Subject: Re: MS cause found or not?

From: [email-masked] (Eric G. Stern)
Date: 28 Jul 1997 22:49:34 GMT

In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.970727123245.6822A-100000@pluto> Paul Flavell <[email-masked]> writes:

>Yes and excerpts of the article were posted. Only 2 people responded - one
>to say thanks, the other to complain that this was still another crackpot
>theory that should be subjected to Koch's postulates or ignored. (By the
>way, even the very naming of the bacteria, Borrelia mylephora, is in
>dispute.)
>
>
>I don't believe that Koch's postulates would have worked in this case,
>particularly the third which is to reproduce the disease in another animal
>- who's going to volunteer for THAT? But the article you cite also
>describes that the postulated bacteria works differently from anything

I suggested that an *updated* version of Koch's postulates would be
applied.  I stated in my article that all the easy diseases where
Koch's postulates apply as they were originally formulated have been
found, and that now we're doing the hard ones.  Koch's postulates do
not apply to HIV infection but yet researchers have managed to work
really hard with some really hot epidemiology, good antibody assays,
molecular biology techniques, and the like to identify HIV as the
cause of AIDS.  It wasn't a single technique or observation that
clinched the identification either, it was the combination of all the
different investigations coming together.

I would (humbly) suggest that if this bacterium were to be
conclusively demonstrated as the cause of MS a good number of the
following would have to occur:

1) a good assay to identify exposure by the presence of antibodies
	would be developed.

2) If these bacteria can be made visible with some special technique,
	this should be elaborated and made common and reliable so that
	several labs can use it routinely.

3)  An understanding of what infection with this organism does, and a
	good solid molecular and/or physiological connection between
	infection and MS disease processes. 

4)  A good epidemiological study demonstrating that people with MS are
	or have been infected and that people without MS have not been
	infected or have somehow escaped the consequences of infection.

5)  Some notion of how this organism is transmitted.

In the case of both HIV and H. pylori, not all of these criteria were
met, but in each case at least three of them were satisfied.