News of the Liberation Treatment for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has been getting more and more press in the media I’ve been exposed to.
Dr. Paolo Zamboni found that 100% of the MS sufferers he tested had abnormal veins. These veins, between the head and heart, restricted or blocked the flow of blood.
The treatment is a surgery that inserts a balloon into each blocked vein and expands it, stretching the vein.
A number of MS sufferers from this country have gone overseas to have the treatment done. A large number have had improvements in their MS symptoms, some say the changes are major.
There has been resistance in the established MS community here to this treatment.
Firstly Zamboni says the vein blockages are the entire reason for MS. This is theory and hasn’t been proven as the established MS community has gleefully said. I’ll have to give them that, sometimes competing theories take a long time to show a winner.
My problem is another “defense” they take. They’ve said something that meant this: An anecdote is not science.
The Liberation treatment is not just an anecdote, it is a number of anecdotes all in the same vein*. And that, very often, can be solid science.
Now to be fair, I have no experience with the placebo effect which is known to muddy medicinal studies. But everything else is the science I know. So I suspect that the Liberation Treatment is not just a trick to get journalistic interest. It appears to be something that can help an MS patient.
Over here in Canada, it has been announced that Newfoundland(studies on people who get the treatment elsewhere) and Saskatchewan(actual trials) are going to start research for this new treatment. So at least someone in this country is saying let’s at least try the new.
MS is a terrible illness. Something that can alleviate some of the symptoms is both powerful and, I think, our duty to offer.
*Choosing this word is the only humour in this article.
