league.
See
Matthew Herper, From Satellites To Pharmaceuticals; Martine Rothblatt came
down from the stars to save her daughter. In the process she gave new life
to the orphan-drug business. Forbes, May 10, 2010 (cover date).
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0510/second-acts-pharmaceuticals-orphan-drugs-pah-deep-breaths.html
My comment:
(a) The last name Rothblatt is German or Jewish, comprising "roth" red and "
blatt" leaf.
(b) The portion of the article taht is related to the topic at hand is in
second paragraph: "In 1994 he [Martin Rothblatt] underwent gender
reassignment surgery and changed his name to Martine. Now a she, 55, Martine
remains married to Jeni's mom."
Now, that is noble.
(c) Originally I intended to post this article about MEDICINE, for I once
encountered a mother who had a boy with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH
).
(i) That was heart breaking and I always remember the family.
The mother brought her teenage son to a major hospital in Taiwan, asking for
help. That was late 1970s. Mother was very guilty, saying that when she was
pregnant, she came to the same hospital for a minor illness. The doctor
requested a X-ray. She was too timid to indicate that she was pregant. The
boy was born and diagnosed with a severe congenital heart defect: Tetralogy
of Fallot (TOH).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetralogy_of_Fallot
(four anomalies: pulmonary stenosis; overriding aorta; ventricular septal
defect (VSD); and right ventricular hypertrophy)
The mother blamed herself, thinking the X-ray was the cause.
Mother described the boy became more and more cyanotic and easily got
exhausted. The boy's lip and fingers were bluish and thick.
She said they went to a lot of hospitals in Taiwan, including this one, but
none could help. Their eyes were full of sorrow-- and yearning.
After a battery of tests, a pediatric chief told her that PAH had set in and
there was nothing they could do.
They checked out the hospital and disappeared from my view.
(ii) in 1989 I was a senior research scientist at Columbia University at
Manhattan. A close colleague was a heart specialist. She did not think X-ray
would cause TOH and that if the boy had been in US, surgery would have been
contraindicated due to PAH. If a heart transplantation was attempted, PAH
would cause a acute heart failure and the patient would die on the operation
table, the thinking went.
(iii) I kept thinking about the family. Finally I came up with the heart-
lung transplantation, to resolve the problem of PAH. Naturally the boy might
have died in Taiwan.
(iv) I met a fourth-year Harvard Medical Student almost about six years ago.
She agreed that X-ray would not cause TOH.
(d) I am glad to learn from Forbes that PAH has medical treatment. I want to
investigate more to see how effective it is.
【 在 choi 的大作中提到: 】
: http://www.mitbbs.com/article/Family/32414893_3.html
: My reply is as follows.
: -----------------
: I read all of your postings and yours only.
: A man originally from Taiwan, I have lived in US for a quarter century,
: (以下引言省略...)
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发表于 5-11-2010 11:08:59
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