So, in Aime's case, her seizures began after she contracted the flu. While the affidavit does not say so, "An American Prophet" says that Aime "had received an injury to her spine before becoming sick." Thus, her seizures seemed to be related to those major events in her young life. Further, Aime later became severely developmentally-impaired, and her case was pronounced hopeless. By contrast, in the other case, it would appear that there was no obvious precipitating event for the seizures, the child did not become developmentally delayed, and the case was never thought to be hopeless.
Developmental delay is a feature of West Syndrome and resistance to treatment gives a poor prognosis (i.e. this case would be considered otherwise hopeless).
No, but I still no evidence that a viral infection can resolve developmental delays.
The case-report represented a viral infection resolving developmental delay, although whether or not it does so in that circumstance depends upon the underlying cause of the developmental delay (e.g. primary or secondary).
Please note that the case-report was not adding to the understanding that West Syndrome or other types of epilepsy have spontaneously resolved after various viral infections, but rather adding to the understanding of HHV-7 infection in humans.
Further, under your scenario, Cayce has got to be amazingly lucky. Five doctors fail to help Aime at all, with the fifth pronouncing her case hopeless. Cayce is then called in, prescribes some osteopathic adjustments, and by a coincidence that would stagger even Carl Jung, Aime gets better not because of those adjustments, but because she actually simultaneously contracted an unreported viral infection. Does that scenario make sense to you?
It would be an amazing coincidence. And as I was attempting to get at earlier, that alone doesn't mean anything, since it may be the only reason that it was Cayce that was remembered 100 years later, rather than some other medium. With thousands of opportunities for medium intervention to coincide with spontaneous recovery, occasionally it will happen. And it is the medium that happens to be in that lucky situation that will subsequently be hailed as having real powers. And the proof of those real powers? That it was unlikely for spontaneous recovery to coincide with the medium's intervention
if that particular situation is assumed a priori. Of course, everybody conveniently forgets that they have violated one of the assumptions of their hypothesis testing, since the situation was not, in fact, assumed a priori. And how many readings did Cayce give? Tens of thousands? He should have been swimming in amazing coincidences, even without taking the strong confirmation and attribution biases into effect.
However, it may not even be an amazing coincidence, as the events could easily be confounded and not independent. Viral infections usually make epilepsy worse, so even if eventual resolution of the viral infection leads to eventual resolution of the seizures, it would be expected that they could get worse before they get better. And it was that Aime was "getting worse" that led to calling in Cayce - i.e. the same thing that could have led to Aime's worsening and then subsequent resolution was the same thing that led to the desparate attempt to try anything.
And that a viral infection wasn't reported by Dietrich may have been that it was unnoticed or that Dietrich didn't understand the significance of what the doctor said. For example, the majority of HHV-7 infections seem to be asymptomatic or sub-clinical. Which is why a report of an acute manifestation of HHV-7 is worth a case-report. A sub-clinical infection (for many viruses) can smoulder for months, and recovery certainly fits with with the time course reported in the affadavit.
However, I realize that none of this
necessarily applies to Cayce, since we simply to not have enough information on anything that has been claimed to say "this is what
must have happened." All we can say is "this is what
could have happened." And the scientific approach is to assume a naturalistic explanation exists (even if currently undetermined) until proven otherwise, mostly because this assumption has lead to amazing progress and because no exceptions have yet been discovered. Your approach seems to be to assume a supernaturalistic explanation when encountering the unknown until proven otherwise; an assumption that leads to stagnation and continual exceptions.
Linda
