Friday, August 20, 2010

"No Harm, No Foul" Must Stop!

For many years people who have seen healthcare professionals miss ALS diagnoses have wondered if there's not a subliminal "no harm, no foul" waiver given to those errors. After all, there is not treatment or cure. If it had been diagnosed correctly, there wasn't anything that the doctor could have done, anyway. That's wrong, but it happens every day.

The recent buzz over Lou Gehrig and head trauma has moved ALS into the world's media for a few days, and there was an interesting statement in Time -- http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2011489,00.html
Making such a conclusive diagnosis and distinguishing ALS from the other related diseases has not been critical until now, because there have been few effective treatments for ALS.
No harm, no foul? It's time that we change that. Until we start having cases of ALS diagnosed accurately and promptly, we'll continue to lose precious lives and not know exactly why. That's wrong.

2 comments:

gamboachuck said...

You can bet that fine author of the Time article would sing a different tune if he or his loved ones were diagnosed with ALS. Unfortunately I think his comment reflects the pervasive ignorance of this disease that is slowly robbing me of all my functions but is perverse enough to keep my mental faculties intact.

ALS Grumpy said...

If the head trauma thingy has any credibility then those soccer players with all the headers should be a cluster of ALS don't you think? Wait a minute did I read somewhere that there is a cluster of Italian soccer players with ALS?