Wednesday, November 30, 2011

EDTA and the Entrenched Cardio Industry





I have included this item, not so much to discuss EDTA generally, but to share the first several pages of this article which describes the profoundly distorted medical procurement system in place and how it actually works to preserve a chronic and expensive protocol in the face of very reasonable alternatives.

Remember that no one has ever died from an over dose of grass, but we recently lost Amy Winehouse to binge alcohol poisoning.  EDTA therapy as it stands properly administered harms no one.  Yet in the face of gross disinformation, it improves the lives of the victims of circulatory disease.  It can be taken orally in spite of false claims(the intravenous crowd of course) that it is consumed before it becomes effective.

EDTA succeeds by slowly removing improperly accumulated mineral in the body.  Calcium in the arteries and gall and kidney stones are attacked and removed.  This triggers the resolution of the disease itself.  There is an ample history of improved health from this exotic therapy.  It should be taken with proper medical support in order to know when to quit and what supplements become necessary if any.

A scientist thrives on controversy while a doctor thrives on certainty.  After all, that is what and how they are taught.

It is apparent that EDTA should be applied earlier in life and repeated as often as necessary in conjunction with sound eating habits.  This would largely eliminate chronic circulatory disease or substantially slow its onset.  That works also.  None of this cures the syndrome which once again we blithely blame on our diets.  That is merely how the medical profession avoids admitting their utter ignorance.

EDTA has been steadily helping patients with damaged circulatory systems for decades in whatever protocol that has been used.  A good oral system is available at a sane pricing structure and I suspect that is finally the superior method.  However, I have had to wade through a wall of misinformation and name calling to get that far.  I expect to test the protocol myself shortly.

Returning to the problem the consumer faces with the present day medical industry, it is worse than buyer beware.  It is bad but lucrative protocols spending to suppress any superior system.  This is awful as the playing field is hugely tilted and few consumers are able to properly review the data should they even locate that data.  The doctors are just as trapped and everyone has problems dealing with authority peddling their scheme.

CONJECTURE:  Application of oral EDTA protocols will decimate the revenues of the circulatory disease industry.

This is in spite of the fact it will not cure the disease itself.

If EDTA Chelation Therapy is so Good, Why Is It Not More Widely Accepted?

James P. Carter, MD, DrPH

When he wrote this original article Dr. Carter was Professor and Head, Nutrition Section, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Reprinted from the Journal of Advancement in Medicine, Volume 2, Numbers 1/2, Spring/Summer 1989, pages 213-226.

ABSTRACT: A summary of the medical politics, turf struggles between medical specialties and factions in the health care professions, and the medical economics of EDTA chelation therapy is described in detail 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.


As with EDTA chelation therapy, major pressures are brought to bear on the "deviant" physician to coerce him back into the accepted mold. He is ostracized by his peers; he comes under professional attack for "lack of ethics;" his medical and mental competence are questioned; he is accused of "exploiting" his patients for personal gain; and epithets of "quack" and "charlatan" are hurled his way. Ad hominum attacks are common, in the absence of more cogent and scientific criticisms.


Well known historical examples of that phenomenon occurred with the introduction of the germ theory of disease. That simple concept took 50 years for complete acceptance by the medical profession.


Lister was viciously attacked when he proposed that wound infections were not inevitable after surgery if aseptic techniques were used. Semmelweis was likewise dealt with when he urged doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies to prevent maternal deaths from puerperal sepsis. Lister's recommendations were not accepted by mainstream medicine for many decades, and Semmelwels was persecuted to his death by medical colleagues, who were incensed by the notion that they themselves transmitted disease from patient to patient on their unwashed hands. Has human nature changed since that time?

The history of medicine is replete with examples of medical "heretics" who were eventually credited with major advances. They were often not recognized for their achievements until after death. Paracelsus, for example, is exalted as one of the great pioneers in medicine, but he was the original "quack" in his own time. Paracelsus introduced the use of mercury to treat syphilis. There was no other cure for syphilis at the time, although, as with many treatments today, the lethal dose of mercury was close to the therapeutic dose. Paracelsus was viciously attacked by his medical peers and derisively called a "quack" (short for "quacksalber," the old German word for mercury).


