Conventional medicine is always coming up with new miracle cures for diseases, and the latest in a treatment for MS, or multiple sclerosis. The media has, as usual, heralded this new treatment as "a game changer", with BBC News announcing
"Doctors say a stem cell transplant could be a "game changer" for many patients with multiple sclerosis. Results from an international trial show that it was able to stop the disease and improve symptoms."
"Doctors say a stem cell transplant could be a "game changer" for many patients with multiple sclerosis. Results from an international trial show that it was able to stop the disease and improve symptoms."
This is, indeed, good news - if it is true. According to the National MS Society, MS was first identified in the mid-19th century, and since then MS has probably become the most widespread disabling neurological condition of young adults around the world. According to this HealthLine article, there are an estimated 400,000 cases in the USA (with 200 new cases diagnosed every week), and 2.5 million cases throughout the world. And all this without there being any known cause!
The hopes of all these people will undoubtedly have been raised, and from the media coverage there appears to be no reason for these hopes not to be raised. But when the treatment is described it is more concerning. Conventional medicine is playing around with our immune system again - the immune system that is designed to keep us all healthy!
- The treatment involves wiping out a patient's immune system using chemotherapy drugs. The immune system is destroyed, we are told, because it is already faulty.
- The immune system is then "rebooted". Stem cells are taken from the patient's blood and bone marrow are re-infused. As these cells are unaffected by MS they rebuild the immune system.
So another disease, which now affects an unprecedented number of people, is likely to bite the dust. In a few years time MS will be an ex-disease. 2.5 million people will have had their immune system 'destroyed' and 'rebooted', and they will all be well again. That is, of course, if there is enough money to spend on tinkering with the 2.5 million immune systems. And if there are enough people who want to have their immune systems 'wiped out' and 're-infused'.
So I will publish this blog today, and wait to see the outcome of this breakthrough treatment.
Expect to hear from me again in a couple of years with up-to-date MS statistics!
But first, another suggestion for treatment, and one for prevention too.
Treatment
Homeopathy has been treating people with MS for as long as MS has been diagnosed, and it does so without having to 'destroy' or 'wipe out' anything, leave alone a system that is designed to keep us healthy. I have discussed this, and compared conventional and homeopathic treatment, in more detail on my 'Why Homeopathy?' website.
Prevention
As is so often the case, conventional medicine says that it does not know what causes MS, but states categorically that it is an 'autoimmune disease'. So something has affected our immune system, but doctors are unable to tell us exactly what it is that has done so. So could it possibly be something that conventional medicine has already done to interfere with our immune system? After all, there are pharmaceutical drugs that are designed to do just this. And there are drugs and vaccines that do so as a 'side effect', including those known to cause MS.
So perhaps the best answer to MS is to stop taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines altogether, and to use safer and more effective medical therapies instead. I, for one, would like to hold on to my immune system!