I was just thinking about the roughly 75,000 people in Canada that are needlessly suffering
from a debilitation, sometimes fatal disease, Multiple Sclerosis. There
is also, a therapy that seems to be resurrecting these patients back
to at least a better quality of life. However, at the expense of good
Samaritans who are still funding our other healthcare needs in this
country.
I am no doctor, however, I will offer my understanding of the condition. Multiple Sclerosis is caused by an
increase of iron deposits in the brain, in which the immune systems
try’s to break down, but instead destroys the myelin coating of nerves
and causes those nerves to basically short circuit and fire off the
wrong signals throughout the body.
The effect of MS is a neurological problem in that the nerves are misfiring. However, in this
society of corporatism we are faced with specialists fighting the
symptoms of problems as opposed to root cause analysis. This disease
has baffled Doctors since the 1800's and I think we are on the verge of
a breakthrough.
Dr. Zamboni of Italy revived an old idea of veins restricting blood flow out of the brain resulting in the
buildup of iron deposits, thus the autoimmune response. However, the
cause is not the autoimmune response, but an effect of the condition.
This theory is proving true for hundreds of patients.
The procedure in a nutshell is providing normal blood flow through
restricted veins. Radiologists have been doing this procedure since 1977
for heart patients and other illnesses. The procedure is known as
angioplasty, in that a balloon is expanded at the restricted point in
the vein to open it an allow normal flow. Stents can also be inserted to
help with keeping a vein open. I can imagine the thousands of clinical
studies already done over the last 33 years.
Clinical trials are not required to perform the procedure as they already know
the effect of angioplasty on a patient. What needs to be studied is how
an MS patient benefits from the corrected condition. So, fix all of
the malfunctioning veins, and study the improvements. Make a conclusion
after you have observed the effect.
One of the main prohibitions is that there are so many MS patients in Canada, that
removing large numbers of patients (approx. 65,000) from the health
system can have a detrimental effect on pharmaceutical corporations as
well as medical specialists currently prescribing on an average
$36,000 in prescriptions per year per patient.
If this procedure were offered here in Canada it would mean the removal of
$2.34 Billion dollars per year in prescriptions. The treatment cost for
this procedure would be about $10,000 per person which would cost $65
million, one time. Not recurring. We would have made the patients
happier in that they can mostly return to at least a much better
quality of life, as well as making tax payers happy in understanding
that their money is being managed wisely.
I will be flying out shortly with my brother out of the country so he can have
this treatment to save his life. I am appalled that we are forced to
beg for money from friends (who are also tax payers) and cannot rely on
our government to make the right decision.
In 2008 the government blindly spent billions of dollars on the roll out of the
H1N1 vaccine which did not undergo clinical trials. 12 months ago, the
cost of H1N1 roll outs reached $1.5 Billion. Something is defiantly
wrong with our system, and the more they try to fix it, they over
complicate the process and break more in doing so. What is missing here
is a leader who can say, we are going to save a bunch of money and save
a bunch of lives. And deal with the consequences accordingly. Just do
the right thing!
Common sense isn't so common anymore.
Tom Gignac
?http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=457604002255&id=879220612