▼ Loranzo's Oil

Stars - Nick Nolte, Susan Sarandon
Dir - George Miller
Year - 1992

This is a movie based on a true story. In 1984, a 6 year old kid Lorenzo Odone was diagnozed to have ALD (Adrenoleukodystrophy), a sex-linked inherited disease only passed from mother to boys. These boys have malfunction in an enzyme which supposely should metabolize long chain fatty acid (LCFA). As a result, they accumulate high content of LCFA in the blood, which somehow strips off (desolves it, I guess) the myelin covering of nerve cells. The myelin is responsible for message transfer along the nerves. Stripping it off results in the loss of communication between different body parts and brain damage.

The syndrome usually appears at age between 5~10, and follows by gradually deterioration of body function (deaf, blind, seizure …), with inevitable death in 2 years.

Lorenzo’s parents, Augusto and Michaela, tried their best to save their boy. They put him in a trial experimental diet conducted by the best ALD expert in USA but to no avail. They decided to “educate’ themselves to find the cure. Without any medical background, they started from basic biochemistry, and read hundreds of paper/articals in the library. They even organized the first world-wide ALD symposium, gathering all ALD experts and participated in every discussions. With tremendous effort, they finally found some oil to reduce the LCFA content to half. They kept doing research, and found another oil to reduce the LCFA to normal level, thus completely stop the further development of the disease.

It is really amazing to see that, a disease considered by all scientists/doctors around the world as non-curable, but was found to be possible to cure by people without any medical background. Their findings not only have saved lives of many young ALD boys, but also make those boys able to live a normal life.