User talk:Endrun

Quote Years after Kennedy's death, it was revealed that in September 1947, while Kennedy was 30 and in his first term in Congress, he was diagnosed by Sir Daniel Davis at The London Clinic with Addison's disease, a rare endocrine disorder. In 1966, his White House doctor, Janet Travell, revealed that Kennedy also had hypothyroidism. The presence of two endocrine diseases raises the possibility that Kennedy had autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2 (APS 2).[256] Unquote.

Notice ought be taken that many people with Celiac Sprue(AKA more popularly known today as "Celiac Disease")have recognized JFK to suffer from this from reading the Robert Dallek biography of JFK in 2002 titled "An Unfinished Life". Therein his health issues are discussed in great detail. This issue is admittedly fraught with difficulty in rendering an airtight, foolproof declaration on this based upon the extremely tight standards with which the medical profession today holds such "evidentiary processes"(quite against the practical hypocrisy it has itself presented its own insufficiencies to bear upon the topic, both in JFK's time and now, on the issue of Celiac Sprue in diagnosing, advising, and managing in some affirmative and timely manner).

It should be noted that in support of such a declaration would be Dr. Peter H.R. Green, who, having the great ability of not having suffered the entirety of his professional career under the peer review of the AMA or related U.S. medical "groupthink enforcement groups", he being the current director of Celiac Research at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital's effort on Celiac. Dr. Green however, admittedly did not publish his thoughts in a peer-reviewed medical journal but instead on the internet at "History News Network", where presumably this article can still be viewed. Male sufferers of Celiac also commonly note the proneness to infection as seen in JFK's childhood, the hypothyoridism(Hashimoto's Thyroiditis) documented by his doctors (and the ostensible ulcerative colitis documented meticulously by his wife), the bone issues so well shown on a minor back injury he got playing touch football with his family that took too long to heal that he felt he had to combat this problem with multiple back surgeries, and the perennial vagueness his doctors had on any unifying theory such as Celiac on what were seemingly ailments far too varied to do anything but confound them. Dr. Green further, in his referenced article, suggested that DNA be recovered from his body in order to test the Celiac hypothesis(but which the Kennedy family would almost certainly oppose for reasons they have always opposed such inquiry, ie, that it would provide embarrassment and somehow a stain upon JFK's historic legacy).

I happen to be passionate about this issue because I am a sufferer of Celiac myself, have Irish ethnicity, am male, and stand roughly the same height as JFK did during his life. Medicine completely failed(as in "totally") me for the first 45 years of my life and I got a gene and antibody from stool sample test from the city ironically JFK lost his life, Dallas, Texas, which confirmed the presence of Celiac Sprue. Going on a gluten-free diet was the best thing I could have ever done--but I have to wonder, as should all other such sufferers in the United States, whether JFK's medical history, released in more timely fashion, could have provided an astute observer such as Dr. Green information to have reached the conclusion about the Celiac and thus make this issue newsorthy from the standpoint of, hey, JFK suffered it too, and thus bring it out into the limelight on behalf of sufferers getting diagnosed sooner and led to the proper management strategy of it sooner.