Inertia in science and medicine is a powerful force and is reinforced by major economic and legal forces in the United States. Many industries and special interest groups that are politically and economically powerful would be hurt financially if chelation therapy were to become more widely accepted. Those same industries have a major influence in our society at all levels. Grants for university and medical school research often stem from those same sources. They spend heavily to lobby for laws, regulations and government funded medical research to favor their own interests and to suppress competition. It is difficult to obtain NIH research funds in the face of opposition from powerful lobbies when that research goes against those special interests.


Those same special interests have a major influence on lay and professional exposure through the news media. Advertising revenues are essential to the survival of medical journals, newspapers, magazines, television and radio. Even with freedom of the press, the media cannot survive without advertising revenues. There often exists an understandable reluctance to bite the hand that feeds them. It is difficult to educate the public and the medical profession about new developments without media cooperation. Medical schools also cannot afford to offend their corporate sources of research funds.


The welfare of the American public is often pushed aside by the industrial quest for profits and pressures to suppress competition. Every industry wants a monopoly, if that can be achieved. Mainstream medicine has come very close to that goal.


Scientific arrogance is commonplace. Physicians consider themselves to be experts in their own field. If a majority of physicians do not endorse a new therapy, they collectively rely on public recognition of their own "expertise" to discount a new concept that they themselves have not yet embraced. They forget that all great advances in medicine began with a small minority. Their thinking tends to follow along these lines: "If I'm the expert and I don't use this new therapy and if my many colleagues and peers are experts and they don't believe in the new therapy, then we must be right and that small group of physicians who believe differently must be wrong. We're the experts."


The most frequent criticism leveled by critics of non-traditional and alternative medical therapies is that new treatments are "unproven" because randomized, double-blind, controlled studies have not yet been done to prove effectiveness. Those criticisms ignore the fact that most medical procedures routinely performed in the practice of medicine are also unproven using those same criteria.


The Office of Technology Assessment, a branch of the United States Congress, with the help of an advisory board of eminent university faculty, has published a report with the conclusion that, " . . . only 10 to 20 percent of all procedures currently used in medical practice have been shown to be efficacious by controlled trial." Therefore, 80% to 90% of medical procedures routinely performed are unproven.(1) That report further points out that research which purports to prove effectiveness of the remaining 10% to 20% of medical procedures is largely flawed, and " . . many of the other procedures may not be efficacious." The most frequent reason for not accepting the value of EDTA chelation therapy reflects a flagrant double standard.


A complete program of chelation therapy involves dietary changes, away from highly refined and processed foods. The use of nonprescription nutritional supplements is emphasized, more than expensive and highly profitable drugs, patented and marketed by the pharmaceutical industry. Chelation therapy is performed in doctors' offices, without the need for hospitals, surgeons, cardiologists and the large team of health professionals who profit greatly in dollars and reputation from the $6 billion per year bypass surgery and balloon angioplasty industry.


For obvious reasons, double-blind studies have never been done to prove or disprove clinical benefits from bypass surgery or balloon angioplasty. The effectiveness of EDTA chelation therapy has been clinically proven to the same extent as bypass surgery and angioplasty, or more so, as established in data from the clinical studies published in the TEXTBOOK OF EDTA CHELATION THERAPY.


Recent reports conclude that from 44% to 85% of coronary artery bypass surgery is routinely performed on patients who do not meet the criteria for benefit, even using standards derived from non-blinded studies.(2-9) The media consistently makes light of such flagrant abuses of surgery, while widely publicizing any hint of "quackery" associated with chelation. The American Medical Association, in its official journal (JAMA), admits that at least 44% of all coronary artery bypass surgery is done for inappropriate reasons.(9)


When a therapy is widely accepted by the medical profession, no scientific proof of effectiveness is required, and anecdotal evidence is accepted as valid. If an alternative therapy is contested by those physicians, however, they attack by demanding that the therapy in question be subjected to very expensive and time-consuming double-blinded, placebo controlled trials costing tens of millions of dollars to meet FDA requirements. Medicare regulations also exclude the need for scientific proof for treatments that are utilized by a majority of physicians. The federal government thereby adds support to this double standard.


