Diane Edwards receives MS Society prize.

Diane Edwards receives MS Society prize

Diane D. Edwards, our former Life Sciences/Biomedicine writer who departed SCIENCE NEWS last summer to help her mother construct a tepee at the family ranch near Big Sandy, Mont., has won a first-place prize in the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's 1988 Public Education Awards Contest. The nonprofit group honored her in the medical/science print category for "Still Stalking MS," an article in the Oct. 10, 1987, SCIENCE NEWS.

Multiple sclerosis, a progressively debilitating central nervous system disorder caused by the deterioration of the protective sheath covering neurons, affects an estimated 250,000 people in the United States. Its cause remains unknown, although increasing evidence suggests a virus or some other environmental "trigger" activates an immune system malfunction in people genetically predisposed to the disease.

In her award-winning article, Edwards chronicled a series of recent studies aimed at understanding MS' cause and finding an effective treatment for the disease.

Judges awarded Edwards her prize based on the article's accuracy, clarity, writing quality and contribution to the public's understanding of multiple sclerosis, says MS Society spokeswoman Denise C.L. Lundborg.

Edwards currently serves as a lecturer in microbiology at Montana State University in Bozeman and as coordinator of AIDS education for the Area Health Education Center, a state-wide, federally funded program dealing with Montana's rural health-care needs.

A representative of the MS Society's Montana chapter presented Edwards her prize, a plaque and a $1,000 check in Bozeman on Dec. 5.