frodo wrote:Dr. Freedman has been defaming and insulting since the beginning of CCSVI research, with an absolute disrespect to real researchers. At the same time he has been hiding his connections to the pharma industry in his articles, which should carry a very big disclosure of interests.
This lawsuit is unfortunately a required step for CCSVI adoption. Research cannot advance with people like Freedman sabotaging the real researchers' work.
How can we support this lawsuit? Any idea?
I wish I could help you, but he was my own neurologist, too recently for comfort. Patients with the right vocabulary who know something about CCSVI, might make good witnesses. This fight is in the hands of Dr. MacDonald's lawyers. There may be real experts, cardiac vascular people, IRs, who would be willing to go to bat for Dr. MacDonald in Court. If anybody knows one, that might help, but we don't even know if they need those people. You could start by offering the lawyers help if you have it to give.
Anyway the complaints may have been worked on since 2010, so they probably have what they need.
The defense already has outlined its case.
They will have to argue that some kind of "absolute privilege" protects "MS" doctors from liability for their behaviour. That specialists have some kind of divine right to behave this way, because their duty is to protect patients from themselves, especially when they are so unfortunate as to be vulnerable to fraud because of their cognitive difficulties.
Doctors, have associations that try to to protect other doctors. It should not be a contest that only shows whose professional association has the most money and power. This should also not be about CCSVI. It is, but that's a distraction, and one the legal beagles may try to exploit for their defense. The complaint is not directly about professionalism or accuracy of research, but against malicious libel. It is against a professional who should have known that an appeal against wasting the taxpayer's money was irrelevant, because Dr. MacDonald's CCSVI care does not depend on the taxpayer. Dr, MacDonald might be doing it below cost, because it is the right thing, on his own nickel.
The defense might have attempted to try CCSVI, and the patients who have it. They might have tried to make Dr. MacDonald seem greedy and not concerned about the welfare of patients. Or to make people involved with CCSVI work look like foreign criminals, who run scams on dying ALS patients, stealing their families' resources to pay for phony stem-cell schemes. They might have wanted to play up actual real stem-cell work in Canada.
Lawyers for the plaintiff might have wanted to show they are dealing with someone who sees himself as a self-appointed spokesman for people with "MS". Or that patients know at least as much about their own mysterious condition as their self-appointed spokes-people. That patients learned early not ask for opinions on CCSVI, because they know they will get them even if they don''t ask. Or that patients know drug researchers get well compensated for performances at the "MS" Society's events, and for "research" on "MS" drugs, where patients are as often as not unwilling victims of risky experiments with unproven drugs. That they are aware that they themselves are also victims of those drugs, even after they have been approved.
The amounts Anne Kingston has said that drug companies will pay for research on "MS" drugs might have been of interest in showing motivation to be untruthful. I would like to see a forensic accounting of money the "MS" Society has given, for instance what is in the brown "token" envelopes given to "MS" doctors for speaking at their "MS"" Pharma-sponsored events. I have been to plenty of those, and I could tell by the large quantities of chocolate chip cookies, coffee and other drinks, etc., at those meetings, that the organizers had never read Swank's book.
They might have tried to concentrate on media-seeking behaviour, because the publicity campaign against CCSVI has been as puzzling as the heavy-handed reception "MS" patients have received in Federal Parliament.
That federal campaign might have been looked at, maybe with an access-to-information request, as just another example of efforts against CCSVI research. That this one was no different, just appealing to the provincial Physicians and Surgeons College, and a provincial politician, maybe because of provincial jurisdiction over health. They might have pointed out that somebody who puts warnings on their emails might be expecting to be safe from lawsuits, and might have thought their emails would not see the light of day.
But the dice have likely already been cast, and we'll have to wait and see. Good luck to Dr. MacDonald.
OK, they got the scoop...