In the case of EDTA, those demands ignore the fact that it would normally cost many millions of dollars for double-blind studies to prove effectiveness, and public funding for medical research cannot be obtained without political support. Without patent protection, pharmaceutical manufacturers will likewise not fund that research. The cost and time required for research of that scope is also beyond the resources of the clinicians in private practice who utilize chelation therapy. EDTA chelation therapy has therefore been an "orphan" without a source of financial support for research.


Despite those drawbacks, even in the face of a severe and unjust double standard imposed by opponents, research money has been successfully obtained from private foundations and from patients and physicians who believe in this treatment. Patients have been accepted into double-blind studies, beginning in mid-1988 [those studies were not completed for political reasons].


Deprived of reimbursement by medical insurance, patients have thus far paid for EDTA chelation therapy entirely from their own pockets. If Medicare refuses to pay for a therapy, most other insurance companies follow suit. It costs far more to fight those unjust policies in court than to pay for the treatment.


Historical examples of similar campaigns to control the practice of medicine, in favor of organized medicine and other special interests, against the public interest, are easy to find. As many innovative physicians have discovered, one of the quickest ways to become the target of opposing forces is to utilize nutritional or other nontoxic and noninvasive treatments for cancer.


On August 3, 1953, Charles W. Tobey Jr., son of the late Senator Charles Tobey, Chairman of the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, entered into the Congressional Record a report of an investigation by Benedict F. Fitzgerald Jr., Special Counsel to the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Fitzgerald's investigation was directed at an alleged conspiracy to suppress what, in the 1950s, would have been considered alternative methods of treating cancer. His findings could equally have been applied to other innovative and nontraditional methods of treating any disease.


Fitzgerald criticized those who supported the party line of the American Medical Association (AMA), and who applied themselves to efforts to hinder, suppress, and restrict the free use of new therapies. Those therapies included medicines that were supported by evidence of success from clinical records, case histories, pathological reports, and x-ray and other photographic proof, together with living testimony of former cancer victims. Fitzgerald concluded that a conspiracy existed, and that public and private funds had been "thrown round like confetti at a country fair" to shut down clinics, hospitals and research laboratories which did not conform to the AMA's viewpoint.


Investigation tactics used against emerging and nontraditional medical therapies show a consistent pattern of: 1) arrogance; 2) a sense of mission and of knowing what is best and right for other people; 3) depriving citizens of their constitutionally protected rights to freedom of choice; and, 4) acceptance of the concept that the end justifies the means. Opponents of nontraditional therapies have viewed as legitimate activities: disinformation, smear campaigns, harassment, instituting IRS tax audits, encouraging patients to sue physicians, entrapment, illegal wiretaps, and possibly even break-ins. These tactics have been used against physicians for nothing more serious than administering intravenous EDTA chelation therapy.


When evidence, real or fabricated, is uncovered which is unfavorable to the targeted physician, a representative of the opposition will contact the state board of medical examiners, asking for an official investigation and prosecution. Pressures are brought on the physician to cease and desist his aberrant practices or lose his license to practice medicine.


Investigations and proceedings of licensing boards are often confidential and not available, even to the physician under investigation. By definition, it is difficult for an outsider to learn all of the specifics of such covert tactics, although a good approximation of how these things work has gradually emerged over the years.


The power structure of organized medicine may be visualized as a pyramid, with the sides composed of different physician specialty associations, each with its own special interests to protect. The result may be collectively called "organized medicine." The apex of the pyramid represents the governing boards and officers of those groups, while the base represents the broad general membership. Local and state chapters centralize the power and influence from the base upward to the national level. This pyramidal structure in medical politics forms the basis for a conspiracy that operates in coalition with other groups to benefit the individuals who compose the core of the pyramid. Although the composite organizations draw authority to sanction their collective actions from individual members, those members are often unaware of the larger structure within which power brokers and medical politicians operate.


By representing almost every practicing physician and specialty group in the country, this coalition has enormous influence in the affairs of our nation. That is especially true when an alliance is formed between organized medicine, the pharmaceutical industry and food processing corporations. The food industry profits greatly from sales of margarine [trans fats], unsaturated fats, fake eggs, and other refined and fractionated foods with the endorsement of physicians.


