Half Man Half Tree

i saw the special on him on TLC... i feel so bad for him but he is getting help. they also showed these other 'freaks' that he does a side show with and they were NUTS!

Yeah, a group of my friends and I were watching this one night before we went to the bar. We ended up staying to watch the whole thing before going out that night because we were so hooked in.

actually - according to the follow up story - he is not getting help now thanks to politics and government

Here is the story:

A doctor hears of a man who is afflicted by bizarre, grotesque tree root-like growths on his hands and feet, and tracks him down to the jungle. Through careful analysis and painstaking detective work, the doctor discovers the reason for the man’s affliction and begins to develop a cure.

The tale of Dede, a 35-year-old Indonesian fisherman, which was first reported last month, is heart-warming. The “roots” in question began to grow from his limbs after he cut his leg as a teenager.

Gradually, these “cutaneous horns” became so large that he could not work, walk properly or use his hands. Consequently, he could no longer care for his children, and his fellow villagers subjected him to abuse and ridicule.

Local doctors were baffled as to the growths’ cause – until Dr Anthony Gaspari, a dermatology expert at the University of Maryland in the US, heard about Dede’s plight and flew to Indonesia to investigate.

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Blood tests showed that the growths are caused by rampant human papilloma virus (a wart virus), but it is still a mystery as to why it is so out of control in Dede’s body. Dr Gaspari has suggested treatment with vitamin A and begun further research to understand the pathological process at play.

The history of medicine is littered with examples of inquisitive individuals such as Dr Gaspari, who were spurred on by an all-consuming desire to help humanity and a dogged determination to understand and master diseases that blighted people’s lives.

In the modern world, medical advances are dominated by profit margins, projected sales figures and marketability. It’s the absence of these factors that makes the story of Dede and Dr Gaspari all the more endearing.

But what began as an inspirational story of one man’s desire to help another – of the application of the doctor’s expert knowledge and scientific reason to alleviate another human’s suffering – has turned into a sad parable of modern life.

Now the story is about how politics impacts people’s lives; how bureaucratic concern obliterates the individual. A row has erupted because Dr Gaspari has taken Dede’s blood samples back to his laboratory in the United States in an attempt to research a cure.

But Indonesia’s health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, argues that developing nations risk exploitation unless they maintain control over their virus strains. Indeed, previously she has refused to share bird flu samples with other countries in case they use them to produce expensive vaccines.

Dr Gaspari, desperate to help Dede, has offered to put it in writing that the samples were not for commercial use, explaining: “We did it for humanitarian reasons, to help the patient.”

With the project in jeopardy, Dede may never be cured, the mysteries of his illness remaining unsolved. It’s hard to know who to blame; a paranoid, defensive and self-interested Indonesian government, or the US, whose aggressive pursuit of wealth and power generates such fear in other nations?

The virus does not belong to the Indonesian government, and it is not Mrs Supari who has to endure the lesions that it has caused. But perhaps the pharmaceutical industry in the US is mercenary and countries like Indonesia have a valid reason to be wary.

It’s indicative of the market-savvy, cynical world in which we live that the Indonesian government refuses to believe that one man would go to so much trouble just to alleviate another’s suffering. It’s a parable of how power and greed – both real and imagined – can halt progress, and how nebulous political concerns overshadow those of the individual.

After all, it was just one man trying to help another.

^^^but surely the Discovery Channel and TLC would have checked all that out???? maybe??? I see where you are coming from - I went back and looked at the pics

That is so so so so so sad. I cannot even fathom something like that. And the article about how he may not be able to be helped now is also so sad.

Oh, I know. Thanks for pointing that out! The video wasn't playing for me...