PICS - HILLS,MOUNTAINS OF ECUADOR
These isolated mountains in Ecuador are home to a group of people who could radically change the world. In our lives, most of us will be affected by cancer in some way. But living in the remote villages here, is a community of dwarfs who appear to be immune, not only to cancer, but to diabetes as well. A pair of scientist brothers are on a mission to prove that these people could help in our understanding of some of the biggest medical problems of our time.
PTC - Dr Marco Guevaras taking us to meet a group of people. They suffer from an extremely rare genetic disorder called Laron syndrome.
PICS - DWARVES
There are only about 300 people with Laron dwarfism in the world, and a third of them live here, in the southern Loja province. They have an average height of just over 4 feet, but unlike other forms of dwarfism their bodies are in proportion. But what really interests Dr Guevara is that none of his dwarf patients have ever died from cancer, and despite a tendency to obesity, none of them have developed diabetes.
These communities are sparse and remote, so marriage within families has been happening for generations. Laron syndrome is a result of this inbreeding.
PICS - EDITH ROJA
Sisters Alexandra and Edith Rojas family are peanut farmers. Their parents, like many others in the village of San Vicente del Rio, are cousins.
Ramita question - do your parents have Laron syndrome?
SOT - EDITH ROJA
My parents are normal, my grandparents were normal. I have seven siblings, four of them are normal height and three of us are little.
PICS - WIDE SHOT OF EDITH AND DOC
What interests the doctors is a unique aspect to this type of dwarfism, which they think results in there being no recorded cases of cancer or diabetes among sufferers.
SOT - DR MARCO GUEVARA
The fundamental difference with patients who have Laron syndrome is the patients have normal growth hormones but they dont have the receptors which allows the organism to grow.
PICS - QUITO / LAB
In Ecuadors capital, Quito, Dr Marco Guevaras brother, Jaime, has been viewing the collected data from the patients. Dr Jaimes focus is on the absence of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF1. He thinks by understanding why cancer and diabetes fails to develop in Laron dwarves, it could help us work out why it develops in the rest of us.
Ramita question - So do these findings mean the medical world is a step closer to finding a cure for cancer and diabetes?
SOT- DOCTOR JAIME GUEVARA
Yeh. In a sense yes.
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PICS - DR VALTER LONGO IN LAB - TBC
These findings have caught the attention of a professor in South California who …
SOT - LONGO - TBC
DWARVES
Whilst these people with Laron may bring the medical world closer to cracking the cancer cure, in a country as poor as Ecuador there is a pressing problem that dogs these trials.
There is actually a treatment for Laron syndrome, but most sufferers here cannot afford the medicine needed to help them grow.
For most patients, its too late as the expensive growth treatment must be administered before puberty. But the doctors have been lobbying for children like 10 year-old Jannick to receive free drug treatment.
SOT - DOC
In male children with this treatment they could grow up to 1metre 60 in height.
SOT - JANNICK
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I want to be big like my daddy.
PICS - BACK TO QUITO / LARONIES IN LAB
As these people come under greater scrutiny they now want to use their new-found voices to get the help they need.
SOT - MARIA
Scientists are interested in using us to investigate whats needed to help them. We all want to give our help, but we also need help. So if they help us, well help them and well both work together so well all be winners.