MS Breakthroughs

Attending the MS Breakthroughs Conference

Over the weekend, I attended the MS Breakthroughs event put on by the National MS Society. The keynote speaker was Jeffrey Dunn, director of the Stanford MS Center. The event promised to inform about the current-day MS Breakthroughs as well as the future of MS Research.

It began with a free breakfast. The guy next to me dug in. I'd already eaten. I heard the danishes were good.

Award Ceremony

Someone who raised $250,00, another raised $100,000 & wrote pieces of legislation.. a team of 4 people raised $1.1m. A cool guy who runs a lot of local support groups received an award.

Alameda

Volunteer of the year came from Alameda. I used to work in Alameda supervising down's syndrome adults at their jobs collecting carts for the supermarket. You can’t drive 26 in Alameda without the authorities checking you out! It's locked down tight in Alameda.

Grouping and Splitting

Dr. Dunn started off with some history of the MS Society, and its important role fostering collaboration, explaining the scientific paradigm of grouping and splitting.

Things start far apart and come together, collaborate, and become normalized, then specialization occurs. Repeat process forever.

Biology is complicated

Biology is complicated - the result of complex processes comprised of many interacting components. Why things happen is often unclear.

We need a map

In MS, the immune system attacks the brain. There are at least a few thousand pathways in the immune system - there’s no map. Dunn thinks we need one, because identifying the specific immune pathways driving disease can enable individually tailored treatment

Immune Hypertension

Dr. Dunn suggested that Multiple Sclerosis is an endstage name, like referring to a "stove fire" as a "burned down house". He said a better name might be immune hypertension.

Thanks for listening

To the Whats The Matter With Me? Podcast Other episodes at whatsthematterwithme.org, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.. Check out more of my music on soundcloud.comHoppin Hot Sauce is a movement! (Hoppin hot sauce theme) Season 3 episode 2 in the books! Thanks for listening to the What's The Matter With Me? Podcast.

Transcript

JOHN HOPPIN: Welcome to What's The Matter With Me, Season Three, Episode Two, Scene Report: MS Breakthroughs. My name is John. I'm 39 years old, husband and father of two, small business owner, radio DJ, podcaster. And I have multiple sclerosis, so I made this podcast to share what I'm going through.

What's The Matter With Me is an MS podcast, and it's also about other things. Past episodes available for download on Whatsthematterwithme.org, iTunes, and wherever you get it. I'm not a medical professional, and you should not take this for medical advice. If you need medical advice, ask your healthcare provider.

In this episode, we'll talk about the MS Breakthroughs conference. But first, last episode recap. Something happened at Bill's Café, and I stepped in a hole, and I was on the radio. Check it out, surf on over to Whatsthematterwithme.org to get the last episode. It's that time, shout outs to Rocky, always to Rocky. Shout outs.

Over the weekend my wife and I attended the MS Breakthroughs conference put on by the National MS Society. It was at a hotel in San Jose. Jeffrey Dunn, the Director of the Stanford MS Center, was the keynote speaker. The event promised to inform us all about the future of MS treatment. It started with free breakfast. I didn't get the memo or something, I didn't realize it was free breakfast. You know when you walk in a room and there's a bunch of free breakfast, and you've just eaten breakfast, and you're kind of like, "Dang …"

So I sat down at my table. My wife came with me. I sat next to Peter, a Canadian entrepreneur. His current venture involves coaching business people how to work across cultures. And he told me the danishes were good.