Though risky and intensive, it's hard to argue with the results. This sort of research has been going on far longer that Liberation treatment trials and has collected some impressive data. Disease progression has been halted in most cases and disease reversal has been documented.These improvements seem fairly consistent and enduring.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 213441.htm
http://www.neurologyreviews.com/dec04/n ... arrow.html
http://www.vancouversun.com/health/rese ... story.html
Our anti-CCSVI media darling, Dr. Freedman, himself has been involved in a $6.4 mil study funded by the MS Society for the last ten years ($4 mil to start and $2.4 to continue)
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/77216.php
Is it any surprise that he, and those involved in similar research, should be so diametrically opposed to CCSVI? Patients who have braved the procedure are also less than enthusiastic about CCSVI.
http://themscure.blogspot.com/2010/06/ccsvi-hoax.html
In truth, the results are hard to reconcile with pure CCSVI theory. Such a treatment, because it does not address impaired drainage, should not produce any benefit. And any benefit it does produce ought to be short-lived as the brain is once again assaulted unabated with backed up blood.
So they both can't be right. And I am not about to sweep this research under the carpet or dismiss out of hand the experiences and results of those MS patients who have braved it - one, to his death.
So here you have an apparent contradiction that if left unresolved, disproves CCSVI theory. If BMT then not CCSVI.
Still, they don't seem much further ahead than we are,
This reminds me of some of the weaknesses in CCSVI theory to account for why a supposed congenital defect takes so long to assert itself and, possibly, the presence of CCSVI in healthy controls.Freedman said the treatment does not explain what exactly goes wrong with the immune system in MS, but it tests the idea that the error will not repeat itself if the immune system is replaced.
Another similarity is both camps seem comfortable in having something that apparently works without being able to precisely explain how. The trickier question is how can they both work???
A potential answer presented itself when I discovered that persons undergoing bone marrow transplants have to be re-immunized for many diseases such as polio because the antibodies would no longer be present. Similarly, that ubiquitous kin to herpes, EBV - the love bug might also be affected. EBV has a strong association to MS.
http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/news/Apr2 ... Virus.html
The immune system reboot might rid the body of EPV antigens, whereas the antigens can be passed on from bone marrow donors.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 5/abstract
Perhaps CCSVI provides the mechanism by which these antigens can harm tissue in the brain? Iron buildup? So that removing the antigens helps but so does fixing the venous flow by which these antigens are allowed to do their evil.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the conundrum presented by the contradictory successes of Liberation and Bone Marrow Transplant therapies?