The federal Liberals are accusing the Conservative government of “bungling” its approach to a controversial new treatment for multiple sclerosis, helping to give the extraordinary scientific debate an increasingly political flavour.

The scientific community remains heavily divided on the work of Italy’s Dr. Paolo Zamboni, but Ujjal Dosanjh, the Liberal health critic, said Tuesday the Harper administration should be taking an “activist” role on the issue, championing patients who want access to the novel treatment.

After raising the issue in the Commons, Mr. Dosanjh and Kirsty Duncan, a fellow Liberal MP and doctor, published a newspaper commentary recently slamming the government’s handling of the MS file. Mr. Dosanjh said the Conservatives should generally be encouraging scientists to do more to investigate the Zamboni theory, and to do it more quickly. He insisted, though, that he does not want politicians to actually interfere in the scientific process.

“Government can’t do science itself. Scientists do science, but government hasn’t prodded, encouraged, government hasn’t been the leader on this,” said Mr. Dosanjh in an interview. “This file has been totally mismanaged and bungled by the government.”

Some outside observers, however, question the value of turning what is at heart a medical dispute into a partisan one.

Ian Mitchell, a University of Calgary doctor and bioethicist, said it is appropriate for legislators to direct where medical research funding is spent, allocating it generally to one disease or another, for instance. But it is unusual and troubling when they become involved in specific research projects.

“I’m sympathetic to the MP who is getting all these calls from these distressed people. But is doing something, even if it’s the wrong thing, better than doing nothing?” he said. “Being on the cutting edge is one thing, being out on a limb is quite something else entirely.”

Nelson Wiseman, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, said it does not surprise him that politicians have latched on to the issue, given the extensive media coverage it has received.

“They see it, somebody’s talking about it, so they think ‘Maybe there’s something for us here in pushing that button,’” he said. “[But] it is best left to the scientific community.”

Dr. Zamboni has turned the MS world upside down with a hypothesis that the devastating neurological disease is caused by a narrowing of veins in the neck that drain blood from the brain, a condition he dubbed chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI). The blockages cause blood backups that lead to inflammation and damage to the brain’s myelin coating, which triggers the ailment, he suggests.

He developed a treatment that involves inflating a tiny balloon in the vessel to widen it, and published a preliminary study that suggested positive results.

Neurologists, who normally care for MS sufferers, have voiced skepticism from the start, and conflicting evidence has emerged over the past year about whether CCSVI does cause the disease, and whether the so-called “Liberation” treatment works.

Many MS patients have embraced Dr. Zamboni’s work, however, and hundreds of Canadians have travelled overseas to undergo his operation or procedures like it, with many reporting dramatic improvements. On the other hand, even most scientists who believe the Zamboni theory has potential have urged patients to hold off on getting the operations from fee-charging surgeons, except as part of a credible clinical trial.

Still, the Liberals say the government should have launched a registry to study the outcomes of those overseas operations on Canadian patients, arguing that such research would turn anecdotal reports into good evidence.

The opposition MPs also heavily criticized an expert panel appointed by the Canadian Institute of Health Research to review the issue, calling it prejudiced against the Zamboni ideas. The panel strongly urged the government to not fund a clinical trial until there is more evidence that CCSVI actually causes the illness.

http://www.globaltoronto.com/Liberals+blast+Tories+over+treatment/4171265/story.html