good question, better answers -

Interesting article. Thanks for sharing!

"I have to be perfectly honest here... I think the article is a bit of a joke. "


care to expand on that opinion cm ???

I too am interested in why you dislike this article?
Care to share?

Well for starters he of all people pulls out the old line right form the start - "one of them is to remind them that we don’t really cure any chronic human diseases, except for infections" Then goes on to say the reason is that IBD is to just to darn complicated.

I'd like to remind him that at one time Ulcers were considered a 'chronic disease'. Now we know this is not the case. The majority are bacterial infections. Let's see here... Some cancers where always thought of as 'chronic diseases' but wait a minute... Viruses cause some cancers. They are due to viral infections and are not complicated chronic diseases after all. And the list goes on in this regard.

'To complicated' is doctor slang for 'I have no clue really'. It's just complicated until it's solved. Then we usually find out the answer is pretty simple and straightforward. Like Ulcers or Liver Cancers.

The medical profession started with IBD as an infection some 100 years ago, moved to psychiatric, then to autoimmune, then to complicated chronic genetic disease, and now some are trying to suggest that, as he says, is possibly 50-150 different overlapping diseases... I mean come on now. Some of these folks are getting kind of ridiculous.

And further, I really don't need to remind him of what I said about Ulcers and Cancer because this is the very same guy that said this about his 'Medical Mentor' who he studied under when first practicing just a few short months ago:

"And I often asked him (he is referring to his mentor here), well what is the cause of IBD. After all these years of studying it, Dr. Kirsner, what do you think? And Dr. Kirsner said, I’m pretty sure we’re going to figure out it’s an infection. And I have subscribed to that."

So yeah... I think the article is crap and a bit of a joke. It's just a doctor that can't answer the question and is afraid to say what is really on his mind.

It perpetuates a lot that is wrong with IBD research, funding and thinking where they get lost in these overly complicated hypothesis that don't lead anywhere except to a bunch more people loosing their colon's, intestines, and sometimes lives.

Just my two cents though.

Canada Mark said...

'To complicated' is doctor slang for 'I have no clue really'. It's just complicated until it's solved. Then we usually find out the answer is pretty simple and straightforward. Like Ulcers or Liver Cancers.

.

what about saying something is complicated means they have no clue? maybe its beyond the scope (no pun intended) of the article
Trashing a doctor who is at the forefront of research and IBD advocacy is not fair.

all what he said was good science and he is clearly an expert in IBD as he is highly successful in getting complicated patients into remission.

I dont mean to bash any of the research that you do, and it is very interesting, but has it been used in practical clinical settings?

dr rubin has made contributions and his research does have practical clinical benefits that have made improvements in numerous patients

Hepatitis has three types they are not the same except that they all have to do with the liver
A,b, and c are all are caused by different virus infections.

Dikid said...
all what he said was good science and he is clearly an expert in IBD as he is highly successful in getting complicated patients into remission.

More info on this please. I'd love to know how Dr Rubin gets complicated patients into remission with the same limited number of drugs as any other doctor at his disposal. Whatever he does, maybe I can go and tell my GI about it and he can do the same thing for me.

Canada Mark said...
Before they all go jumping on a new bandwagon, in this case the idea that IBD is actually 50-150 different diseases in place of the whole auto-immune thing, why not start back exactly as his mentor suggests - rule out infection as close to 100% as possible and then more forward from there. Every time they jump on a new bandwagon many more years are lost, more people lose their colons, more young children suffer the disease which permanently alters their life. It's about time they took history into account into their thinking.

Really interesting. I don't know if I agree with you or not. All I know is, we don't even seem to be close to approaching the possibility of a cure, let alone an actual cure. And in the meantime more and more people get this disease and the surgery rates don't even go down, for UC or Crohn's.

I have no suggestions, but I think I am inclined to agree with you that IBD research doesn't seem to be on the right path.

@hateuc - I was just talking with my step father yesterday. I didn't know his business partner has Parkinson's. The reason it came up in conversation was that he asked me if I had ever tried medical marijuana. He went on to tell me that his partner chose this and apparently his symptoms decreased dramatically from it to the point where it does not interfere with his work etc.

No clue as to the validity of it - other than I trust my step father. My step father also said he was not aware of him taking any other medications along with it.

In any case, my guess is you have looked into it or read about it. But just in case I thought I should at least mention it. Who knows...

Perhaps it's like using it for IBD where the results vary depending on the person.

Thank you Canada Mark for telling me! We have discussed that with him but I am not sure that he is on board with it. I will show him your response. It really is a terrible disease. I really wish they would just cure something. I sometimes think the people on these boards are going to be the ones to cure things first. Thank you and Happy New Year!!
B