I n a striking departure from his political counterparts across the country, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall says his government will finance clinical trials of liberation therapy, a contentious experimental procedure for multiple sclerosis patients.
Of course, the heads of provinces don’t usually get involved in research at this level of detail. However, “Saskatchewan has the highest rate of MS in the country,” says the article.
In Part 5 of The Story of Science (BBC), Michael Mosley, the presenter, said that for hundreds of years medical students were shown a human liver and told it had three lobes. They were told that because that’s what Galen had said. However, human livers do not have three lobes. As the students could see. Mosely is a doctor. “When I was a medical student,” said Mosley, “there was tremendous pressure to conform.” MS researchers have said for a long time that MS is an autoimmune disease. Could this have been as misleading as Galen’s description of the liver?
Thanks to Anne Weiss.