Healthcare ProfessionalsPublicationsContactNews Español
Normal text size Large text size Largest text size
Magazine
Radio
Shop Privacy Terms of Use Site Map

View by


Educational

The Puzzle of Multiple Sclerosis from 1868 to 2013

Ted Nolan Thompson
This book traces multiple sclerosis (MS) first described by London physician Robert Hooper in 1828 to confirmation as a separate disease entity by Jean Martin Charcot, Paris France in 1868. The author observed a first case totally disabled by MS while on the clinical diagnosis service of Clayton Mote of UCSF as a second year medical student. By the late nineteen sixties the author became fascinated with the research of Earl W. Sutherland (Nobel Prize medicine 1971) began using ACTH to treat first and second attacks also became fascinated became friends with Linus Pauling in 1971 (Nobel Prize 1954 chemistry, Peace Prize 1962) in short surrounded himself with those competing for Nobel prizes and winning them! Exploring for clues to understand the cause of MS at the Salk Institute becoming friends with Jonas Salk in 1977 both fascinated by the total recovery of the author's otherwise fatal Devic's disease treated with ACTH case presented at the World Congress of Neurology the Netherlands in 1977. Follow up in 2006 no further attacks! The author continued to attend lectures at the Salk Institute befriending those competing for and winning Nobel Prizes and on August 28th, 2012 at the Margaret Vogt Memorial lecture hosted by cancer genetics whiz Inder Verma and head of Salk cancer Tony Hunter about P53 Karen Vousden head of Beaston Cancer Research Glasgow Scotland provided the author with an essential "light bulb experience," then and there I realized to prevent MS one needs to phosphorylate the amino acid Serine; that was how ACTH via the "second messenger system" worked! As for the cause of MS the virus is "influenza in a form" Jonas Salk knew that as early as 1977 but research "powers that be" would not accept such a notion. The answer for causation of course is corroborated by another Nobel prize competitor who studied influenza decades ago Macfarlane Burnet who won his Nobel Prize in 1960! Briefly in conclusion 56 years after seeing that first case "MS is caused by influenza can be stopped by "avoiding prednisone," allowing ACTH to phosphorylate the amino acid Serine."