“Lorenzo’s Oil” is a very dramatic, heartbreaking movie based on a true story. The story starts off of the Odone family coming back from Africa. Their fiver year old son Lorenzo Odone starts to have some odd changes in his behavior during school, and later on at home. He starts to have fits which is unusually for Lorenzo. As well he had two accidents that left him injured. The parents Augusto Odone and Michaela Odone decide to take him to the children’s hospital to see what is wrong with him. They find out that their son Lorenzo has a rare diseases known as ALD (Adrenoleukodystrophy). It is a rare heritable genetic disorder that affects only males ages 5-10. It is passed on by mothers who are carries of this disease. What happens is that the brain function declines, due to the lack of myelin sheath being removed from the brain nerve cells. When there is no myelin the nervous system starts to fail. Lorenzo muscles started to get weak, and had less control over things.
After Lorenzo’s father Augusto learned all about the symptoms (blindness, deafness, seizures, and death), him and Michaela start to study about the disease. They are determined to find a cure for the disease, and tried to seek more help from scientist and doctors. Sadly, the doctors and scientist seen Lorenzo as just another patient and were not able to do anything to help Lorenzo. This is where the problem started. Lorenzo was used as a “rat” for the scientist and doctors so they could study his conditions so they could help boys in the future who had the same problem. There was a part when Lorenzo’s mother Michaela was talking to the doctor and they were arguing over the diseases and how could the doctors help. They did not agree with one another and Michaela told the doctor a phrase that I believe shows the difference between how a parents wants medical doctors help or how the doctors want to help. She said “What you are saying is that our children are in the service of medical science. How foolish of me, I assumed medical science was in the service of the children”(Lorenzo’s Oil quotes).
Lorenzo’s condition gets worse and his parents are more devastated to find a cure. They join a support group for ALD families, which turns out to be nothing they expected to be. The parents in the group are more focused on themselves and trying to fix their marriages then focusing on the boys. Augusto and Michaela did not agree with the other parents because the main focus is to help the boys and find a cure. As well Lorenzo’s nurse was heartless. She did not treat Lorenzo as he was alive. At the end of the movie, the parents figure what really is wrong and what is causing the problem. Augusto figures a way to stop the problem, and he comes up with Lorenzo’s oil. The oil brought down Lorenzo’s fatty acid level down. The oil had a positive effect on Lorenzo. At the end of the movie Lorenzo was able to communicate in sign language.
The main problem in this movie is how the doctors, scientist, nurses and parents were all portrayed. There were a lot of ethical issues in this movie; especially with the doctors and scientist. The parents had a different view on the condition while the doctors and scientist had another view. Another big issue in the movie was that the doctors and scientist seemed to care less about helping a patient live, but was more into the science of what was going on with the disease.
Hollywood draws up its own view of ethics and the viewing audience begins to rethink about what their own ethics views are against what Hollywood thinks. Depending on whom the audience is and what the topic is. Hollywood has the ability to control our minds with what we think is ethical or not; even without us knowing that it is controlling our minds. With whatever issues there is in this world, Hollywood has a movie about it; it could be about war, disease, sex, drugs, money, religion, love and etc. Some movies are based on real life event, while others are not.
They show us movies of teenagers partying, drinking, having sex and when teenagers see this like that they believe it’s okay for them to do things like that, that is why we have so many teenagers drinking and having sex at a early age. Or they show street violence, and people might think that is okay so they go ahead and do the same thing. This causes problems for our society. But there are movies they show positive things; like fighting a battle with a disease or fighting for your rights and your country.
As mentioned above some movies are based on real life events, which could be what influences Hollywood on making the movies they make. In “Lorenzo’s Oil” case they could have been inspired on how Lorenzo’s parents handled the situation and because it was such a newer type of disease that was discovered not long ago. They make these kinds of movies to be able to educate the watchers on different types of diseases. Lorenzo’s Oil movie does contains a key factual error which can provides an excellent idea to teach the viewers a scientific method. Based on scientific studies was released when the movie recorded, had demonstrated that Lorenzo's Oil didn’t work for other ALD patients who, like Lorenzo, had already developed symptoms of the disease. Lorenzo's reaction to the Oil was an anomaly. But the move did not provide any explanation for why the Oil worked with Lorenzo. On the other hand, the worries of the scientists and ALD Foundation leaders about holding out false hope to families turned out to be entirely justified. They educate us on the cause of the disease, the affects, and how to prevent future problems.
Movies such as “Twilight” are obviously not based on true stories but tells a story of two lovers. I believe that the point of this movie is to show the audience that it is okay to love outside of your culture, religion, and ethnicity. What I am trying to say here is that Hollywood makes both negative and positive movies that affect each person who watches that movie. Their main influence in the movies are about the citizen, somehow Hollywood wants the movies to relate to them. So their movies are based on situations that maybe typical people who encounter, even though they put the situations in movies like “Spider Man”, “Twilight”, or even cartoon movies.
We need to focus on trying to believe in what we think is ethical not what Hollywood thinks is ethical, because they have different views on all different matters.
There were two points of views in the movie, the view from the parents and the view from the doctors. The main concern for Augusto and Michaela was to stop the disease that was killing their son. As any parent would do, they would not take no as an answer. They believed that there could be a cure for the disease and knew that if they kept it in the hands of the doctors and scientist it would be too late for their son Lorenzo. The doctors and scientist main concern was to figure out the science behind all of this; which means they wanted to understand how the disease was working. An issue in the movie was when the doctors wanted to use Lorenzo to study the disease. They did not care about helping Lorenzo save his life, but wanted to see how the disease was affecting him. Lorenzo is a human, not a test animal to be tested on. That is when the parents realized that Lorenzo was just another child to the doctors.
