A Slow but Certain Massacre

Sunday, April 4, 2010

A Slow but Certain Massacre

I have been doing a lot of thinking since arriving home from Poland after being liberated. My experience in Katowice was wonderful and I met many people, who like me, were forced to leave their countries because medical attention for their blocked jugulars was denied. The fact that many MS Societies all over the world, including Canada, are spreading doubt and lies about CCSVI and it's treatment are a travesty. I heard a story from a family from Holland that the MS Society there is telling people it is too dangerous to travel to Poland as it's a third world country and many people have been killed by Dr. Simka and his team. I keep hearing the erroneous story about the patient from Stanford who died from the liberation procedure, when in fact, she had an unrelated aneurysm of her brain, and bled out.

All these crazy stories that are being circulated are meant to scare us into not seeking treatment for a serious and debilitating condition. Why? I believe it has to with greed on the part of the pharmaceutical companies and the MS Societies and health professionals who make a tidy profit off our illness. If CCSVI and the liberation treatment gets the world wide press it deserves, what do you think will happen to the profit margins of Big Pharma? New oral drugs for the treatment of MS symptoms are set to come on the market soon and if investors knew the real story about CCSVI I'm certain it would create fear and doubt in the minds of the investors and consequently cause a huge market drop. Companies like Teva who only cater to treating the symptoms of MS would go under. Many other companies would show huge profit losses and the research grants and kick backs would dry up. The treatment of MS is a multi billion dollar business and CCSVI threatens to destroy it.

Because of the fact that our Canadian MS Society is doing everything in it's power to quash the CCSVI movement, thousands of it's supporters have turned their backs and closed their wallets to them because they know the MS Society has been doing everything in it's power to discredit CCSVI as they fear the inevitable loss of revenue from Big Pharma. Paid employees of the National MS Society of Canada, such as April Royale will argue and state that the Canadian MS Society IS giving money for CCSVI research. This is true. What Ms. Royale fails to mention is that the grants are in $100,000.00 increments. Basically, this means that a researcher can apply for, and receive from the Canadian MS Society, only $100,000.00 to conduct research on CCSVI. In the world of research that small amount of money is a pittance and obviously a token gesture by the Canadian MS Society. Ms. Royale and all the paid employees of the Canadian MS Society know full well that it takes millions of dollars in order to adequately fund and carry out research.

In Alberta and across Canada, provincial health care is denying CCSVI scanning coverage for patients with MS. Dr. Robert Sevick is the head of Alberta Health's Radiology section, and a key person that wields the power to allow CCSVI scanning in Alberta. Curiously, after CTV's W5 presentation in November of Dr. Zamboni's breakthrough, I was told by a radiology tech at Mayfair clinic in Calgary, that they received a letter from Alberta Health Services stating that they should cease and desist CCSVI scanning for MS patients and return the requisition form to the issuing Doctor. I was shocked and saddened because just a couple weeks prior to this e mail, Mayfair was working hard to be able to offer CCSVI scanning. I asked the Mayfair tech why a private clinic such as Mayfair would follow these directives as they were a privately owned diagnostic imaging centre. She told me that the letter stated that CCSVI was unproven and that the radiologists were afraid of diagnosing an unproven ailment so they opted to wait it out. I called Dr. Sevick's office after this and was told by his receptionist that she and Dr. Sevick knew nothing of this letter. So why would Mayfair lie about receiving something like that? A few weeks later AHC published a statement about CCSVI, so closely worded to that letter, that I nearly spit out the coffee I was drinking.

Health professionals that we have depended on to let us know about medical breakthroughs, treatments and education are seemingly turning their backs on CCSVI before research can even begin. Despite the fact that Dr. Zivadinov and Dr. Weinstock-Guttman have produced promising preliminary data in the BNAC study for CCSVI, many Doctors refuse to acknowledge it. Dr. Lou Ann Metz, Director of the Calgary MS Clinic has seemingly gone out of her way to discredit Dr. Zamboni's work and whine about being deluged with MS patients calling about CCSVI. In a newspaper article published in the National Post and written by Tom Blackwell, Metz laments about angry patients calling and tying up the clinic phone lines and worries that we will all be crushed when CCSVI turns out to be a "medical dead end". Metz has said many negative things about CCSVI in the past few months, including calling CCSVI "quackery" I am told. The irony of this situation is that the Calgary MS Clinic phoned me a few weeks ago to ask if I would be interested in taking part in an MS study about how physical activity using a Nintendo Wii Fit impacts people with MS. I asked the girl phoning me if this was a joke. Nope. It was real. I asked her how a ridiculous study such as this gets multi million dollar funding and CCSVI is barely on the radar. I told her I was appalled and insulted and that the Doctor(s) heading the study should be ashamed. She replied that she would take me off the list of potential research subjects and that they wouldn't be bothering me again.

It is my firm belief that, in the interest of the almighty dollar,Canadian MS patients are being denied medical testing and research is being dismissed and discredited. The Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale, or EDSS, that Neurologists use to quantify disability of an MS patient ranges from zero to ten. It starts at zero being normal and ends in 10 being "death due to MS". Based on the EDSS it is a well known fact that death is the final outcome of multiple sclerosis yet, when there is finally a promising, non drug treatment on the horizon, every attempt is made by the greedy to stamp it out. This is nothing short of man slaughter and the people and organizations responsible for this heinous crime should be held accountable.