Isekai Yakkyoku - Vol. 14 Ch. 70 - Parkinson's Disease

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I bet they thought the old priest was insane for saying the medicine god was walking among them
 
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This is also going up against the limits of modern knowledge. Depending on when this was written, we've only "recently" discovered that drugs that remove the similar plaques involved with Alzheimer's, doesn't necessarily help the patient. Google Donanemab, and the controversy about their approval in 2024. Patient groups and Alzheimer's groups clamored for it, the science behind it was pretty bad, so the actual Science people said it's not worth it as a drug. Patient groups won out, for an incredibly expensive drug that has horrid side effects and doesn't have many benefits. The other "new" drug, Lecanemab also is pretty ineffective overall. I'd guess the author may have known about some of the clinical studies, but not the results when this was originally written. So they may not want to jump the gun on unproven therapies. Even if you use magic.
Note also that "patient groups" and "Alzheimer's groups" often have no bearing on the actual patients suffering from Alzheimer's themselves, and are just advocacy groups trying to secure funding by demonstrating they are doing something to forward the cause.
 
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He can't do it with medicine, but couldn't he use his divine arts to eliminate the buildup?
Maybe, but that's still not addressing the root cause, which is a lack of cells that produce the substance. Between taking meds or seeing him regularily, the former is obviously the better option, taking into account that he won't be there forever.
 
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Welp... that can't be good... church politics are brutal, if they substituted him... they could very well have just eliminated him entirely.

And they even went as far as to replace the entire personnel of the place... that is not a good sign.
 
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Recent breakthroughs in gene therapy using rna induced silencing complex (RISC) as well as research on heat shock proteins role in stabilizing complex protein folding both have potential for treating a variety of disorders which involve an accumulation of dysfunctional misfolded protein plaques including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's one day. I can't blame the author for not mentioning bleeding edge research like that.
 
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This discussion on Parkinson's illustrates a subtle blind spot in Falma. He doesn't even consider that magic may provide a solution unavailable in his original world. That wasn't a problem in his previous life because magic didn't really exist but in this world it very clearly does. He only uses it to simulate things he's already familiar with and so far hasn't explored what might be possible within this world's more esoteric natural laws.

To be fair, he is currently focused on bringing the world's medical knowledge closer to what he has and that is eating up the majority of his time. Would still like to see him delegate more things to his direct students or his brother so he can really dig into what new options magic provides. Maybe task Palle with it instead since he doesn't have the same blind spot?
 
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One thing I think is factor about this is that, even if MC can do magic to cure it, it's still only short-term overall, cause that would mean it can only be cured by MC and only MC. Also iirc MC's magic has its limit? Forgot some of those little detail.
 
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I can see this going a few ways, and I am not sure which of them would be the best option.

1) Falma/ someone else somehow "invents" new cures to currently incurable illnesses, whether by using a substance only found in that world or by "magic". The downside is that this is basically a cop-out to the problem. It only works because the author directly says it works.

2) Modern medicine actually makes significant breakthroughs for cures to numerous illnesses. The downside is that this is highly unlikely to happen.

3) The story becomes vague about how it handles certain illnesses that there isn't a known cure for. It maybe addresses them as a passing issue like, "we have so and so working on finding a cure, because I can't be the one to always do everything for this world".

Or maybe it even puts the issue into the "(seemingly) forever in testing" phase (just like the real world sometimes finds itself stuck in), but that's it. It never directly cures or resolves them, and just ignores them once it moves past them as there isn't an actual solution as of yet. Its basically acknowledging their existence, but sets them to the hardest difficulty setting, making them "so challenging, that even current modern medicine and even magic struggles to properly handle them".

The downside is that this becomes an impassable wall that the plot must always work around. It would make certain things a bit awkward going forward too.

4) The story distances itself from solving medical problems entirely. Maybe introduces a war or a huge conflict to take the focus away from solving current medical mysteries, and instead focuses on doing various, more advanced first aid related stuff. Or maybe it decides to go deeper into the religious aspect and deepen that lore? The downside is that it would be a big change in direction from the current story path and would only be a temporary distraction, like a side quest.

5) The story ends with an optimistic yet empty resolution. Falma looks off into the distance towards the sky and says something generic like "It may take us many years to finally figure it out. The road will be hard and full of trials, but I am sure that if we all try our best, will be able to one day accomplish it..."

The downside is that this makes for a really terrible ending, akin to a story getting axed way too early for a proper ending to be made. It would be like One Piece suddenly ending with "...and after several more years of searching, making countless new friends and having numerous adventures, Luffy and crew eventually found the One Piece."
 
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One thing I think is factor about this is that, even if MC can do magic to cure it, it's still only short-term overall, cause that would mean it can only be cured by MC and only MC. Also iirc MC's magic has its limit? Forgot some of those little detail.
Even if that's the case... Saving one more life when possible and not being taxed to do so is still a good thing.
 

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