Current estimates of the number Americans with MS are about 400,000. Estimates of U.S. prevalence of ME/CFS are about four million. Both of these diseases can rapidly become disabling and persist for years or decades. Any plausible suggestion of a pathway to cure or remission should obviously be investigated to its fullest by our best and most insightful researchers. But this rarely happens. Usually, government/academic/corporate machinery kicks into gear to smother the most innovative, perceptive research.
We can guess at reasons why, but in a secretive and manipulative system it gets hard to determine true causes.
It could be as simple as an agency, medical specialty, or corporation unwilling to admit they have been embarrassingly wrong for a long time. It could be the unwillingness of the medical doctor culture to deviate from their medical textbooks or professional group guidelines.
More cynically, it could be that medical resistance to new ideas comes from entrenched investment by drug companies, medical device manufacturers, and medical specialities profiting substantially from the status quo.
Health insurers could be the real cause of the problem. They like predictability. They would rather have a disease classified as incurable with predictable costs than have it be curable with unpredictable costs.
Regardless of motivation, there is a pattern of behavior among our government backed researchers that is not good.
We see it in recent government-academic-corporate handling of CCSVI.
Zamboni published his first paper on CCSVI and MS in April,2009 (web availability December, 2008). Without the efforts of patient advocates, the news might have gone unnoticed. In February, 2010 Canadian news media picked up the story and in June, 2010 The New York Times published a fairly balanced article.
In a National Post article, in January, 2010, Dr. Mark Freedman states “I think there are going to be millions of dollars spent now to follow a hoax…. If I thought for one instant there was substance to this, I’d be all over it,”. Freedman is head of U. of Ottawa’s MS program.
Dr. Zamboni has always presented his observations with the great caution, saying only that we need to find out more. The vitriol directed at him is unwarranted, almost spectacular, and, depending on the career strategy of the journalist, either reported reasonably, or as vitriol confirmation.
Neurology specialists want to own MS. They prescribe expensive, injectable drugs that generally make patients feel worse and only produce improved symptoms about a third of the time. Science has little to do with this. Their popular theory of genetic differences in the immune system causing MS, were recently refuted in an extremely rigorous study in identical twins. There was no indication of genetic causation, nor has there ever been, but that does not change neurologists’ minds.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/ ... o-now-what