The thesis of the "Addison's Disease" diagnosis was that, according to the medical textbook definition of this condition, TB infection, necessary to clinch such a diagnosis, must have been true for JFK because of a)his susceptibility to infection in general and moreover b)his known long-term sexual promiscuity. Since doctors of his day never considered Celiac in anyone past the age of infancy, and having survived infancy, this was surpassed as an item for suspicion in JFK automatically, then the extreme fatigue he experienced had to have been due to such an inner endocrine malfunction(yet, no low cortisol level, based on my reading, was ever recorded in order for the UK physician to make such a diagnosis). There are two other bases upon which it is often thought somehow "show", "prove" or "provide adequate support for" the Addison's Thesis(a total atrophy of the adrenal glands by definition, upon infection by TB):1)his symptoms of distress following missing a dose of his prescribed corticosteroids on a trip to England during which he left his daily dose of same behind in Massachussetts:the endocrine system has normal feedback mechanisms, which were at work here:once exogenous hormone is introduced to the body, the adrenals simply stop producing it. Therefore immediately after missing a dose of exogenously introduced adrenal hormone to substitute for cortisol, the body is not yet making it again;but once it starts to make it again to adjust for this new condition, there is no problem.  2)Known to happen in true Addison's, an "Addisonian Crisis" while under any kind of major stress, in this case the stress of back surgery, was tested and written up in a New England Journal of Medicine article posted anonymously as to the patient in 1955(but later known to be JFK). Under the stress of surgery, numerous hormones and other lab results demonstrating known lab reflections of an "Addisonian Crisis" were investigated during his 1955 back surgery. None was found-none whatsoever. Finally, after his assassination, his adrenals were physically removed and examined by the pathologists. Both were found to be entirely normal in weight and color and other appearances. Taken together, these effectively debunk the theory JFK had "Addison's Disease." Now what has been advanced in recent years by the medical profession as a "cover" to this issue(in my judgment)is the notion JFK suffered "Autoimmune Polyendocrine Syndrome Type 2." Reviewing the definition of this, this can incorporate a Celiac Sprue diagnosis without actually doing so directly, and although this is a very apparent improvement upon the "Addison's Disease" thesis, this also, "IMHO after some study", fails to provide the best explanation, that being the Celiac followed by the other known autoimmune disease associations such as Hashimoto's Thyroiditis(hypothyroidism due to autoimmune disease) and Ulcerative Colitis. It would have been of interest to discover whether he also had any signs, under a specialized MRI called an MRCP(not available in those days), of Sclerosing Cholangitis (autoimmune destruction of the bile ducts in or near the liver) or serious gallbladder disease(which all Celiacs untreated by failure to follow gluten free diet or have daily steroids such as he had eventually do suffer). His pain syndromes, which the new diagnosis of this "autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2" also incorporates, mostly falls outside of same in that the bulk his pain was a result of back surgeries he clearly didn't need and the risk taken in doing those was clearly not worth the painful result. He was reportedly, as much a cripple due to those as FDR was, but like FDR, this information was deliberately and cleverly hidden from the public at the time(eg, not being able to walk up stairs to board a plane to attend the summit meeting with Kruschev in Vienna--he had to be taken to the level of the plane by a lift instead). But, rather than blame its own sometimes feckless and sometimes reckless industry, medicine is always more inclined to pass off the blame for such items onto something else--which is what we see here and particularly in the case of JFK.

SUMMARY:"Celiac Sprue" is a much better "fit" than "Addison's Disease" for what President Kennedy suffered medically as a core issue;ancillary to that was his elective surgeries on his back which only worsened his bone pain issues, which were already there from the daily use of steroids from his early 20's until the day of his assassination and prior to that, by the gluten-laden diet he consumed as a sufferer of Celiac Sprue. "Autoimmune Polyendocrine Syndrome Type 2" is perhaps acceptable and clearly better than just the "Addison's Disease" diagnosis he officially had during his lifetime, but even here we see signs of the medical profession trying every trick it can think of to cover up the simple fact that it just got his medical evaluation wrong from the start on the Celiac--a fact which it collectively resists making to this very day in every single individual with Celiac as well. What do we hear from the medical profession as to Celiac today? "It appears to be increasing in frequency"(not, "It traditionally was underdiagnosed and continues in that vein due to lack of good surveillance and suspicion by medicine and thus only appears to be increasing in frequency--anything but admit, "we the medical profession goofed for a long time on this and continue to goof").

I have an ongoing debate with a medical professional ignoramus on the topic of JFK's true medical issues with him being unable to see the Celiac Sprue connection at all, save to note it as one "speculation". Celiac Sprue is, philosophically a challenge for medical people because most diseases are based upon a single human body system being affected instead of multiple ones being affected, which is philosphically anethema to the entire process of medical diagnosis. It is also the case that since Celiac Sprue results in by definition chronic clinical malnutrition and physicians have no awareness or professional expertise in such conditions per se' especially with respect to handing out advice on how dietary changes might improve any such condition, it is by this date in history "axiomatic" to suggest that doctors have no training, awareness or professional expertise in any such a topic because they are trained to believe this is not needed in the United States of America. Further, the rates of Celiac Sprue all physicians were taught to believe was correct in medical school was 1000 times less of an incidence epidemiologically than Fasano et al's studies at U. Maryland in 2003 and 2004 determined them to be and set the accepted standard for them to be since that time of 1% of the national populace.

Finally, and this is obviously an interesting anecdote but does, for whatever reason, demonstrate medical aplomb by LBJ, that LBJ was quoted as referring to JFK as "that feller from up North with Rickets or something"("Rickets" being a deficiency primarily of Vit. D adversely affecting the bones, and very similar to Celiac Sprue in nature and affect in this regard and others). Endrun (talk) 22:19, 15 June 2014 (UTC)