Breaking Ranks with both the Harper ‘Brain Trust’ and the editorial board of the Toronto Star.
The Toronto Star runs a rare editorial praising the actions of the Harper Brain Trust which should give all thinking people to cause to pause and re-think their positions on any issue
Canadians with debilitating multiple sclerosis are understandably expressing disappointment — even to the point of bitterness — over the federal government’s rejection of clinical trials into the controversial new “liberation treatment” for the debilitating disease.
A cure can’t come fast enough for those struggling against the neurological ravages of MS, and for their anguished friends and relatives. And rightly so. But it must be a real cure — one backed up by sound scientific evidence showing it is both safe and beneficial.
There is no such proof at hand for liberation treatment. Indeed, an expert panel convened by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has unanimously concluded that there is “an overwhelming lack of scientific evidence on the safety and efficacy of the procedure.”
Under these circumstances, federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq had no real choice but to announce on Wednesday that Ottawa is not yet prepared to fund clinical trials in this controversial form of MS treatment. “To ensure that we have the evidence to support this procedure, we need to do the research,” Aglukkaq said. “And once we have that, we will proceed … with pan-Canadian clinical trials. At this point in time, we do not have the evidence to proceed.” Although heartbreaking to MS sufferers, Aglukkaq’s approach is both prudent and responsible.
There is a word weasliness coming from the traditionalists in the medical and scientific circles and its inherent in the federal government’s refusal to fund wide scale clinical trials using the so-called Liberation Treatment and it can be summed up this way. There is no evidence Dr. Zamboni’s theory is correct or this procedure is a cure for MS; ergo, why should large scale clinical trials be funded or performed?
Dr. Zamboni’s theory may be very well wrong, and his treatment may not be a cure for MS, but if a simple angioplasty procedure opening up the block veins in an MS patient’s neck could very well represent the equivalent of a daily insulin injection to a diabetic patient. It may not be a cure but any procedure which allows an MS patient to participate fully in life and offers relief from the debilitating effects of MS and the drugs used to control it - should be fully be explored and funded.
There are approximately 75,000 people in Canada suffering from MS and they spend approximately 2,000 a month using traditional drug treatment. Given the average MS patient can live a relatively long life with horrendous suffering; its the goose which lays the golden egg for Big Pharma. It appears a treatment which can be had for less than the yearly costs of MS drugs which potentially and dramatically improves the quality of life for MS suffers for a year or longer loses out in Canada. Is it any wonder the federal government’s decision not to establish and fund wide scale clinical trial is a very bitter pill for all Canadians suffering from MS?
For more information on the Liberation Treatment watch this W5 report on it.
You go, girl. Note that they do not say it is unsafe or ineffective, or even that they suspect it is. They say there is no evidence that it isn’t, a loophole that may never close for people who don’t want it to. And what, pray tell, is an “overwhelming lack of evidence”?
How about this one: prostate cancer is common and a common treatment is surgery. In the US a high percentage of surgeries now are done with an expensive “robotic” procedure yet there is not yet evidence that it improves cancer control or that it lessens side effects. But it does lead to a quicker recovery (as no open incision) and the patient will look better from a cosmetic point of view. Cover or not cover?
Cover it. Any new technological advance is expensive – at first, but as it becomes widely used it brings down the cost. Ultra sound machines are just one example which started out as extremely costly and have now come down rather dramatically in price. As well, the risk of complications resulting from surgical procedure ups the cost (sometimes exponentially) especially once you factor in all the extras factors like hospital, nursing, drugs, – not to mention that with a dramatic increase in quicker recovery times – means the patient is sooner back to being a taxpaying contributing member of society.