What sort of conspiracy? That's just how the world of MS medicine works. It's been that way for decades. People have made a lot of money out of this process.Some of the comments on here are amazing. I really don't understand how people hold the neuros and "big pharma" together in some sort of conspiracy to make money.
Yep. Whether it works or not. And some of these docs get paid a nice chunk of money by the drug companies to prescribe their medicationsFirst off, neurologists (or any medical doctor for that matter) do not find cures for diseases. They simply apply the best treatment that is available at a given time.
I won't disagree in general what you are saying here but don't you find it strange that the same line of research (autoimmune system altering drugs) costing billions of dollars are all that the research development people have developed and supported for decades? Big pharma is in this for one reason and one reason only...and that is to make as much money as they can from the MS drugs that they develop. Their marketing and sales costs far outstrip their research output. But that's what they are in business for....not to find a cure for MS or even worry about what causes it.As far as development of treatments for MS, this difficult to do when you have no idea what causes it. It is going to take a lot of trial and error, but you have to start somewhere. With each failure, there is knowledge that is gained which pushes forward the science. I guess "big pharma" could have not bothered developing treatments until a cure was found. But what about the people that these drugs have helped?
What has been discovered in the last decade as far as MS medications are concerned? Monoclonal antibody treatments which shake up the immune system even more than the CRABs ever did...along with the nastier side effects. But I have to admit the new drugs have contributed big time in one way....they have allowed the companies to who make the CRABs to raise the cost of their drugs dramatically since the new ones cost even more. You would think that a product that has been out for almost 20 years now would start to drop a bit in price!!So here we are, complaining about how neurologists and big pharma have taken advantage of PWMS and we shouldn't believe anything that has been discovered over the last decade of research.
And those HSCT trials are double blinded?For example, HSCT treatment is in phase III trials and is the only treatment that has a highly effective success rate (80%) of halting MS progression that is scientifically reproducible.
I guess it's so overwhelming it still can't prove that MS is an autoimmune disease!!Or the amazing advances that have been discovered in regulatory T-cells that provide overwhelming evidence that MS (as well as all other autoimmune diseases) is driven by a defect in the protective role of the immune system against self reactive immune cells.
Oh yeah...I forgot about the poor EAE mouse. Hasn't been one treatment that has worked on MS mouse that has worked in humans!!By the way, both of these discoveries could not have been accomplished without EAE and mouse studies.
Probably because the number of patients that have had HSCT treatment isn't anywhere near the number of people that have had CCSVI. Sure HSCT may hold promise but what does that have to do with the readers' views on CCSVI or any other possible MS treatment? Absolutely nothing in my opinion.So my big question is why has the HSCT treatment not had the same amount of hype as CSVI? It seems to hold a lot of promise yet is completely ignored by most people on this site. Maybe its because it proves that what they have been spewing all along is wrong and they don't want to admit it.
Harry