When first hearing about this disease on an episode of House, I thought it was amazing. On this episode it did not talk about the rest of the side effect, only that this one girl could not feel any pain. A broken bone, a cut; unnoticed. I dreamed of having this disease, after all one of the biggest fears I have, and most seem to have is the fear of pain. Imagine getting punched and not feeling any pain, you would give Floyd Mayweather a run for his money.
I thought I wanted this disease up until I read a few stories from people that actually have the disease, like this one.You could potentially bleed to death without even knowing you’re bleeding, or have a life threatening illness without even knowing you’re sick. Every day you have to carry around eye drops because you cannot produce tears, also leaving you with a lack of emotional expression. You constantly have to have doctor’s visits, and be checked out to make sure you hadn’t hurt yourself. The average day event for most becomes a bigger deal with the fear of hurting yourself without feeling hurt.
With the fears, risks, and challenges set aside let’s look at the possibilities, or making the impossible possible. Due to the fact that FD is a genetic condition there is a possibility that scientist could find a way to distract this gene and use it for possibly the greater good. Imagine finding a way to only distract the part of the disease that aloud for no pain. We could inject our soldiers with this pain-free potion. With this there comes ups and down. The possibility of getting seriously injured, and not knowing it could be life threatening. On the other hand what if a soldier felt no pain and was captured by enemy forces?The soldier would most likely make it through getting torcher with no physical pain causing him to not speak, or surrendering. In most cases surrender leads to death. Cases like this would be the only good outcome of not feeling any pain. Imagine if anyone in the world could choose whether or not they wanted to feel pain. The idea is scary and limitless.
Sources:
http://www.esquire.com/dont-miss/wifl/notfeelpain0807
fdhope.org
www.familialdysautonomia.org/
Without pain, people can't grow up. I'll say for example a little past experience of mine.
ReplyDeleteWhen my brother and I were about six years old, we were obsessed with dinosaurs because Jurassic Park had just came out. We always loved to replicate that one scene with the T-Rex and the vehicle.
One day, I got out of the car and left my brother alone. The car then proceeded to roll down the driveway and into a nearby tree.
Thankfully he wasn't hurt, but I'm hoping you see my point. To not feel pain means he wouldn't have learned something from the experience. The one thing he did learn though was if he ever totals the family car again, he doesn't get an allowance for a few years.
I do not see this trait as a positive one. Like the examples you gave, you could not feel if you are cut and bleeding, or sick. Having a baby would mean that you would not know if you are in labor!! While I see the advantages, such as if a person needs an operation and they could give them a "dose of it". I think the negative out way the positive.
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of this before. This is a super interesting disease that I would not like to contract. If there were some way to allow for humans to control this disease there may be some very interesting implementations of it. Very nice post.
ReplyDelete~ Paul
This would be really good for me. I always burn myself cooking. But yet there is that possibility of danger if I were to grab a hot pot and keep holding on. But it would be helpful when cooking bacon especially. But overall I think the outcomes of hurting myself would overtake the helpfullness and would cause this to be a deadly disease. Great Post
ReplyDelete~Mike
Pain is your body's way of telling your brain that something is wrong. Without that feeling you are unable to tell if you are in danger or even hurt. Having read about someone who was a victim of this disease I can say that some of the implications are truly troubling. For example the individual had to check herself each morning to make sure she had not bitten off her tongue, or scratched her eyes during sleep. Not being able to feel pain may seem like a good thing but in reality it destroys the human body's only way of warning the brain something is wrong and inevitably leads to more suffering and harm than good.
ReplyDeleteI dont know, in some ways this could be good, but others deff. not! Minor pains would be nice to not feel, but the others would be very crucial to feel because then you know somethings wrong and it needs to be tended to. I think this is a very interesting disease!
ReplyDeleteFD is extremely scary. Without pain, many things in life will not be experienced. I found it interesting, in your video link, that they said this genetic feature was found in only a certain Jewish sect with Eastern European ancestry. I wonder why this is...
ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting. This could be good and bad. The good is like you said, creating a a potion that would allow soldiers to essentially feel no pain while while being treated to an injury, but at the same time it could be bad if the solider was captured. I think the idea of creating such potion would be cool, but at the same time, what would the side effects be ?
ReplyDeleteI saw an episode of Oprah featuring a girl who had FD. She had to wear gloves to prevent her from injuring herself because she was very young, around 3 or 4, and didn't understand the damage she was doing to herself. When she was a baby she had scratched at her eyes so much that was nearly blind. She had broken several bones, and because she couldn't feel pain they would often go untreated unless visibally noticed my her parents. This disease that caused her to feel no pain was essentially killing her.
ReplyDeleteWhile we don't have an "FD potion," we definitely do have similar things: local and general anesthesia, Tylenol, Advil, morphine, Oxycontin, Vicodin, Percoset, laughing gas, alcohol; all of these provide temporary pain relief, but as you all well may know, they also inhibit other bodily functions such as motor control or cause long term damage (or short term if taken in a large enough dose) to vital organs such as the liver. So in a way we do already have a "FD potion." It just isn't good to take a lot of it.
ReplyDeletePain is an important part of human learning and brain development because of what we learn through our sensory world while experiencing pain or pleasure.
ReplyDelete