Unit 6, Listening 1, Innovative Ideas in Medicine

Innovative Ideas in Medicine

Narrator:       Report 1: Doc-in-a-Box?

Reporter:      In this country, when we get sick, we usually get to see a doctor or a nurse. But in most developing countries, there’s a huge shortage of both. Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Laurie Garrett was thinking about this problem and flipping through an architectural magazine when she came up with a novel idea[1].

Laurie Garrett: There was a description of a place called “Container City” in London in which shipping containers, painted in primary colors, had been stacked[2] in unusual ways to create apartment buildings. And I, I simply thought of it at that moment and a little sort of “bingo” light bulb went off in my head[3]. This might be the way to solve a lot of our global health problems—by converting these abandoned shipping containers into frontline medical clinics.

Reporter:      A so-called Doc-in-a-Box could be transported to remote villages, far from health-care centers.

Garrett:         Instead of having to trek[4] enormous distances spanning a day or two just in travel to get to a health clinic, you would be able to squeeze this into your daily routine to come in and be tested for a wide array of infectious diseases and have your kids immunized as a matter of routine.

Reporter:      Garrett says there are empty shipping containers in almost every port in the world; each one could be converted into a Doc-in-a-Box.

Garrett:         Ministries of Health, or non-governmental organizations, would be operating these networks of Doc-in-a-Boxes. And that they would have selected paramedics[5] from the very villages that they serve. Uh, the most obvious reservoir[6] is midwives[7], who already, uh, operate as paramedics all over the world.

Reporter:      The idea for the Doc-in-a-Box is still in its early stages. A prototype clinic was developed in Haiti earlier this year. While it cost about $5,000 to put together, Garrett says that cost could be even less.

Garrett:         We see no reason why, if retrofitting is done on a mass scale and if the retrofitting is done in a developing country port, such as in Durban, South Africa, these containers could come in for well under $1,500 apiece—including the delivery cost.

Reporter:      Laurie Garrett, who now works with the Council on Foreign Relations, hopes governments and aid organizations will take her idea and run with it[8]. She believes the container clinics, ultimately, could make portable[9] medicine a reality for people in countries that need it most.

Narrator:       Report 2: Bee Sting[10] Therapy

Host:              Of the many alternative medical therapies gaining popularity, one is getting a lot of buzz. Some folks claim honeybees and all their products are useful for everything from cancer prevention to pain treatment. It’s an ancient alternative therapy that’s coming back into use. Practitioners and enthusiasts for all things apiary[11] met in the Triangle recently. Rose Hoban reports.

Hoban:          Frederique Keller always makes sure she’s got bees with her. But it can be tricky to travel with them, especially on a plane. So when she left her home on Long Island recently to come to North Carolina, she had several hundred honeybees mailed to her here. They arrived in little wooden boxes with perforated[12] plastic tops, each about the size of a Snickers bar. Inside each box wiggled 40 honeybees that amazingly didn’t try to get away when the box was opened. Keller is a beekeeper and an acupuncturist[13]. She combines her two trades.

Keller:           You sting a person with a live honeybee in specific places on the body where people have pain or discomfort.

Hoban:          Keller calls her practice apipuncture: acupuncture using bee stings instead of needles. Apis is the Latin word for bee, so apitherapy becomes the word to describe medical therapies using products from the beehive.

Keller:           Honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly, beeswax, and bee venom[14], of course.

Hoban:          Keller was here for the annual meeting of the American Apitherapy Society in Durham a couple of weeks ago. She demonstrated bee venom therapy during a session for about a dozen people who practically buzzed with[15] excitement as they waited to get stung.

Keller:           There you go. There’s a beautiful sting there.

Hoban:          Keller is also the vice president of the AAS. The organization is dedicated to research and application of bee-based therapies for a variety of ailments[16], from cancer to digestive problems to autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. There isn’t a lot of research on some of these areas, and mainstream[17] doctors are reluctant to talk about apitherapy.

But Andrew Cokin is a pain management doctor who practices outside of Los Angeles and frequently uses bee venom to treat pain. He says it works most of the time, although he’s unsure of how it works. He says there are several theories.

Andrew Cokin: One of the mechanisms is that bee venom causes the release of cortisol, which is the body’s own natural anti-inflammatory, from the adrenal gland. And that’s been shown in some animal experiments but hasn’t really been verified in humans yet.

Hoban:          Cokin says another theory holds that some compounds in bee venom might affect how the body transmits pain signals to the brain, but it’s hard to know for sure. Cokin’s been trying for years to do formal research in the US, but recently had a study protocol denied by the FDA. Researchers studying the use of bee venom are mostly in Asia and in some Eastern European countries where use of bee products has a strong tradition.

Cokin:            Bee venom has been used as a treatment since the time of the Greeks and for at least 2,000, 3,000 years in Chinese medicine.

Hoban:          Cokin says there’s lots of anecdotal evidence.

Cokin:            People find out about this by themselves. I’ve had patients in the last 20 years who told me that relatives of theirs, older relatives working in the garden, had accidently got stung on their hands by a bee, and their arthritis got better. And so they would go out periodically and get stung by a bee to keep their arthritis under control.

Hoban:          One of the biggest boosters of apitherapy in North Carolina is Fountain Odom, who invited the Apitherapy Society to come here. He’s a lawyer, a former state legislator, and a beekeeper. He says the state’s 10,000 beekeepers should embrace[18] apitherapy.

Fountain Odom: We believe that there are tremendous opportunities for the beekeepers of this state to develop some of the ancient modalities[19] for medical treatment of pain and other uses. These are some alternatives that are very, very inexpensive.

Hoban:          Odom started getting stung to treat the arthritis he has in his foot and knee. He says it took his family and friends a little bit of time to get used to the idea.

Odom:            They might look at you askance or say, “Uh, you know, you’re kind of flaky[20], aren’t you? I mean, why would you want to be stung by a bee?”

Hoban:          But now Odom’s a true believer. He says getting stung is the only thing that helps him with his pain. He’s also convinced his wife, and that’s a big deal[21], since she’s the state secretary for Health and Human Services. Carmen Hooker Odom says she’s seen apitherapy work out well for her husband, but the state’s probably not going to start reimbursing[22] for apitherapy anytime soon.

Rose Hoban, North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.

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[1] novel idea: phrase a new idea

[2] stacked: adjective piled one on top of another

[3] light bulb went off in one’s head: idiom had a great idea

[4] trek: verb to make a long or difficult journey, especially on foot

[5] paramedic: noun medical person trained to take care of injured or sick people in an emergency

[6] reservoir: noun a large amount available for use

[7] midwife: noun a woman trained to help women give birth to babies

[8] take an idea and run with it: idiom to take an idea and do something with it independently

[9] portable: adjective able to be carried

[10] sting: verb to touch skin and make a small hole that causes pain (usually by an insect)

[11] apiary: noun a place where bees are kept

[12] perforated: adjective full of holes

[13] acupuncturist: noun a person trained in healing by inserting thin needles into the body

[14] bee venom: noun poison from a bee (insect)

[15] buzz with: verb phrase be full of

[16] ailment: noun a pain or minor illness

[17] mainstream: adjective normal or ordinary

[18] embrace: verb to accept an idea

[19] modality: noun a sense used by the body to experience things

[20] be kind of flaky: idiom to be a little strange

[21] a big deal: phrase important

[22] reimburse: verb to pay back