Sydney neurologist Dr Dan Milder (rhymes
with 'mill' not 'mile') accidentally found an MS treatment that got a woman
out of her wheelchair and walking. And another. And another.
And a fourth.
Read about his discovery in the article from Time magazine
(June 13 '02). Read the transcript
of the TV program (June 17 '02) which
featured the story. Watch the segment
(RealMedia). There's nothing
like seeing Natasha jogging after being in a wheelchair.
(You can download the entire segment by clicking
here - about 35 minutes over a 56kbps modem.)
For those unable (or unwilling to) see
the RealMedia segment, the transcript is here
with a few stills from the video.
(Aug18) I managed to find a sympathetic neuro who
(essentially) said: it's your decision. There is one problem however: azathioprine a bit of reading up on it
will tell you that it’s a nasty drug. It
does play around with your immune system (that’s what we want, after all)
and it plays around with it BIG TIME: don’t be in the same room as a person
who’s just had the polio vaccination, don’t cut yourself shaving (you
might get sick). As the neuro
says: we aren’t really worried that the therapy won’t work, what concerns
us that it will make you worse.
We discussed the success Dr Milder had had: Natasha
had not had MS long what would be the effect on someone who had had MS for
10 years (i.e. me)? Natasha has taken steroids prior to this therapy but they
had been discontinued because they made her psychotic (pretty good reason to
stop). But had there been of some longer-term benefit? The therapy
had worked for four of Dr Milder’s patients.
Natasha was undoubtedly his ‘star’ patient. He says that the therapy does not reverse all the MS
‘deficits’. As my neuro said:
would it put you to where you were a year ago?
Do we know of anyone else on the therapy?
Since I'm going away I will not make a
decision until the end of October.
(Nov) So I took a holiday and thought
this therapy was a bit hare-brained. I looked in the newsgroups for
anyone who'd tried Imuran, and yes, they had, but no, it didn't do any
good. I thought that caution was probably the watchword here (given that
this is the time of year when I try something which doesn't work).
My pharmacist friend (the one who has
MS) thinks it sounds an awful lot like something that's been tried in
Europe. Alarm bells started ringing. I knew it was too good to be
true.
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