More on Sherlock House

Fast 164 Report

By John Taylor; 2008 March 07, 06 Ala, 164 BE

I was dragged under by weather conditions, snow and the threat of snow, even before the fast. I had no energy or initiative, but at least no migraine attacks, yet. I was going through all the episodes in DVD of the television series "House, M.D." <http://www.fox.com/house/showinfo/> before the fast started. My listless funk lasted until the weather lifted a couple of days ago. Those were the first, most difficult few days of fasting, worsened by weather woes. That over with, yesterday I could go back to a fairly normal routine, except that vigorous ping pong sessions are replaced by long, sedate walks.

My new habit of watching House, M.D., is especially handy in the late afternoon period when the brain is dehydrated and virtually non-functional. One difference I noticed between John watching House before the fast, and now during the fast is flinching. Before the fast the doctors could be up to their hips in blood and guts and my reaction was, "I wonder if they will find the elusive diagnosis?" Now I have to avert my eyes and cover my ears if they so much as prick a patient's finger with a needle.

Somehow, the condition of fasting has sensitized me. I am more easily shocked and awed. That is probably why Naomi Klein's book about shock capitalism has grabbed me and will not let go. The bad guys are ratcheting up their agenda by means of disasters, and now as I fast I know what it is like to go into shock like a patient slipping down the slippery slope to termination.

I suppose I should not be surprised, since Baha'u'llah did say that the religion of God is like heaven and "fasting is its sun and obligatory prayer is its moon." Except that I did not expect the sensitization to the sun to be so literal, so intimate, so penetrating in its effect. My emotions feel not like standing in a desert with no water and a hot high noon sun above, more like sitting on the surface of the sun itself. I feel with God the pain of an entire universe, not joy, just pain, and it is hard to bear.

Just read some more about the lead character, Dr. House -- as always, a Wikipedia article is among the most informative sources. It seems that his name is a play on the inspiration for his character, Sherlock Holmes. Get it, homes, house? Hmm. A fictional doctor inspired by a fictional detective who in turn was inspired by a real doctor, a Scottish medico whose name was Joseph Bell, as I recall. Interesting also that one of the methods House uses is based on another hero of mine, Socrates.

"The team arrives at diagnoses using the Socratic method and differential diagnosis, with House guiding the deliberations. In medicine, differential diagnosis ... is the systematic method health care providers use to identify the disease causing a patient's symptoms. In other words, part of diagnosis is attempting to narrow down the list of possible diagnoses until one emerges as the best."

The Wikipedia article also points to a review of every episode by a real doctor, who of course sees mistakes that go right over my layman's head.

Here is an idea for a future television series: Mashriq, B.T. (Baha'i teacher) the story of a hotshot Auxiliary Board Member who encounters seekers with various obstructions to the faith and diagnoses them.

Actually, the family history of Sherlock Holmes goes further back, as William Osler's biographer points out,

“Holmes/Doyle/Bell had a common root, the `method of Zadig, as outlined in Voltaire's 1747 novelette, Zadig, or Destiny. Zadig, a reasonable man with an affinity for nature, reasons from apparently trivial details to give accurate descriptions of animals he has never seen. Joseph Bell considered Zadig's method the everyday foundation of medical teaching. In later years, Osler, using the method to the fullest in diagnosis, had his students look up Voltaire's text. Medical lore is rife, of course, with stories of cocky Zadigs being caught out. It was said that Joseph Bell's mentor in Edinburgh was once telling students a great deal about a child on the basis of his observations of its mother when the woman spoke up: `Please sir, I am only his step-mother.' Another time, as he was saying, `This I can tell, gentlemen, from the condition of the patient's teeth,' the patient asked if he would like to hand them around.” (Michael Bliss, “William Osler, A Life in Medicine,” pp. 89-90)

Burned up by Oneness.

Last year a science magazine reported on research indicating that oneness is our only channel to compassion.

