September 25, 2010 - BY JOANNA SMITH
There were the angry letters and phone calls. There were patients who told him he was fired, and others who accused him of conspiring with drug companies to keep them ill in the name of profit. There was the vitriol being poured into online forums, where he was called a pompous windbag with the bedside manner of Adolf Hitler, a pill pusher and, even, the “King of all Turds.”
He had spent a quarter century searching for a cure for multiple sclerosis, spurred on by being a daily witness to the fear and pain of his patients, but when Freedman urged caution over a proposed new theory of the debilitating disease — something he says he did in the best interest of patients — he was labelled a villain.
“What did we do — other than point out the obvious careful approach to treatment — to warrant this kind of aggressiveness from their part?” asks Freedman, director of the Multiple Sclerosis Research Unit at the Ottawa Hospital.
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4 comments:
A position of skepticism, rationality, reason is never a popular one. It becomes through scientific research more evident each year that humans are not evolved to be rational and that critical thinking is deviance which will not go unpunished. For me, this makes rational people heroic by their daily deeds. But I cannot condemn the irrational majority for being... normal, even if normal appears to be delusional. And rather savage, in this case.
The one thing I just don't get about all of this controversy is "Don't these doctors understand how hard this disease is to live with year in and year out 24/7?" I would never verbally assault my doc, but I sometimes wonder if "the docs" really understand living w/ this heinous disease that no matter what you do, i.e. diet, exercise, DMDs, or supplements you will NEVER get well. Just the hint of an improvement let alone the REALLY GREAT improvement would be enough for me. I have tried the CRABs/ Tysabri w/ no change in my condition. It gets harder and harder to keep hope alive. Time is not on our side.
"Ditto" to what "anonymous" posts. The longer many of us wait, the more pain, the greater the struggle, the greater the loss of function, with continued progression.
I have a prgressive form of MS and I agree it's awful. The slow steady loss of function has very much negatively impacted my quality of life. Yet, Dr. Friedman could simply say "go ahead and do the CCSVI" just to get people off his back and then have it turn out not to be a cause of MS or anything near it, but possibly only a symptom. If people want to have the procedure done, there are certainly numerous places that will do it in the U.S. The problem for most people is paying for it of course. Time is definitely not on our side, however, lambasting an MS researcher also does not resolve our horrid disease process. I too don't think that many doctors really understnad the difficulties inherent in daily life with MS, as they don't have it themselves. I do respect their knowlege base, but I too am very frustrated at the total lack of understanding of what causes this disease.
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