Doctor Dad Treats Son’s MS but Is it Good Science?
The medical community is questioning a San Diego doctor’s ‘”miracle’” treatment for multiple sclerosis.
Dr. David Hubbard prescribed a revolutionary treatment–venoplasty–to help alleviate the symptoms of MS that his 27-year-old son Devon was experiencing.
If an MRI scan of the patient’s brain reveals that a patient has decreased blood flow to the brain, Dr. Hubbard performs a surgical procedure to open up veins that carry blood out of the brain. He has now treated 60 patients using this technique and he claims 58 of them have seen symptoms decrease or disappear.
Although the work Dr. Hubbard is performing is part of a scientific study of the MS, the neuro-degenerative disease that attacks the central nervous system, he is collecting data not running a clinical trial.
Still patients are coming from all over the nation and Canada to pay $15,000 for this surgical treatment. Other doctors believe Dr. Hubbard is pedaling false hope not a cure.
Dr. Hubbard is not alone in thinking that MS is related to narrow brain veins.
Dr. Paulo Zamboni thinks the vein-narrowing allows blood to drain more slowly. He believes this causes iron to build up in the brain and cause MS.
Like Dr. Hubbard, for Dr. Zamboni, MS is a family affair. The BBC reports that he treated his wife using a vein widening procedure.
Unlike Dr. Hubbard, Dr. Zamboni ran MRIs on 500 MS patients in different postures to study blood flow. And he used 161 healthy patients as controls.
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