A New Line Of Defense

Many people work in defense for a living. 

A prosecutor will set out his/her case, call their witnesses and present their evidence to try to convict the defendant. The defense attorney will object, present his/her own witnesses and try to discredit the prosecutor’s witnesses in defense of their client.

In football, the quarterback will throw the ball downfield to his receiver and hopes he will make a touchdown.  The offense will try to protect the quarterback from getting hit and open up an area so the receiver can have a clear field to run without getting tackled.  The defensive players will try to tackle the quarterback before he can throw the ball.  If they don’t, they will try to get to the receiver and defend their side of the field against him running and making a touchdown.

According to the web, the Department of Defense is the U.S. federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the United States armed forces.  To stay out of trouble, I will not comment on that! J

In a perfect case, when we have an infection, cold or some such illness, our bodies turn on this invasion and fight it.  With MS, this does not happen.  Our bodies turn on the parts of our system that fights disease and makes us that much more vulnerable to problems.  Our defense mechanism kicks out of gear.  With many of us, this onset of problems often leads to a bout with depression.  It is rather frightening to realize that your body is not helping but hurting our chance of fighting a disease.

There is real excitement concerning new cancer treatments.  According to the City of Hope website, immunotherapy uses the body’s own immune system to attack cancer tissue from within.  Using pioneering technology, they have been able to isolate immune cells from a patient’s blood sample and then engineer those cells to express an artificial receptor that will seek out and attack cancer cells.  Unlike chemotherapy, there are no harsh chemicals invading the body and no radiation to kill normally healthy cells in the process.

It would be wonderful if something like this could be developed for MS treatments.  As it is, most of the drugs used have serious side effects and often do nothing to halt the progress of the disease.

Maybe we need a new defensive coach to train our teams and get them back on track?!