Сергей Пузанов – Multiple Sclerosis. Everything you need to know (страница 1)
Сергей Пузанов
Multiple Sclerosis. Everything you need to know
Preface
Why Is This Book Free?
Because I want this book to reach as many patients as possible. Open statement: this work belongs to the public, and I am not protecting its copyright. As the author, my rights are inherent, and I am explicitly giving you full permission to download, upload, share, forward, or even sell it. Do whatever you want. Sharing this with a fellow MS patient is a good deed. Printing it, translating it, or publishing it is a massive good deed. The only thing I ask is that you keep my name on the cover.
Originally, the book was supposed to be published by Alpina-PRO publishing house. I had negotiated with the editor-in-chief, signed a licensing agreement, and was even assigned a managing editor who had a medical background. I even had a co-author—a neurologist well-known in the Russian MS community. It started out simple: I wanted to compile basic information about multiple sclerosis—explaining its courses, remissions, relapses, DMTs, lesions, disability scales, HSCT, mesenchymal cells, and so on. Essentially, a beginner’s handbook.
I buried myself in research, eating and breathing multiple sclerosis all day long. At some point, I realized I had misread a great deal of it. A little later, I realized I had misunderstood almost everything. Shortly after that, I noticed that other patients were getting it wrong too. Then came the realization that my co-author didn't understand it either. Ultimately, I saw that everyone in the field was completely turned around.
Naturally, I assumed I was the problem. Lost in my own confusion, I emailed a professor of hematology who specializes in MS and asked him to proofread a few chapters. To my surprise, he wrote back telling me I was completely right, praised my work, and offered his full support. He even volunteered to write a review.
The sensation was bizarre—it felt as though everyone around me was insisting the Earth was flat. I was shouting that it was round, backing it up with logic and evidence, yet everyone smiled and assured me it was flat. I called a dozen specialized MS clinics, and they all confirmed the flat-Earth theory. To make matters worse, I was heavily abusing substances at the time—I won't list them, as the Russian law forbids it. In short, I had a full-blown psychotic break. I became deeply paranoid, genuinely believing people were out to kill me, just like in a movie. I spent four months in a rehab facility, got clean, and cleared my head.
Once out, I finished the book—but the deadlines in the publishing contract had long expired. The editor-in-chief informed me that the house was facing hard times, and funds for "non-target projects" were frozen, pushing everything to the next year. Honestly, it was a blessing in disguise. The original draft was raw—not bad, but incomplete.
Later on, I decided to polish the text and publish it entirely for free. Here is my request to you: if you find this book valuable, please forward the file or the link to other MS patients and ask them to pass it on. After my first book, many readers tracked me down on social media. To keep things simple, you can reach me directly at puzanovsi@gmail.com. I’d be happy to hear from you and answer any questions.
Disclaimer
Once the manuscript was ready, I fed it into Google AI to check for factual errors, verified numbers, and logical consistency. I must admit, it's an incredible timesaver. The AI gave it a thumbs-up, rating its scientific accuracy at 90–95 points. However, it also insisted that I include a formal medical disclaimer.
First and foremost: I am not a doctor. Frankly, I don't know if that's a blessing or a curse—had I gone to medical school to become a neurologist, I would probably be just as misinformed as the rest. I would have studied the same flawed textbooks and repeated the same dogmas as my colleagues. I would have run with the herd and called it "truth" simply because everyone around me agreed. Still, legal obligations dictate that I warn you: I am a patient, not a physician.
Secondly: I strongly encourage you to cross-check everything written here. In fact, if you spot an error, please reach out and let me know. Despite exhaustive fact-checking, mistakes are inevitable, and I may have misread or overlooked certain nuances. If you decide to verify this information with a professional, I highly recommend consulting an immunologist or a hematologist rather than a neurologist. You will likely be stunned by how radically hematologists and neurologists diverge on the actual nature of multiple sclerosis.
The rest is standard legal boilerplate. There are no direct medical prescriptions in this book, so it’s highly unlikely to cause any harm. All data regarding pharmaceutical companies, drug efficacy, and side effects is drawn directly from public, open-source records—there are no industry secrets hidden here. As you well know, MS is deeply unpredictable and varies from person to person, but I am legally required to remind you of that fact. Most importantly, please consider my conclusions as personal evaluative judgments; they are not intended to defame or damage the corporate reputation of any brand. I have no desire to offend anyone—I simply want patients to know the truth.
I would like to apologize for my English—please forgive me, as it is not my native language. If anyone feels like rewriting or smoothing this text out while reading, please don't hesitate to do so. You are more than welcome to republish the book and add your name to the cover. You can even print it—who knows, maybe you'll make millions or billions from it! My Russian is perfectly fine, honestly, but my English, unfortunately, is a bit rough around the edges.
The AI also mandated that I insert the following text verbatim:
Introduction
A Little Bit About Me
How did we reach a point where both patients and doctors are completely blind to the reality of multiple sclerosis? Why does a disease that some hematologists learned to completely stop thirty years ago remain "incurable" in the minds of mainstream neurologists? Why does the flawed model of relapses and remissions refuse to die? Why is everyone ignoring the artificial spike in patient numbers, particularly in the United States? Why do people who have felt perfectly fine for years continue to inject toxic chemicals that make them actively miserable? And finally, why is a book meant to untangle this entire mess being written by a patient instead of a doctor?
Personally, I think it’s fate. Consider this: for six years, I rented an apartment belonging to another man named Sergey who also had multiple sclerosis. The odds of such a coincidence are one in several billion. His story ended tragically—he stopped recognizing his loved ones, was confined to a wheelchair, and laughed uncontrollably without stopping. My landlord, my namesake, and my brother-in-arms died while being spoon-fed. He choked on his food, suffocated, and passed away. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the terminal stage of multiple sclerosis progression looks like for some patients.
So, multiple sclerosis! The disease is choked by a staggering mountain of myths and misconceptions—it is hard to find another condition on Earth where reality has been so thoroughly distorted. Errors plague every single stage of the disease, from the initial diagnosis and the evaluation of drug trials to how society views patients. In Russia, for example, every other person thinks sclerosis is just a fancy word for being forgetful, simply because of a terrible translation of the medical term.
Worse still, a significant number of people diagnosed with "multiple sclerosis" don’t actually have it. The crisis is most acute in the United States, where the bulk of clinical trials for "disease-modifying" therapies are bankrolled. By 2025, estimates of the US patient population hit one million—making the disease magically several times more common there than anywhere else on earth. Can you imagine the chaotic distortion this overdiagnosis inflicts on drug efficacy data? If a massive chunk of a clinical trial consists of perfectly healthy people, you can "contain" the disease with absolutely anything—from burdock leaves to homeopathy. And that's not a joke; there are corners of the Russian internet where people passionately defend burdock roots as a legitimate cure for MS.