The AMA and other segments of organized medicine are second only to the National Rifle Association in political campaign contributions to senators and congressmen at the national level. They give more than any other special interest groups in the country. Through political influence, bought and paid for, the policies of public institutions and federal and state agencies can be influenced by this group, including medical schools and universities, HHS [DHEW], PHS, FDA, FTC, NIH, state medical licensing boards, etc. When a physician is selected for censure by organized medicine, the FDA, FBI, IRS, postal inspectors, district attorneys, Antifraud Division of Medicare and other agencies with quasi-police powers are quick to join the fray. This has occurred to physicians who have had the courage to offer EDTA chelation therapy to their patients.


An average of approximately 60% of all state medical licensing boards' time is spent confronting, rehabilitating or defrocking physicians who are impaired or otherwise incompetent. Most of those are chemically dependent on alcohol and drugs. Increasingly, addicted physicians are being successfully rehabilitated, with the help of medical societies and recovered physicians. That function is truly in the best interests of both the medical profession and the consumer.


The remaining 40% of state medical licensing boards' time is, on the average, spent "witch-hunting," in the manner described above, in an effort to control the practice of medicine. The result is to force conformance with majority practices and to protect the medical profession against financial competition from "maverick" physicians who are bold enough to espouse innovative practices ahead of their peers. Restraint of trade and government support of a medical monopoly is the bottom line.


All too often, academic physicians on medical school faculties and research scientists allow themselves to be influenced by propaganda and disinformation, instead of obtaining the true facts and relying on their own analytical abilities and scientific methodology to determine the truth. The overwhelming majority of physicians in clinical practice appear to be totally unaware that a conspiracy exists and that covert activities are routinely taking place to protect their monopoly and to prevent competition.


The AMA Coordinating Conference on Health Information (CCHI) was formed in 1964, as an offshoot of the AMA's Committee on Quackery.(10) All responsible citizens, by definition, must be opposed to quackery. The main difference between the AMA Committee on Quackery and the newly formed CCHI was that the CCHI was a totally secret and covert organization which functioned in coalition in a network with other, similar groups. The CCHI operates in partnership with the National Council on Health Fraud with regional chapters in many states. The director of each regional chapter must swear to an oath of secrecy. National and regional chapters of the Council on Health Fraud stay in communication with individual members of each state's board of medical licensing examiners. The CCHI operates through this secretive network, without access from public scrutiny. There are no checks and balances.


Both the CCHI and the National Council on Health Fraud purport to be scientific and authoritative sources of information. A significant portion of their activities, however, have nothing to do with real quackery, but are rather a means to coerce practitioners of medicine to adhere to practices approved by medical politicians. The end result is to preserve certain monopolistic and economic advantages enjoyed by organized medicine.


An important reason that research into the use of EDTA in the treatment of atherosclerosis and its complications stopped after 1960, until the mid 1980s, was because of an active and vicious campaign of misinformation and unjust harassment of physicians who used EDTA in their practices. Scientific researchers who showed an interest were also discouraged and harassed.


Practicing physicians who used EDTA have been summoned to appear before state boards of medical examiners to answer complaints. Charges were often contrived and rarely documented by careful investigation. The Federation of State Boards of Medical Examiners is associated with the CCHI network. State boards of medical examiners are legally constituted bodies that have ultimate authority to revoke a physician's license to practice medicine. Medical licensing boards in at least six states have attempted to mandate a blanket prohibition against chelation therapy within their states. Fortunately, the courts have been quick to nullify most such arbitrary rulings.


EDTA was already on the market as a legitimate pharmaceutical agent to treat lead toxicity, digitalis toxicity and acute hypercalcemia. EDTA is legally available for physician use, and it is quite legal for any licensed physician to utilize a drug for any purpose which, in that physician's judgment, is best for his patient. The only restriction is that pharmaceutical companies [and compounding pharmacies] that manufacture EDTA cannot make advertising and marketing claims of effectiveness in the treatment of atherosclerosis, in the absence of FDA approval for that indication.


The patent on EDTA expired many years ago. It is now a generic drug. Any drug company can manufacture and sell EDTA. There is no longer any patent protection to allow recovery of research, development and licensing costs. It customarily costs a drug company tens of millions of dollars for research and paperwork to satisfy FDA requirements for the addition of a new therapeutic claim to the package insert of an established drug such as EDTA. No company will spend the money without the ability to recover those costs in the marketplace. This lack of FDA approval for atherosclerosis is commonly used against physicians by opponents of chelation, although it has always been a fully accepted and common practice for doctors to use medicines for diseases not yet approved for marketing claims by the FDA. This is another blatant example of double standard.


