> This is a long read about a well known drug (EDTA that actually cleans
> diseased arteries and reverses heart and artery disease.
> Why isn't it used widely by doctors? Because there would be loss in surgery
> profits in the billions by doctors and pharmaceutical Corporations...
> Why Is EDTA Chelation Not
> Widely Accepted?
>
> James P. Carter, MD, DrPH
>
> ABSTRACT: A summary of medical politics, turf struggles between medical
> specialties, and the medical economics of EDTA chelation therapy is presented
> to answer the question, "If EDTA chelation therapy is so good, why is it not
> more widely accepted?"
>
> Most people, including physicians, are not aware of the medical politics,
> legal machinations and economic sanctions that covertly control the practice
> of medicine in the United States. A physician who introduces an innovative and
> nontraditional type of therapy often becomes the target of those forces. That
> is especially true if a new therapy, like EDTA chelation: 1) involves a major
> shift in the scientific paradigm; 2) if acceptance of the new therapy somehow
> implies that currently used medical practices are inappropriate; or 3) if the
> new therapy threatens the financial well being of a politically powerful and
> well established branch of the medical profession. Quite the opposite occurred
> with the immediate and widespread acceptance of bypass surgery and balloon
> angioplasty, which quickly brought wealth and fame to surgeons, cardiologists,
> large teams of health care professionals, and the hospital industry.
>
> When a radical new therapy like chelation is first introduced, physicians who
> do not utilize that therapy feel threatened, both professionally and
> financially. Their professional integrity is threatened by obsolescence of
> their scientific knowledge and they lose patients who seek out the new
> therapy. They forget that if their established treatments were really
> successful, and without major disadvantages, patients would not look to
> another type of treatment.
>

Thanks CR, I never heard something like this before. To hear that some people in the medical community are actually preventing the wide acceptance of this drug cuz it will threaten their moneys or reduce the need for their established treatments, is something truly scary.

I don't know too much about this particular drug (EDTA) , and I also don't have any heart probs, but if that drug is intentionally not being offered to patients that might benefit from it for any of the above reasons, then I say to the gallows with the scoundrels that are part of this.

Why don't more people embrace thalidomide?
http://www.tv.cbc.ca/witness/thalidomide/extrahis.htm

"...was hailed as a safe and effective sleeping pill. "

And here over in Number Crunching I was hypothesizing a scenario very similar to this.

Fight AIDS @ Home

> I totally agree with you and the more I learn about this, the more pissed
> off I get at our government for letting it happen.
> I wonder if this kind of thing happens in Canada because they have
> free health care.

An official from Merck was interviewed on The Daily Show a couple weeks ago (the real interview portion, not one of the comedy skits). He said that in the first part of the 20th century, if you wanted to learn real science biochemistry, you learned it in Germany, and development occurred just as much in other countries as in the US. Nowadays, he said, you learn in the US, and (I can't recall the number exactly) the majority of all drugs are developed in the United States, and there are no overseas companies that come close in scale to companies like Merck and Pfizer in size. He claimed it was due to the lack of regulation here allowing them to recoup enormous cost of development.

> And here over in Number Crunching I was hypothesizing a scenario very similar
> to this.
>
> Fight AIDS
> @ Home
>

Hmm. That's an interesting topic in that thread about the possible behavior by certain drug companies Murasaki. I think that the EDTA issue shows blindness by the medical profession, as where the various issues discussed in that thread are more about price monopolies by certain drug companies. But I'd say that both of these cross paths in some way. You made some good points with this I think:

"I often worry about the seeming conflict of interest between profit motive and the altruism of an "ideal" medical system. It was a fictional book that got me thinking about it."

"The scenario was an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Plague. A drug company's research develops a somewhat effective but expensive antibiotic, and a more effective but obscure derivative of tetracycline. The company makes the decision to suppress the tetracycline cure because there's no way to put an enforceable patent on it and recover the costs of the research, so many die from a less effective regimen."

"This scenario seems frighteningly plausible, and is why I wonder if leaving medical biochemical advances almost exclusively in the hands of people with an ulterior motive is in the long term best interests of everyone. This and other scenarios illustrate that it may be in a drug company's best interests NOT to offer cures. I wonder if in a wierd way the "holistic hippies" are right: our system is biased towards long-term expensive solutions to problems that may have a simpler but less profitable fix."

Man, I think this is going to be a long night.

> I forgot to mention that the patent has run out on this drug and without
> the possibility of having control over it the pharmaceutical companies can't
> make money off of it.
> Well, I guess that's covered in the article but the fact that this drug can be
> had on the Internet isn't covered in the article.
> The liquid form of EDTA is supposed to be the most beneficial because
> more of it goes directly into the bloodstream and the blockages in the
> arteries are passed out as waste in the urine.
> Heart disease runs in my family and I'm the only one out of six including my
> parents that haven't gotten it yet, I'm also the youngest.
> I've read a lot about it and I'm going to give it a try.
>
> @Alex,
> If things like this really do happen then I have a new understanding of why
> it's taking so long to find cures for AIDS and cancer.
>

Hmm. Well, I may have some reason to be concerned about my health cuz I'm a smoker. I also eat a lot of food that is known to contribute to heart desease. I was wondering if EDTA may be used as a preventive drug as well.

