The Celebrity of Disease
Doctor-patient relationships have also been changed, right?
People like Gehrig and Dulles followed doctors' orders. But by the 1970s, we were embroiled in Vietnam, and everyone was questioning authority. So when Morris Abram, the civil rights lawyer, challenged his doctors on his leukemia treatment and credited his survival to his own advocacy, it gave a big boost to patient empowerment. And when Steve McQueen told his doctors they were wrong and he could beat his mesothelioma (a type of lung cancer) with alternative treatments in Mexico, that made big news. McQueen was wrong-the treatments didn't help-but gave a higher profile to alternative medicine.
Are we now seeing an evolution of activist patients as Michael J. Fox does ads for political candidates?
Where Fox differs is that other advocates have tried to get bipartisan support for research funding. But stem cell research falls on one side of the aisle, so that's where he went. My sense is he's not doing these commercials for candidates in Missouri and Maryland as a Democrat but as a desperate patient. And they are incredibly powerful, when you see him bobbing and twitching on the TV screen. I actually think that's what disturbed Rush Limbaugh-we don't usually see public symptoms like this. But since they are so powerful, I think we'll see more like this in the future.
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