A communication from Dr. John Parks Trowbridge, a physician using chelation therapy in Texas, dated August 1986, illustrates very succinctly the difficulties physicians have encountered when they offer chelation therapy to their patients. The following illustrates how the system of repression often works:

"In the last 90 days, at least 3 chelating physicians have been hauled before the Texas licensing board—1 lost license, 2 threatened. We've been put 'on notice,' through one who was threatened, that they were going to 'get' each of us, one by one."

Such legal harassment can bankrupt a doctor in order to pay the legal fees to defend himself against ongoing attacks by legally constituted agencies. Due process is a constitutional right but can be very expensive. The state pays its attorneys and legal costs with public funds. An unjustly accused physician must defend himself at his own expense. That is the basis for a tactic used by state licensing boards to keep up the pressure until a targeted doctor can no longer afford to pay for his defense. At that point, more than one highly competent and ethical physician has submitted to injustice and agreed to stop using EDTA chelation therapy in his practice, accepting probation and censure, just to end the mounting legal expenses and other stresses of harassment.


The original motivation to discredit EDTA as a treatment for atherosclerosis may have stemmed from ignorance of its benefit and arrogance in the belief that EDTA was dangerous treatment and that it did not work. The motivation may have once been to weed out fraud and quackery. With the development of enormously profitable coronary artery bypass surgery and angioplasty, however, not to mention peripheral and carotid artery surgery, it is obvious that many influential groups in organized medicine and the hospital industry would suffer greatly if EDTA chelation therapy, administered in physicians' offices at approximately 10% of the cost, became widely accepted. That now seems to be the most significant reason for ongoing attempts to suppress the practice and clinical investigation of EDTA chelation therapy. What other explanation could there be in the face of the large body of clinical and scientific data in support of EDTA chelation therapy?


In recent years, mainstream medical journals have refused to publish the results of research supporting EDTA chelation therapy for atherosclerosis, while at the same time publishing many frivolous letters to the editor and editorial comments criticizing chelation therapy [as well as flawed studies deceptively alleging to disprove benefit]. This ongoing editorial bias and censorship have largely prevented ready access by interested clinicians and, researchers to favorable clinical data. Most literature searches begin and end with the Index Medicus or its electronic counterpart, the MEDLINE computer database. Recent studies of chelation therapy have been published in less widely circulated journals, many of which are not included in the Index Medicus.


Most physicians and medical students are not aware that only 10% of the world's total biomedical literature [in all languages] can be found in those databases.(11) If a physician becomes interested enough to do a computer search of EDTA chelation therapy for treatment of atherosclerosis, he will find a plethora of negative editorial comment and propaganda, but no negative data to support that criticism. Most clinical data to support the effectiveness of EDTA in treatment of atherosclerosis has appeared in journals that are not listed in easily accessible references. [The most pertinent of that data is summarized on this website and republished in A TEXTBOOK ON EDTA CHELATION THERAPY.]


The first randomized, double-blind, controlled study of EDTA chelation therapy for treatment of atherosclerosis was conducted by Professor Doctor Schettler, et al, in the clinics of the University Hospital in Heidelberg, West Germany, while Dr. Schettler was Chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine and President of the International Atherosclerosis Research Association. That study was funded by Thiemann Pharmaceutical Company, manufacturers of the platelet inhibitor, bencyclan, marketed as Fludilat®. Fludilat® is widely prescribed in Europe to treat atherosclerosis. EDTA chelation therapy was compared with bencyclan.


It is unknown why a pharmaceutical company would fund a study of a generic drug for which the patent had expired. It is possible that Thiemann believed AMA propaganda stating that EDTA was ineffective. Why else would Thiemann put EDTA up against their own Fludilatl®?


Thiemann did take precautions, however. When the grant was awarded, Thiemann reserved the right, in its written contract with Schettler, to edit any published reports of the study. Thiemann reserved the right to interpret the final data for publication and to do the statistical analysis themselves. All recorded data from the study were to be the property of Thiemann. It was agreed that all data would be given to Thiemann at the end of the study. Such a contract seems to eliminate the possibility of an unbiased report, and it eliminates free access to the original data by other investigators.


