Summary: Multiple Sclerosis is the most common disabling disease of young adults. Many people who have MS today take medications to prevent relapses, and hopefully delay the progression of the disease. The approval of those drugs followed decades of painstaking research into many possible avenues of treatment. The results were often disappointing until the discovery of Copaxone, a drug that has a unique and fascinating history, described in a new book called, "The Remarkable Story of Copaxone." The author, Dr. Kenneth Johnson, played a major role in leading the national clinical trials of Copaxone that eventually led to its approval. In this interview with Ellen Beth Levitt, Dr. Johnson describes how Israeli scientists, working under tumultuous circumstances, discovered that the drug Coplymer 1 had promise as a treatment for MS. Dr. Johnson is retired as Chairman of Neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