Phooey. And here I was thinking there was a BOINC project that would be designing artificial hearts that last 1000 years...

---

> Why don't more people embrace thalidomide?
> http://www.tv.cbc.ca/witness/thalidomide/extrahis.htm
>
> "...was hailed as a safe and effective sleeping pill. "
>

So you're saying that EDTA might have the same results as thalidomide?

Good. Now how's about lungs, brain, kidneys, spleen, eyes...
"We have the technology"

---

> "I often worry about the seeming conflict of interest between profit motive
> and the altruism of an "ideal" medical system. It was a fictional book that
> got me thinking about it."

There is no money to be made in simplicity. Clinical trials with any sort of statistical significance cost a fortune to conduct, meaning that somebody has to ante the money. Who is willing to do this for a non-patentable substance? Alternative, traditional and naturopathic medicines offer huge and inexpensive potential for treating a variety of problems, but it is extremely hard to "scientifically" substantiate the effectiveness of remedies. Few are interested in doing the required studies as a non-profit exercise, and even within the realm of alternative medicine there are enough problems with standardization and quality control that the practical effectiveness of off-the-shelf products is a hit-and-miss affair.

One case in point relates to a drug effective for the cure of African Sleeping Sickness (Trypanosomiasis). The only existing cure at one point was an extremely painful and often fatal series of injections. Then along came eflornithine hydrochloride - extremely effective, and comparatively extremely safe. The problem? The drug was quite expensive to manufacture, and the prospective base of patients both relatively small (tens of thousands per year, rather than millions per year for blood pressure medication, Prozac etc.) and relatively poor (Africans rather than Europeans and North Americans). The drug was not produced commercially. Then lo and behold - it was found to be effective for hair removal from Western women's upper lips. Vaniqua was born, and the drug is now produced.

Ironic and tragic that a huge amount of pain, suffering and death was not enough to motivate the production of a known commercial remedy, but the hairy upper lips of rich and vain women immediately created a market.

---

Correction:
We can build it. We have the technology.
We have the capability to make the world's first BOINC man!
Guido will be that guinea pig. Better than he was before.
Butter . . . sugar . . . fatter.

---

> >
> > Hmm. Well, I may have some reason to be concerned about my health cuz I'm
> a
> > smoker. I also eat a lot of food that is known to contribute to heart
> desease.
> > I was wondering if EDTA may be used as a preventive drug as well.
> >
>
> From what I've read on different sites, that's what they are saying but
> it's not something you can take constantly because it removes all the free
> heavy metals from your blood like iron that your body needs.
>
> These might help:
>
> Just to clear things up, this is not a plug or advertisement from me.
> I don't have anything to do with these people, it's just that their website
> can explain this better than I can.
> cardiorenew
>
>
> This is a
> five year study of EDTA using intravenous infusion that was to start in
> 2003.
>

Thanks for the info CR. From what I've read, there doesn't seem to be that big of a risk if someone were to take EDTA in small dosage while increasing the amount of intake of certain minerals. But it looks like doctors prefer to use EDTA for treatment rather prevention.

Heh, yea, I did notice that there's another Alex here. Hmm.

I've had nicotine, caffeine, and protein, I've gotten an even further stipped-down Linux installed on my ppc603 box and running, and the ethernet card install on the IIcx was a breeze, so I'm in a pretty darn good mood !-D

'Sides, I'm sure Guido would've enjoyed it. I know he's very into distributed computing.

---

Oh I'm definitely hexed:0xDEADBEEF!

I finally got around to cleaning up this place and (surprise, surprise) it's actually made life a bit more bearable. I still have that demo due on Friday, so I have to get it going, but somehow being able to see the carpet helps. Go fig.

---

> Why don't more people embrace thalidomide?
> http://www.tv.cbc.ca/witness/thalidomide/extrahis.htm
>
> "...was hailed as a safe and effective sleeping pill. "

I could have been a Thalidomide child but thankfully was born just after the end of its general use and my mother never used it.

I suspect that people do not use Thalidomide because of its gross side effects.

However Thalidomide is being used now increasingly as the very same property that caused damage in unborn children is an effective drug against some cancers and leporasy.

Sadly we are also seeing new Thalidomide babies appearing in countries where there are poor medical support to regulate the drug. Africa again suffers medically :(

To add to the general arguement. A friend of mine is a medical rep. My house is full of incentive gifts usually given to doctors to induce them to prescribe certain drugs over others (I'm in UK).. I end up with tons of this stuff as many of the doctors just don't want yet another toaster, kettle, writing pad, etc....

In fact we often have bonfires to burn half of the notepads as he can't return them to work, can't give them away generally as they have a logo on, can't dump them as the quantity is industrial waste and the doctors don't want them.

It's a bizaar situation but that's capitalism I guess.

Interestingly my father told me a story about going to the family doctors in the 60s. The old doctor weighed my father, looked at a chart and said to my father he was far over weight.

My father looked at him and asked the doctor 'who produced the chart?'. The doc said something like the food and agricultural ministry... My father suggested to the doc that he needed to update his chart as that ministry no longer existed after the second world war and probably underplayed the lack of weight in the general population.

Another bizaar situation but in this case neccesity I guess.


cRunchy

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