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High on Meds Docs by Tony Reveaux
The Guam neurological disease endures as a mystery. photo: courtesy MVFF
The Illness and the Odyssey
Attempting to introduce, explicate and trace the progress of medical research can be hopelessly intricate and obscure for the lay audience.
But Bay Area filmmaker Berry Minott’s lively and conceptually inventive documentary, “The Illness and the Odyssey” (US, 2013, 74 mn,
dir/prod: Berry Minott, narrator: Joy Carlin) with its interweaving of vintage footage and animated graphics, may be the best test to understand what afflicted some citizens Guam.
The indigenous Chamorros, colonized by Spain and then by the US in World War II, as a population suffered from debilitating neurological diseases known under Lytico-Bodig.
Approximately 1 in 4 adults will eventually suffer from some neurodegenerative disease. Where in the rest of the world it may be one in 100,000 that could have Lytico-Bodig, here on this small island it was generationally common.
For western medicine, the Chamorros gave them a rare, captive living petri dish for isolative research. The great motivational drive that brought some of the finest minds in medical science to Guam was, that to solve the puzzle of Lytico-Bodig could possibly yield the “skeleton key” to neurological diseases like Alzheimers, ALS and Parkinsons.
But all they have been left with is the skeleton. One scientist after another, competitive and uncooperative with each other, pursued different solution trajectories: infectious; hereditary: toxic cycads in the diets; prions; aluminum in the soil; cycad-eating fruit bats eaten by the natives. All elusive MacGuffins.
Today, the stubborn Dr. John Steele is collaborating with the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California San Francisco on a new study in the village of Umatac. There is still no consensus on what causes Lytico-Bodig, and the search continues for a cure.
Hundreds of chemicals used in our environment remain unregulated. photo: courtesy MVFF
The Human Experiment
As a human being, watching this extended, detailed and well-balanced documentary flow by, it can feel like being a rabbit looking up from the downside of a slow avalanche.
In Europe, a rational, humanistic regulation of consumer products reigns in confidence. Here in the US, a helpless public, deceived and misinformed by a politically protected corrupt commercial system, is victimized with damaged health from bad science.
In a society that remains complacently secure in a perceived bubble of ever-advancing hygiene, we are blindly being overdosed and imbedded by hidden chemicals and additives.
Arsenic, lead, BPA, PVC, and hundreds of others and their unpredictable combinations. They are everywhere. Plastic baby bottles and surgical tubing, construction, carpets, upholstery, clothing, tools, toys and product packaging.
Rates of cancer, autism and other neurological disorders are increasing as a result. In a follow-portrait of a young couple, we witness the heartbreaking results of the infertility and infant mortality that is another rising result.
“The Human Experiment” (USA, 2013, 78 mn, dirs: Dana Nachman, Don Hardy, narrator: Sean Penn) follows local hero San Francisco Supervisor Mark Leno, as he fights in the trenches for legislation to halt the BPA in furniture fire retardants. After four tries, he is crushed by the lobbyist money which bought the votes.
The tobacco industry playbook of well-funded persuasive deception, since the ‘50s has been the subversive template for countless manufacturers and distributors.
With an EPA and a USFDA hopelessly hobbled by industry influence, we see the growing grass roots activism and opposition groups gaining more visibility. The traction of positive change ranges from writer Arlene Blum to the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry and “The Human Experiment” will be one more step in that positive direction.
Tony Reveaux is a film teacher, writer and critic living in Marin County who can be reached .