The Yukon government will wait for research results before joining with one, or a combination of several provinces, funding studies of a controversial medical procedure to treat multiple sclerosis (MS).

"Basically, health ministers agreed to defer to experts in the field and get that research done,” the territory's Health minister, Glenn Hart, told the Star Wednesday from Newfoundland, where he was attending a meeting of Canada's health ministers.

"And if Alberta or Saskatchewan decide to move ahead (with clinical trials), we would look at contacting them to see if we can piggy-back on that.”

Two weeks ago, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) said there is no evidence to back up Dr. Paolo Zamboni's claim that MS can be treated as a vascular disease and that performing angioplasty on veins in the neck can alleviate symptoms.

The CIHR has recommended that Canada wait for results from seven studies underway here and in the United States before funding clinical studies.

But a string of success stories, including Whitehorse's Tim Cant, appears to have spurred Saskatchewan, Alberta and now Newfoundland to fund studies that will track progress of patients who have undergone the surgery.

Dubbed the "liberation procedure”, it was pioneered three years ago by Zamboni, a professor of medicine at the University of Ferrrara in Italy, whose wife's health was rapidly deteriorating from MS.

Zamboni's research led him to hypothesize that debilitating symptoms of the disease, such as loss of motor skills, numbness and extreme fatigue, are due to an excess of iron in the brain caused by impeded blood circulation.

So Zamboni conducted a series of ultrasounds on blood vessels to and from the brains of MS patients and discovered more than nine in 10, including his wife, suffered from varying degrees of blocked veins.

Following simple operations to unblock these veins in five dozen patients with relapsing MS, active brain lesions amongst the group dropped significantly, and more than 70 per cent suffered no further symptoms whatsoever.

And it is Zamboni's hypothesis and his clinical data to back it up that convinced Cant, who first learned of the Italian doctor's breakthroughs while watching the investigative journalism program W5 last November.

But to date, the federal government is unwilling to fund clinical trials in Canada and those who opt for the procedure must go outside of the country and at their own expense.

Four months after Cant travelled to Bangalore, India, to have the liberation surgery, the 51-year-old says he's never felt better, and questions the territorial government's cautious approach.

"I was really hoping that either the minister or (Premier) Dennis Fentie would ... make a statement that they would

be supporting a clinical trial as well,” Cant told the Star yesterday. "I know a lot of people who have MS, and they would love to be part of the study.”

Cant said he's willing to be a part of any research project, and believes his outcome would bolster confidence in Zamboni's procedure.

"I just came from physio (Wednesday) morning and the therapist said, ‘Every time you come here, it's getting better,'” said Cant.

"I won't be long before I'll be walking as normal as everybody else.

"Instead of every day getting worse, it's everyday and I'm getting better.”