A total of approximately 48 patients were treated, 24 in the Fludilat® group and 24 in the EDTA group. Disodium EDTA was administered in a dose of 2.5 gms in 500 ml 1/2N Saline. Treatments were given five days each week for a total of four weeks. Each patient received 20 infusions. Only patients with peripheral vascular disease who could not walk 200 meters without pain of claudication were included in the study. Pain-free walking distance was measured before, during and after therapy on a treadmill, at 3.5 km/hr with a 10% uphill gradient.


The measured results showed a 250% increase in distance walked before onset of claudication pain in the EDTA-treated group after four weeks of therapy. By comparison, there was only a 60% increase in the bencyclan group. Bencyclan, however, is a drug proven to be of benefit in this disease and is widely prescribed in Europe for that indication.


There were four patients in the EDTA group who experienced more than a 1,000-meter increase in their pain-free walking distance at the end of only 30 days treatment. Highly favorable data from those four patients mysteriously disappeared when the final results were made public. Thiemann, of course, had a legal right under terms of their contract to edit the final results and to interpret the data in any way that suited them. Their final report contained data that reduced observed benefit from EDTA by 72%, from 250% increase to only 70%. The fact that data from the best EDTA responders were altered would not have been known if scientists from Heidelberg with intimate knowledge of the study had not been shocked by what they considered unethical and dishonest scientific conduct. Raw data from the study were personally delivered to an official of ACAM for an independent interpretation.


The fact that a highly placed representative of American organized medicine went to Heidelberg and met with Dr. Schettler while the study was in progress may or may not be significant.


The study was reported at the Seventh Atherosclerosis Congress in Melbourne, Australia, 1985. An attachment to the abstract of that presentation, available at the meeting, contained a graphic plot of pain-free walking distance extending out to three months after the end of therapy. By that time, even using the modified data made public, the increase in pain-free walking distance in the EDTA-treated patients had increased to 430% of the baseline, while bencyclan-treated patients averaged less than half that much with no significant improvement after therapy was stopped at 30 days. Nothing in the text of the abstract described that graphically depicted observation, despite its great clinical significance in proving the effectiveness of EDTA chelation therapy. The report analyzed data only to the end of 30 days, when the bencyclan and EDTA groups had responded equally. It is well known that full benefit from EDTA is often delayed for up to three months after therapy. (12,13)


When deleted data from the EDTA subjects with maximum relief of symptoms is considered, average walking distance increased by more than 400% three months following EDTA chelation therapy. 


The data reported in Australia show only a 70% average increase in pain-free walking distance in the EDTA-treated group (instead of the 250% increase at 30 days indicated by the raw data) and was compared with a 76% average increase in the group treated with bencyclan. Even that amount of improvement is significant. It is rare for placebo effect alone to exceed 33%.


The only patient death was in the bencyclan group. No serious side effects were observed from EDTA. The reportedly negative results of this study received widespread coverage in the news media, but the data were never published in a peer-reviewed journal. Furthermore, the press release stated that "EDTA was no better than a placebo," without mentioning that the "placebo" in this case was Thiemann Pharmaceutical's very own Fludilat®, a proven effective drug.


By way of comparison, in the study which resulted in U. S. FDA approval of pentoxifylline (Trental®), for the treatment of claudication, walking distance before pain of claudication increased by only an average 25% over baseline with treatment. Nonetheless, that small amount of improvement was considered statistically significant and Trental® was approved for marketing by the FDA. EDTA was more than twice as effective, even using the publicly announced results of the Heidelberg study.


The intensity of the attitudes and the arrogance that has lead to a conspiracy of this enormity will ultimately be responsible for its exposure and eventual downfall. It might be argued by some that such a strategy was justified as a means of eliminating widespread quackery. But who is to decide what is quackery, and who is to give a self appointed group of physicians with vested interests in competing therapies the right to assume that they alone know what constitutes quackery and what is in the public's best interest?


With 800,000 people per year dying in the United States alone from atherosclerosis and its complications, despite the best of high-technology hospital and surgical care that is available, it is imperative that the public be given the option to receive EDTA chelation therapy. It would be senseless and even criminal for medical insurance companies to continue to deny payment for a therapy which has the potential to greatly reduce long-term medical expenditures by reducing the need for far more expensive hospitalization, surgery or angioplasty. Savings to medical insurance companies with resulting reduction in insurance premiums could be great.


