Our Responsibility to Research
I was just reading a blog post by Dr Eric Downer on the patient-researcher divide on 'Living Like You' and it brought to mind the need for patients to take part in research. Gandhi once said “the future depends on what we do in the present”. I know that he wasn’t talking about research and Multiple Sclerosis but it holds true just the same. If researchers do not do the research and we do not take part in that research then we are going nowhere fast; As Dr Downer said “We can read forever about the progression of the disease and symptoms in textbooks and journal papers, but we must talk more to people to understand individual experiences and hence become more informed.” Without the participation of patients such enquiries will grind to a halt. I think that if researchers have personal interactions with people affected by MS (or any other illness for that matter) it takes the illness out of the theoretical realms and lands it firmly in the personal realm.