This movie brought up issues that we covered in class. I believe that there are three main issues that would tie up in this situation. We read and talked about the rights of a patient (autonomy), physician assisted suicide, abortion. In the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil” all these cases and debates could come up while watching the movie. Especially what we view as ethical or not, in this case what the doctors views were and what the parent’s views were.
When there is a child with ALD and the parents see their child suffering and they know there is nothing they can do, should they consider allowing the physician help the child end their life from the pain? I see it as everyone’s life is precious and no one has the right to end your life, but if my child was suffering from ALD and was in the pain like Lorenzo was in the movie, then I would consider the choice of ending his/her life, and spare him/her the pain and suffering. In this case Lorenzo’s parents did not take that as an answer; they did not want their son to die. That is why they did all they did to make sure he survives, while the doctors told them there is nothing they can do and just need to let the disease take its course. As for Michaela she did not know that she was a carrier for ALD. But I believe if a couple wanted to get pregnant that they should be able to test to see if the women were a carrier for ALD. A question to ask, is it wrong for a women to try to conceive if she knew she was a carrier of ALD and had a 50 percent chance of having a boy who would have that diseases? I believe that it would be wrong, because she would be bringing this boy to the world and after 5 years or so he would be suffering from all the symptoms of ALD and will eventually kill him. Who would want that to happen to their kid? As well what if she had a daughter, that daughter would be a carrier for ALD and later on would start to conceive. So in this case, there comes up an ethical issue. Should a couple be able to have an abortion if they knew the mother was a carrier of ALD? In this case I believe that the mother should have the right to have an abortion. If she wanted to spare herself and her child pain and suffering then she should be able to have an abortion. Because ethical it would not be right to have a kid when you knew you had ALD.
During the movie the doctors and scientist were more concerned about the science of the disease ALD, especially because the disease was recently discovered. They just wanted to study Lorenzo and see how the disease was affecting him, and how his nervous system was getting destroyed. Ethically that is considered wrong. Lorenzo is a child who is suffering from ALD, the doctors should be able to try their best to help ease the pain for Lorenzo and able to try to help him survive longer. They cannot just take use Lorenzo as a study object. He has the right to autonomy, to get treated.
In the movie the nurse was portrayed as heartless. She did not like the idea how Michaela was treating Lorenzo; as a child who needs nourishment, not just food but as well reading for his brain. Just because one is suffering from a diseases, or dying, does not mean that they don’t have the right to be treated as if they were healthy. Everyone needs love, comfort, support, nourishment. At the end Lorenzo was still a child, it was not his choice to have the disease ALD.
The parent support group was an issue as well. The parents in the group were mindless, and did not really care about focusing on helping the boys. Their main focus was themselves; which is wrong. They are the parents of ALD children, and if they don’t try to help them or try to make positive contribution towards the disease then who else would. And every time the Odone’s would mention anything about different issues in the disease besides what the doctors said they would try to shut them up.
Towards the end of the movie Augusto figured out that olive oil and rapeseed oil combined together would be able to lower the amount fatty acids in the blood of an ALD patient. He took the news to the doctor, but the doctor did not approve of it. His reason would be considered an ethical reason, because he noted that when they tested rats in the lab with rapeseed oil that it caused the rat cardiac problems. But Michaela showed him some facts that people in Asia ate rapeseed oil regularly. The doctor could have considered testing the oil, but was afraid that he would ruin the reputation of his medical field. That is when Michaela told him that he was more worried about the reputation then helping save a life of a boy. Ethically Lorenzo’s parents were the most ethical ones. They were fighting for the life of their son, which he has a right to live. All their actions spoke for them. No one knew what Lorenzo wanted, because he was not able to communicate in any sort of way. But the parents knew what was best for their child, so they fought for their son. When it comes to bioethics, no doubt “Lorenzo’s Oil” was a great movie to watch. It covers all different aspects that we covered in this class. It has different views on all the issues in the movie. Bioethics is a very interesting subject, but has lots of controversy over what is ethical or what is not ethical which show up a lot in the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil”.
To conclude this, “Lorenzo’s Oil” main issue is all about the disease ALD and how to prevent Lorenzo from dying. Even though the parents and doctors had different points, they were all involved in figuring out ALD; which the parents did right away while doctors were taking a while. The point of view was a positive note for biology, in the movie it talked about so many aspects of biology even though ALD is such a horrifying disease that kills these young boys at such a young age. As individuals, it would be quite easy to feel helpless while up against a disease such as ALD and a medical establishment that has agendas other than the life of a small child. But Augusto and Michaela Odone refused to just stand idly by and while there son's life slipped away from them. Instead, they made the unprecedented decision to learn as much as they could about their son's devastating illness and then set about to find a cure. Because of their efforts, thousands of boys will now be able to enjoy a life their child will not. Had they not been the exceptionally educated and intelligent people that they were I don't know if they would have been able to accomplish such an unbelievable feat who knows . Hollywood message from Lorenzo’s Oil is to provide overview that there might be cure for any disease and not to lose hope, Since hope is the basis of public support for expensive medical research programmers, to deprive desperate patients and families from grasping at straws is difficult and perhaps even inappropriate. After all, even though breakthroughs like Lorenzo's Oil happen rarely, they do happen. I think the moral of the story is that great things can be accomplished when people become determined to make a difference.
Reference:
Lorenzo’s Oil quotes. 1992 <http://www.subzin.com/quotes/Lorenzo%27s+Oil/How+foolish/id-104756
Levine, Carol. Taking Sides, Clashing Views on Bioethical Issues. New York. 2012.