A physician signatory to the Constitution of the United States of America, Dr. Benjamin Rush, wrote:

"The Constitution of the Republic should make special provisions for medical freedom as well as religious freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic."

The chiropractic profession was the first to feel the sting of the CCHI. On August 28, 1987, Federal District Judge Susan Getzendanner ruled that the AMA led an effort to destroy the chiropractic profession by engaging in "systematic, long-term wrong-doing with the long-term intent to destroy a licensed profession." That was also the ruling in an anti-trust lawsuit filed in 1976.


The "conspiracy" described in this chapter cannot be dismissed and called paranoid or a figment of someone's imagination. Chiropractic physicians were not the only target. With ample funding from membership dues, enormous real estate holdings, and advertising revenues from their many publications, supplemented by contributions to the Council(s) on Health Fraud by the pharmaceutical industry, food processing companies, and others, the AMA and organized medicine has led efforts to discredit EDTA chelation therapy and nearly every other therapy that is less invasive, less toxic, nutritionally oriented or more natural, when such treatments have competed directly with mainstream physicians for patients and health care dollars.


It is hoped that this information, together with results of research now underway, will eventually cause the medical profession and victims of atherosclerosis to become more open-minded and receptive to the benefits of EDTA chelation therapy.

References:

Assessing the Efficacy and Safety of Medical Technologies. Washington, DC, Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment, Publication No. 052003-00593-0. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 20402, 1978.



Cass Principal Investigators and Their Associates: Coronary artery surgery study (CASS): A randomized trial of coronary artery bypass surgery. Circulation 1983; 68(5):951-960. 

Cass Principal Investigators and Their Associates: Myocardial infarction and mortality in the coronary artery surgery study (CASS) randomized trial. N Engl J Med 1984;310(12):750-758.





 
Lisa PJ: The Great Medical Monopoly Wars, International Institute of Natural Health Sciences, Inc., Huntington Beach, California, 1986.

Cranton EM: Limitations of the Index Medicus and Medline computer program. J Holistic Med 1982;4(2):103-104.

Diehm C, Wilhelm C, Poeschl J. Effects of EDTA-Chelation Therapy in Patients with Peripheral Vascular Fisease--A Double-Blind Study. An unpublished study performed by the Department of Internal Medicine, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany in 1985. Presented as a paper before the International Symposium of Atherosclerosis, Melbourne, Australia, October 14, 1985.

Diehm C. Zeit Deutsch Herzstiftung. Vol 10, July 1986

Drought in Mexico





Drought conditions persist throughout the South West and it appears to be part of a decadal cycle we understand poorly.  It is the one reason I would like to see emergence of my previously described Eden machine.  This is any device designed along minimalist lines that directly harvest water from the atmosphere and supply it directly to a drought resistant tree.


It sounds pretty simple, but many crop lands once were well timbered.  This should be restored in some manner or the other. My favorite protocol comes from Africa in which the acacia tree is active during the off season while providing shade and fertilizer.  Something like this surely exists in Mexico and the South West.


The secret to all this is that a tree receives and re-expels a lot of water permitting an active hydraulic cycle supplying the rest of the ecosystem.  The Amazon would be largely a desert except for the trees themselves (I am over stating the case to make the point that the trees reload the atmosphere).

All dry lands need intensive tree management in order to optimize moisture availability as a matter of course, but few recognize that or pay much attention to it.



A drought coming to Mexico

Mexico may get the worst drought in 70 years.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011


By Kent Paterson



Mexico’s National Weather Service (SMN) has predicted that a drought afflicting more than half the country will likely last at least three more years. And according to the SMN, the upcoming winter rainfall could range between 20 and 30 percent of normal, especially in the northern, western and central parts of the nation.

Considered by the National Water Commission to be Mexico’s worst drought in 70 years, the dry spell is causing serious problems in the agricultural and ranching economy as well as threatening the viability of rural communities.

The National Campesino Confederation (CNC) estimates the drought has already claimed the lives of 450,000 cattle and threatened 12 million more animals in northern Mexican states.

