MS Society of Canada

Brad Wall: ‘It’s a good day in the province of Saskatchewan’

I see that Colleague Kingston is unsure why the federal Minister of Health is frustrated at media coverage of her ministry’s approach to the vein-centered Zamboni hypothesis about multiple sclerosis. One possible reason, I think, is that statements like those of Liberal health critic Kirsty Duncan are being repeated rather uncritically. Duncan told Kingston “They say we need evidence-based medicine but they are doing nothing to gather evidence.” Nothing? I wonder how else, but as “evidence-gathering”, one could possibly characterize the seven MS Society-funded preliminary studies Aglukkaq mentioned in her burst of finger-wagging at the media. These studies are designed to establish precisely what needs to be confirmed before the dream of a pan-Canadian trial of vein therapy for MS can appropriately be fulfilled: namely, whether there is any such thing at all as “chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency”, and whether it is really correlated with MS.

Was it media “misinformation” or Orwellian double speak?

COSH: “There’s no unitary global Science Court where hypotheses can be hauled in for exoneration or hanging”