YOU MAY be too young to remember this, but the late President Ferdinand Marcos was associated with lupus, a long-term and painful disease.
It was important for many Filipinos then to know whether the President had the disease because he ruled the country with an authoritarian arm and it was crucial for the public to know if the nation was in good hands.
Lupus is a disease that causes inflammation and pain. The immune system, the body system that fights infections, attacks healthy tissues instead and affects the skin, joints and internal organs like the heart and, with President Marcos, his kidneys.
In January 1986, a few months before the 20-year Marcos rule was ousted by the original People Power, the Los Angeles Times ran a report from the United Press International. The article, citing US intelligence reports and informed sources, said Mr. Marcos, was “seriously ill with a cyclical, potentially fatal rare disease complicated by diabetes.”
The report continued that President Marcos was suffering from a periodic form of lupus, a disease in which antibodies attack the body’s own tissues, including such organs as the kidneys, that he had a number of kidney transplants but his body has rejected the transplanted organs each time.
At the time, even the Filipino public detected a tiredness in the usually robust strongman, then 68 years old, observing that he was often carried by aides in campaign appearances. The Washington Post said Mr. Marcos was so ‘’weakened” that he had to reduce a busy out-of-town campaign schedule.
In the end, in 1989, President Marcos died in exile in Hawaii, at St. Francis Medical Center in Honolulu where he was hospitalized for nine months. The Washington Post confirmed that he had ‘’systemic lupus erythematosus, a degenerative kidney disorder that can spread inflammation to other vital organs. He had secretly undergone two kidney transplants. He also had heart and lung ailments, pneumonia and bacterial infections.”
We bring this up more than just a footnote to history. Then and now.
It has, in fact, a thread to oral health care. But that’s getting ahead of the story.
Fast-forward to 2020 in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. American President Donald Trump endorses the drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for the treatment of COVID-19.
In May, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that HCQ was NOT a proven drug in the treatment of COVID-19, adding that the adverse side-effects are well documented.
On July 4, the WHO announced it was discontinuing the use of HCQ for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, noting that the drug produces little or no reduction in the mortality of hospitalized COVID-19 patients when compared to standard of care.
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Dr. Joseph D. Lim is a former Associate Dean of the UE College of Dentistry, former Dean of the College of Dentistry, National University, past president and honorary fellow of the Asian Oral Implant Academy, and honorary fellow of the Japan College of Oral Implantologists. Honorary Life Member of Thai Association of Dental Implantology. For questions on dental health, e-mail jdlim2008@gmail.com or text 0917-8591515./PN
