Lyon wrote:
One thing everyone seems to agree about, and what the long and frustrating history of MS research makes obvious, is that Multiple Sclerosis is mysterious and contrary.
I agree with that. Sometimes I feel like I need to take a break from this site because I feel like I'm banging my head agaist a wall. I suppose that's why we all care enough to be here, we are frustrated and we don't like all the mystery.
Lyon wrote:
there is some voodoo involved .... nothing proves to make any sense.
I liken this entire circumstance to just about any state of affairs that precedes a major discovery. The earth is flat, that's a good one. I think that one day (hopefully soon) someone (not necessarily a well funded researcher) will figure this out, test the theory and conclusively understand the entire MS mystery. Until then, we'll argue over whether the earth is flat, global warming is real and how wrong it is to be rude to others on the message boards.
All I was trying to get at is, that the stuff we know and treat with CRAB's - I think it's all symptom. Similar to taking Provigil to deal with sluggishness all we really know about is the symptom. Although I have invested in Opexa, I still wonder if their thearpy is really just another very effective symptom fixer.
Getting at the cause (in my thinking) is a huge mystery. I think that there's several. A number of different things that can come along and cause the illness and it's symptoms. Smoking isn't the sole cause of lung cancer, non-smokers get it too. I know it's a tough topic to learn about no matter how much you google, but I think cross-presentation is part of how MS comes to be and I think there's likely a lot of ways it could come about.
Lyon wrote:
What if ... the situation was really one of an environmental predisposition and genetic and/or other environmental factors??
Yup, could be. It's times when I start thinking this way that I would really love to know what it's like to be a "insider" in the research community. Perhaps this is why I liked the Weiner book so much. napay