More MS news articles for August 2003

Revisiting the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis revisited

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12906768&dopt=Abstract

Int MS J. 2003 Apr;10(1):29-31
Compston A.
University of Cambridge Neurology Unit, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK.

Uncertainty breeds speculation.

First, multiple sclerosis (MS) is said to be a sexually transmitted disease childhood onset cases representing examples of child abuse.

Now, the concept of MS as an inflammatory disorder has been sidelined.

Does it matter

that affected individuals are repeatedly exposed to untested new ideas concerning aetiology and disease mechanisms;
that lay organizations spend time setting straight the record as they and their advisers see it;
that journalists prowling for news are seen to have over-blown their stories;
that yet more raw hypotheses are spawned by the oxygen of this publicity; or
that original research is discredited by these neurological borborygmi?

After all, these claims and counter-claims provided copy for the New Scientist (A Coglan, Have We Got It Horribly Wrong? 16 November 2002) and national radio in the UK covered both stories.

Antivivisectionists spotted an open goal and wrote to the newspapers.

Journalists waved the 'freedom of speech' flag and an institution was criticized for distancing itself from the sex-abuse author.