The Myth of Normal 65

men,” noted a recent article in the Danish Medical Journal. Then, right in line with Dr. Ladd’s observations: “The explanation for these epidemiological changes should be sought in the environment, as genetics only explain a small part of the MS risk. The changes are too rapid to be explained by gene alterations.”[11] None of the specialists who looked after Mee Ok inquired about the conditions—physical and emotional—that preceded her life-blighting illness. This, despite the voluminous research that links stress, trauma, and inflammation, and despite the multiple studies that over many decades have explored such connections in rheumatoid arthritis, in MS, and in other autoimmune conditions. Not only are such possible lines of inquiry not pursued, but they seem to be verboten in mainstream circles. “I’ve come to feel a little bit off the wall when talking about these issues,” a specialist in rheumatic diseases at one of the best-known U.S. teaching hospitals told me. “Since my graduation I have markedly changed the way I practice, because I started observing in my patients the relation between stress and the onset of their disease, and how great a role trauma, psychological and physical, plays in their disease.” This doctor, who requested anonymity for fear of alienating her colleagues (!), has observed firsthand what she calls “remarkable results” among her patients, both in terms of recovery and even, in some cases, getting off medications altogether. Yet she feels like a renegade in her own profession. “I’m surrounded by all my, you know, esteemed colleagues at the university who are investigators, and nobody is looking at these things.” Hearing this, I recalled the Harvard physician who told me that doctors follow these sorts of threads “at their own peril”—though he did think it was changing. If even doctors who stray beyond medical orthodoxy can feel intimidated and misunderstood, what do patients experience? Another lamentable feature of Western medical practice—not universal, but all too often seen—is a power hierarchy that casts physicians as the exalted experts and patients as the passive recipients of care. For all doctors’ dedication and goodwill, the imbalance compromises patients’ agency over their own health and healing process. Essential questions about their lives go unasked, while patients in