MS in the News: Good or Bad?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/nyregion/12marijuana.html?sudsredirect=true
In response to a recent New York Times article, I wrote the following Letter To The Editor
Dear Editor:
As an MS specialist and the President-Elect of the Florida Society of Neurology, I read with great interest David Kocieniewski's January 11, 2009 article: 'New Jersey Vote Backs Marijuana for Severely Ill.' While my patients and I appreciated the special focus on Multiple Sclerosis (MS), we were concerned by the imprecise statement by one of the interviewees, Mr. Kwiatkowski, that “The M.S. Society has shown that this drug will help slow the progression of my disease. Why would I want to use anything else?” We would have appreciated it if Mr. Kocieniewski would have verified that the National MS Society has never shown this to be the case. There are, however, ongoing trials studying this question, but the results have not yet "shown" that marijuana slows MS progression,. In fact, after many well designed clinical trials, there is still no medication (allopathic or complementary), which has been shown to slow MS progression (as opposed to multiple medications that reduce relapses). In the future, we would appreciate it if your writers would verify medical statements with the physician community.
As an MS specialist and the President-Elect of the Florida Society of Neurology, I read with great interest David Kocieniewski's January 11, 2009 article: 'New Jersey Vote Backs Marijuana for Severely Ill.' While my patients and I appreciated the special focus on Multiple Sclerosis (MS), we were concerned by the imprecise statement by one of the interviewees, Mr. Kwiatkowski, that “The M.S. Society has shown that this drug will help slow the progression of my disease. Why would I want to use anything else?” We would have appreciated it if Mr. Kocieniewski would have verified that the National MS Society has never shown this to be the case. There are, however, ongoing trials studying this question, but the results have not yet "shown" that marijuana slows MS progression,. In fact, after many well designed clinical trials, there is still no medication (allopathic or complementary), which has been shown to slow MS progression (as opposed to multiple medications that reduce relapses). In the future, we would appreciate it if your writers would verify medical statements with the physician community.
Thank you
Medical Director
Neurologique
info@neurologique.org
www.neurologique.org
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The author of the article didn't even verify? Isn't that supposed to be step 1 before writing for the NY Times? Fail on their part.
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