Not So Liberating

This study was also conducted by someone who really wanted it to work, Dr. William Pryse-Phillips, a professor emeritus of neurology at Newfoundland’s Memorial University.

Patients who underwent the so-called liberation treatment for multiple sclerosis experienced no measurable benefit from the procedure, a study commissioned by the government of Newfoundland and Labrador found.

They couldn't find one person who benefited from "Liberation" one year after the procedure out of 30 participants. Not even in the self-reports of the patients themselves. That hardly appears to be a procedure that every person with MS should be undergoing at the provinces' expense.

And the outcome of this study, as limited as it is, leaves me wondering if there isn't a placebo effect - especially when the self-report benefits seem to tail off 3 months after the procedure - and why the people who didn't have a recurrence of clots or blockages did just as well as those who did. Like the doctor asks at the end of the article

"...under Zamboni’s theory, those who experienced the closures should have had poorer results than those who didn’t."

The more investigation that is done on this procedure the more I am convinced that MS will not be cured by a single drug, procedure or therapy. It's just too complex, it's origins so vague, that it's not going to be a magic silver bullet that solves the riddle.

My money is still on stem cells. I'm hoping that one day I can just trade in my whole immune system for a new one, and then use gene therapy to get rid of the damage.