Drug Testing In The Film Lorenzo's Oil

The love between a parent and their child is undeniably special. There are great lengths a parent will take for the sole purpose of ensuring their child’s welfare and happiness. In the movie, Lorenzo’s Oil, this parent-child bond is clearly portrayed by the relentless, bold Odones. Both Mr. and Mrs. Odone fought dauntlessly for their son’s life. Unfortunately, all throughout the movie, various roadblocks came up in the form of unwilling doctors, stubborn ALD foundation leaders, desensitized nurses, and unbendable FDA rules for drug testing. At numerous points, doctors seemed to be heartless and cruelly rejected the Odone’s research-based input. Ultimately, though, good science sometime has to be contrary to compassion because good science encompasses completing rigorous drug testing trials to ensure safety and having capable …show more content…
Thorough testing of drugs is mandatory for the experts to analyze short and long term consequences and side effects of drugs. Moreover, it would not be ethical to give human patients a drug with unknown side effects; consequently, animal research and drug trials need to be completed first. Although this adds to the amount of time for FDA to approve of a drug, it is essential to the ethical practice of medicine and good science. Furthermore, this process is particularly important for doctors because it guarantees a drug’s effectiveness, which allows doctors to prescribe new drugs in good conscious. In Lorenzo’s Oil, experts kept reminding the Odones that time is essential. To the Odones, though, the experts are heartless and doctors are not courageous enough. However, if doctors immediately jumped into every patients’ ideas, thousands of hours and millions of dollars could be lost without discovering promising results. Not every parent is as well researched as the Odones, and not every case will work out as well as Lorenzo’s Oil