"The events in Darfur are the latest in a long line of mass murders since the second world war that powerful nations and their citizens have responded to with indifference. Think of Rwanda in 1994, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Algeria throughout the 1990s, Ethiopia under the Mengistu regime, the Chinese takeover of Tibet. Why do we ignore killings on such a scale? This indifference is in sharp contrast to the heroic acts of people who rescue individuals in distress. Why do we not feel so compelled to act against genocide?" (Paul Slovic "Genocide: When compassion fails," New Scientist Magazine, 07 April 2007)

The article goes on to summarize research suggesting that that our inaction to mass pain, as opposed to the pain of one person, reflects a fundamental human reaction, We can love one, not many. For example, they found out that donors in wealthy lands who gave money for one child in a poor or war torn place actually cut off their funding as soon as they were informed of others suffering in the same region as well. We instinctively lump anything more than one sufferer into a vast ocean of suffering humanity. What good does it do, we reason, to try to fill an ocean with a spoon?

I think the sensitization going on in the fast was designed to burn away such illusions, to open us up to more than one individual's pain and to turn our concern to all, or at least to larger numbers than just one.

 I think fasting is also a cure to what some statistics indicate is the most common crippler of them all: depression. Fasting is a natural antidepressant, something far better than what comes out of a pill box. If you can confront the demons that rise up during the afternoon of the fast, mere depression seems like nothing afterwards.

Or something like that.

Here is the first paragraph of a science writer's reaction on her blog to a recent finding debunking artificial happiness meds. The entry is called "What the media misses about antidepressants"

"A new meta-analysis of research on modern antidepressants-- some of it unpublished by the drug companies-- suggests that the drugs have little advantage over placebos.  Why then do so many people consider drugs like Prozac to be miracle drugs for depression-- many putting up with serious sexual side effects in order to take them? Are they simply being duped by a placebo effect or avoiding withdrawal symptoms? And how could drugs which are little different from placebo also produce suicidal or even homicidal thoughts in some patients?" <http://www.60secondscience.com/archive/psychology-neuroscience-news-articles/what-the-media-misses-about-an.php?sc=WR_20080304>

She goes on to speculate that the pills have not been debunked just because the whole population does not get rid of depression any more than they do to placebos. No, it is just that parts of the population can respond while the whole does not.

"A clinical trial could easily find that this drug has no advantage over placebo, depending on the proportion of people with each gene in the study. Another study of the same drug might find it to be a blockbuster-- while another found it dangerous. Same drug, different populations."

She then cites one doctor, himself cynical about the drug industry's corruptive influence, who still prescribes antidepressants because "the right drug in the right person can be lifesaving." Yes, but a placebo can be lifesaving as well. And so can a ritual, a belief, even an activity. Studies have found, for instance, that in children most of the trauma of a needle can be taken away simply by having them play a video game as they are being stuck; the kids barely notice a prick when they are involved in that kind of play. As a worried parent about the prodigious time this coming generation is wasting before screens, this is one case where I would advocate more of it, even in adults.

I watch Dr. House and his minions perform hair-raisingly invasive tests, like needles stuck directly into the eye or plunging without anesthesia a tube into a boy's bones and literally sucking out the marrow (oh, yes, it is the fast... shudder...) and I think, video games would be a good thing then, unlike most times. If plug-in drugs can reduce the need for chemicals by even 5 percent, there would surely be benefits.

The same might be true of religious rituals, especially prayer and meditation. If a person's culture does not have rituals, we should make them up. They help in a crisis like that. The placebo effect, doctors forget, is real. The medical system has got to stop ignoring it, start using the placebo as a cure in itself instead of just a control.

So in curing depressions, rituals and games, mixed right into life's otherwise boring routines, would no doubt have a tremendous placebo effect. If depression is such a great crippler, we should take it seriously and do all we can, no matter how unorthodox, to cure it, to wipe it out. And the Month of Ala is as good as any time to start.