The Health and Environment prize which was created by Coca Cola company, for 1500000F, has just been granted to Pr Gabrielle Pauli (Head of the pneumology services in Strasbourg university hospital) for his research on allergic asthma as an environmental disease.
Congratulations!

I remember sending a summary of my research on asthma to Strasbourg University Hospital in July 1993, and receiving from Mr Gilbert Vincente a copy for information of a document which he was sending to Pr Pauli:

• "Please find enclosed a summary of some work presented by M Jacques Gesret about the treatment of asthma. Please read and consider working on it or not."

At last medicine was going to look at my works

Fourmonths later, having heard nothing, I wrote to Pr Pauli to ask whether he wished to meet me for more information. Here is his answer:

• "Your approach of asthma is definitely interesting. The efficiency of the treatments on asthma is directly related to the different clinical form of this affection and I do not doubt it that you have observed some favourable effects in some cases by your treatment. If you wish to let your approach be considered, I suggest you write a short article and submit it to the specialised magazines. I understand your passion for your work and send my greatest regards. Sincerely yours."

This answer is quite similar to that of the Health Department Director who says in his latest letter:

• "It would seem interesting that you should submit your works for publication in scientific reviews."

This is an interesting attitude !

The specialists of asthma and medicine in general will only be interested in my research when they will be informed by the "scientific" press. (Especially when one knows that it is financed entirely by laboratories!)

Here is what was written in the New England Journal of Medicine in December 1994 about asthma as an environmental disease

• "The number of people dying of asthma has gone up for fifteen years in the US, especially in large towns. In Philadelphia that increase happened while pollution was decreasing; The death rate is much higher in black districts, or in districts inhabited by a lot of single women or poor people who do not get proper medical care or live in poor dwellings."

I suggest that Pr Pauli run tests of detection of black people, single women, poor people and depressed homes in order to get the next Coca Cola Health and Environment prize.

One wonders why there are more asthmatics in Polynesia than in France, while there is no pollution in these isles.

Let's consider Coca Cola Company as an environmental protector:

Around Papeete High School, stand many bars with Coca Cola neon signs, where students queue up to the street to be able to play on the video games. Looking more closely at it, it is interesting to notice that the Tahitian teen agers, just like the Americans, are heavier and heavier. Fifteen-year-old boys and girls 100 kg weigh or more are a common sight nowadays. Indeed, hamburgers also have appeared on these isles recently, to the detriment of the traditional food.

What do we find everywhere ?

Coca Cola wooden cabins and empty cans of coke up to the smallest island.

Still, I understand why Pr Pauli was not interested in my works, as his own research allowed him to get a 150000f allowance, and a fantastic opportunity to commercialise some "do it yourself" tests, which will then allow him to sell some new products to fight against acarians or whatever.

So here we are : asthma is an environmental disease.

Consequently, let's treat the environment of the asthmatic instead of treating the asthmatic.

But...couldn't we consider that environment is only a triggering factor ?

• that the real problem is inside the patient himself

• that I might have been correct for the last ten years...