MS

A dialogue in film between a writer and a scientist about the disease dominating their lives.

Multiple sclerosis is a well-known disease with a dramatic course. A silent killer which progressively restricts its victims in their movements, not taking their lives but forcing them to surrender their freedom bit by bit. If you have this disease, you don’t know why you got it or how you can fight it.

Jeroen Geurts, a professor of Translational Neuroscience at the Amsterdam UMC, is at the forefront of MS research. He is highly ambitious and he is in a hurry. In the year he turns 40, he takes stock of what his research has yielded so far.

Lineke van den Boezem, a scriptwriter, was diagnosed with MS around her 4oth birthday and is trying to live with the disease. Because she feels her doctors have little to offer her, she goes in search of possible therapies that might halt the disease’s progress. She too is in a hurry, as any ground lost can’t be recovered and the disease will continue to reduce her world.

MS is a film about two people whose lives are ruled by the disease MS. The film revolves around two perspectives: What does science have to offer the individual? And what can a scientist learn from an individual patient?

It is an almost philosophical dialogue between a scientist and someone with first-hand experience. A search to discover how to deal with what you don’t (yet) know; a search helped by metaphors to provide an image of that which is still not understood. The hope of a solution being close is vital to both of them.