Treeman: I Wanna Be Oneless

Last night I watched a fascinating two part documentary on TLC. It was about a man whose body was covered in strange warts that alone would not have been so interesting, but the warts on his hands and feet had somehow mutated to give the appearance of his arms and legs being tree limbs. The man whose name is Dede lives in Indonesia. A dermatologist from John Hopkins in Maryland learns of the plight of Dede and begins to try to discover what is wrong with him in hopes of curing him. The Indonesian government upon discovering the American doctors efforts decides to take matters into their own hands.

In an obvious attempt to grab headlines the Indonesian Government with the blessing of their President plans a much more aggressive and far more invasive strategy of surgery to remove the warts and the horns as they call the tree limb-like growths that surround his hands and feet. The American doctor had planned to use chemotherapy to treat the warts instead of the surgery as the warts would grow back after they were removed. This is a medical mystery that even the great Dr. Gregory House would have difficulty solving in one hour. Of course in real life this story takes place over the course of many months. The first part of the documentary is called Treeman: Half man Half Tree and the second is titled Treeman: Search for the Cure. I would recommend watching both, but the second one is clearly the stronger of the two as it involves the drama between the doctor and the Indonesian government and their differing approaches to trying to treat this man's incredibly strange disease.

The American doctor believes that Dede has a strange variant of the human papiloma virus or h.p.v. This virus has gained much attention in the United States due to some efforts to force young girls to have an h.p.v. vaccine in order to prevent them from getting the virus when they are older. You probably remember the commercials with children singing I want to be one less. Many parents were outraged by the the idea that they would be forced to give this vaccine to their child as a common way to get a form of h.p.v. is through unprotected sex. These parents argued that consenting to giving their child this vaccine pretty much gave the child carte blanche to have unprotected sex with numerous partners. Putting aside whether that argument actually makes sense in the real world it would seem to be the prudent thing to do to have the child take the vaccine. H.P.V. is a common precursor to ovarian cancer. If you could give your child a vaccine that would prevent them from getting lung cancer you would probably do it. Sure you would hope they don't start smoking, but if they did eventually start smoking or contracted lung cancer from some other environmental contaminant you would feel terrible knowing you could have prevented it. Is it that important to send a message that you don't condone their hypothetical promiscuity that you would risk turning them into laughingstock or worse that you would risk them eventually getting cancer. I mean how many times do you think they will hear the make like a tree and leave joke or some reference to the talking trees in the Wizard of Oz. Ask John Kerry about that joke he didn't even have tree limbs for arms and legs and he used to get that one all the time.

Full disclosure: I originally wrote this post to recommend the documentary and planned to include a joke about the one less commercial. Somehow I ended up with a long post that sounded like it was written by someone working for planned parenthood. Strange stuff indeed. I never actually got around to the joke either. I did not mean to get off on a rant and get preachy, but it just seems to be that protecting and educating your child would take precedence over any of your own moral views, but of course we know from the abstinence only education debate that this sort of stance is fairly common. I only know all of this stuff because of a previous job in the health care industry. Neither of these issues affect me personally as I am not yet a parent, but I tend to generally be in favor of education when compared to ignorance even if ignorance is in fact bliss.

Of course I would not make a serious argument that people should give their child this vaccine so they don't become a tree person as it is extremely unlikely they will contract that rare strain of h.p.v. as they would also have to have an almost non-existent immune system like Dede does. That said we know of the strange side-effects to the abstinence only education programs where let's just say some of those who followed it had a non-conventional way of keeping their virginity including some practices that were considered an affront to god. (See Sodom and Gomorrah) By not educating them fully they caused them to behave in ways which I'm sure they would not find acceptable although these methods do prevent pregnancy. Anyway enough ranting for today I seriously need to get a life I can't believe I actually lectured people about getting an h.p.v. vaccine for their children and making sure they give comprehensive sex education to their children. Seriously what is tomorrow's post going to be about making sure you put sunscreen on when you are going to be in the sun for a long period of time? I mean you should do that, but hopefully I don't end up writing that as I have enough trouble getting people to read my blog without turning it into a series of boring lectures about preventative medical care. On top of that I have that annoying one less song stuck in my head now. I can just imagine upset parents complaining that their child is going around the house singing that song. My how times have changed. I remember a simpler time when parents were upset that their child was listening to heavy metal or rap or music with profanity in it.