Patient-Driven Politics

Multiple sclerosis sufferers have successfully lobbied provincial governments to fund research into the unproven treatment known as liberation therapy. A victory for patients, or a dangerous precedent?

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall “seems to have made the right move at the right time” by committing to fund clinical trials of liberation therapy, writes the Toronto Star’s Gillian Steward. She says that evidence of Wall’s foresight is that a slew of other provinces have followed suit by throwing money at research into the unproven MS treatment. But it’s unclear for whom Steward thinks Wall has made the right move: MS sufferers, or himself? She doesn’t say whether she thinks the treatment — which goes against most of what we know about MS — might work, but she does note that a recent study found that 75 per cent of Canadians want funding for liberation therapy and a “majority of respondents believed MS patients’ claims about the treatment rather than medical professionals.” To us in The Mark Newsroom, choosing popular opinion over medical advice when making healthcare decisions sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Wall’s MS policy won’t hurt him at the polls of course, and instead Canadians who watch their healthcare dollars be diverted into unproven medical theories will bear the brunt.

As Rob Breakenridge writes in the Calgary Herald, evidence shows “the hype and the science [around liberation therapy] may be on divergent paths.” Studies conducted in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany into the effectiveness of the treatment all came up empty, making it more likely that the millions being spent on it in Canada will be for naught. Breakenridge draws a useful comparison between liberation therapy and some promising but un-hyped research conducted recently at the University of Alberta, which suggests that shutting off a certain gene can alleviate MS symptoms. Funding for that research came through the MS Society and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, both of which oppose liberation therapy funding. “There is a process for determining the scientific validity of a medical hypothesis and for determining the safety and efficacy of a medical procedure,” Breakenridge writes. “Political interference and grandstanding have no place in the equation.”