Lorenzo's Oil Case Study

Lorenzo’s Oil

1. Lorenzo’s parents used the scientific method to solve the situation of lorenzo dying by coming up will solution to his ALD problem and stayed up late every night for years straight just to find a cure for ald and to save their child and all the other kids that suffer from ald and save their lives and many other life that may yet come and suffer from ald

2. Sketch what Lorenzo’s neurons most likely looked like after one year. Then sketch a healthy neuron.

3. Possible genotypes... Aunt 1 X --X, Aunt #2 X-- X, Aunt Dee X-- X, Michalla X-- X, Augusto X-- Y and Lorenzo X-- Y

4. Lorenzo’s Oil is 4 parts oleic acid to 1 part erucic acid. It forces enzymes in the body to use oleic acid instead of saturated fatty acids. It turns off the "synthesis" spout in the sink. (The other spout is the "intake" spout from food that is eaten.

5. It helped him understand that

both of the fats have the same enzyme in common.

6. The responsibility of the medical community was to obtain evidence as to whether dietary restrictions benefited people with the disease. If people in the trial group began using other undocumented treatments, the validity of the study would be questionable, and nothing of value would be learned. A lot of the children did benefit from the dietary restrictions, and their families saw the Odones as playing a destructive role. Since some of them had previous children who had died from the disease, they had some of the same goals as the doctors. The doctors running the trials were responsible for documenting whether dietary restrictions helped. If parents wanted to do other experiments, they should not have joined the trial.

7. Analogies uses examples of stuff that we already understand so it’s easier to make connections.

8. Yes. They did not give up. It encourages people to keep trying.

9. They both learned something new about ALD every day, and eventually learned how to cure the disease by using "Lorenzo's Oil". They had to live with it every day with their son.

10. Money should go to research the big killer like cancer and heart disease. This is because resources are limited. Discretionary money should be directed to "the greatest good to the greatest number". More lives could be saved if we found a cure for cancer.

11.The olive oil only worked halfway because it was not far enough up the triglyceride chain!

Erucic acid worked and is still used today. Erucic is extracted from canola/rapeseed. It distracts one of the enzymes, preventing it from metabolizing the wrong fatty acid. In many eastern countries canola was found to prevent heart disease.

12. The support groups are suppose to be a place to help parents and the people in the group should be understanding and encouraging. For the Odense, it seemed that the people were self centered and did not encourage them, the support group discouraged things the Odones tried to do.

13.That when rats ate oleic acid, their level of VLCFSAs went down.The symposiums were intended to allow researchers working on related projects not directly connected with ALD to exchange information with the ALD researchers. Scientists working in isolation are not always aware of other areas where their work could be extremely useful.

14. Erucic acid is a long-chain unsaturated fatty acid. Like oleic acid, it suppresses the creation of VLCFSAs, but is much more

effective.

16. Mr. Odone was not a doctor and would never have been involved in this except for the fact that his son Lorenzo had the disease. The discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic "wonder drug". The researcher looking for bacteria-fighting chemicals accidentally contaminated a sample with common bread mold, but decided to include the contaminated sample in the study anyway. Penicillin is manufactured by ordinary green bread mold.