Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a horrible disease. At its worse, it sentences sufferers to years of bedridden, total paralysis before death finally comes. In the 1970s, there was no real treatment. Today, although it cannot be said that the disease can be cured, it has, like polio in the 1960s, been tamed.
“The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries: The Education of a Doctor,” by Stephen Hauser, M.D., tells the story of his 40-plus-year struggle to treat MS. It shows how Dr. Hauser pushed the boundaries of knowledge in genetics and immunology to develop effective therapies to treat the disease.
The book is a memoir as much as a chronicle relating the discoveries of how to treat MS. Hauser opens the book with his autobiography. This allows readers to understand his motivations for going into medicine and into medical research, and why he decided to focus on MS. For Hauser, the search was personal.
The work also shows his development as a doctor and researcher. He relates the steps to becoming a researcher and takes readers into the laboratory to show how research is conducted. Networking and informal connections prove as important as his actual job.
In some ways, the book reads like a first-rate mystery. It follows Dr. Hauser as he peels away the layers guarding the secrets of how MS strikes and why it progresses as it does. The search proves a labyrinth. Dr. Hauser runs into false leads and blind alleys, but ultimately puzzles through each challenge in turn.
He also shows other kinds of challenges along the way. Finding funding for his research was difficult. At different times, the federal government refused to fund his research. Bureaucrats holding the money spigot believed there was no cure for MS and the research funds would be wasted. At another point, a pharmaceutical company hesitated before funding a promising new MS medicine because it would be less profitable than their existing one. (To their credit, they funded it.)
“The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries” reminds readers that despite frustrations, today’s medicine establishment can still produce dramatic breakthroughs to tame the worst diseases. It is also a cautionary tale that shows the dangers of politicized science, federal bureaucrats, and industrial cartelization.