Reports suggest that water shortages will leave between 400-500,000 acres of corn unplanted during the fall-winter production cycle in Sinaloa, Mexico’s major corn-producing state and the source of about one-fourth of the national production of the crop used to make the emblematic tortilla.

“In the coming months the grain problem will be notable because reservoirs are at one-fourth of their capacity,” said Mexican Senator Francisco Labastida (PRI-Sinaloa).

Weather forecasters also tie the drought to expected hard freezes, which devastated the bulk of the Sinaloa corn crop last winter. Border walls notwithstanding, the US- Mexico borderlands share a common climate and environment, and the SMN’s predictions have special relevance to the US side as well.

Adrian Vazquez Galvez, general coordinator for the SMN, cautioned that the combination of scant precipitation and cold weather could trigger a host of economic, environmental and health effects. The winter weather, Vazquez warned, could result in more respiratory, flu and asthma problems, particularly in bigger cities, as well as create favorable conditions for a new round of forest blazes in 2012.

“We have to be ready for the issue of forest fires next year, since there will be combustible material in Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango and Zacatecas,” Vazquez said.

In Chihuahua, state government officials warn that as many as 250,000 people-mainly indigenous residents of the Sierra Tarahumara-could be in danger of hunger and starvation because of the failure of small corn plots tilled for self-consumption. On Saturday, November 19, the Chihuahua state government began distributing emergency food packets in the impacted communities, which officials expect will be repaid by community sweat equity in rebuilding roads, clearing fields and repairing schools.

State authorities estimate that about 30 percent of Chihuahua’s population, or roughly one million people, still depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Governor Cesar Duarte said that unless the drought-related crisis was solved, more people would migrate to cities in search of charity.

In Mexico, debate is simmering over the impacts, real or predicted, of the drought and other climate disasters on the country’s ability to feed itself for an affordable price. Some producers blame the drought for 50 percent price increases in the staple corn and bean crops since late last year. As Mexico heads into the 2012 election season, the issue will inevitably become a political one.

Simultaneously, the climate crisis is sowing the seeds for new showdowns over the introduction of genetically-modified crops that are supposed to be more drought-resistant and better yielding. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace and many advocates of sustainable agriculture oppose the transgenic crops on various environmental and health grounds, including the threat posed by genetic contamination of native crops like corn.

Felipe Torres, a researcher with the National Autonomous University’s Economic Research Institute, recently said that production of basic grains could plummet between 30-40 percent because of the pre-existing lack of productive investment aggravated by climate disasters.

In a similar vein, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicted earlier this month that Mexican production of basic grains could be 8.5 percent less in 2011 than last year’s total.

The Calderon administration is challenging doom-and-gloom forecasts. The Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Social Development and Fisheries (SAGARPA) claimed this month that Mexico will produce 20 million tons of white corn in 2011, a harvest far greater than the 11 million tons needed for internal consumption. SAGARPA and other federal agencies are promoting various measures to resist the drought and its impacts, including enhanced corn production in wetter states; more efficient irrigation techniques; improved field conditions; insured crops; and greater yielding seeds.

However, skeptics question whether government policies will get to the root of the problem. IvanRestrepo, a seasoned newspaper columnist and prominent environmentalist, was skeptical of government assurances that production will improve and prices hold.

“In summation, it is the modern miracle of multiplying loaves in times of drought,” Restrepo wrote of the Calderon administration’s public posture.

Kent Paterson edits Frontera Norte/Sur, a news service of New Mexico State University.


Bathtub Shaped Marine Sponge Rediscovered





It is always delightful when an extinct lifeform is rediscovered and it is not so extinct.   I am sure it will require effort to reestablish its original range but the first step is here in place.  Very good news indeed.

It is even a fascinating form and will surely grace an aquarium anywhere.

Perhaps it is time to produce synthetic foam forms to do the job that originally put it out of business.  It looks like a good idea.  My wife certainly thinks so.

Bathtub-sized marine sponge rediscovered after a century of extinction

mongabay.com
November 22, 2011





Neptune's cup used as a bathtub for a child before overharvesting almost pushed the species to extinction. 

Not found alive for over a century the evocatively named Neptune's cup sponge (Cliona patera) has been rediscovered off the shores of Singapore. Researchers with the environmental consulting DHI Group found the species during a routine dive. Although the specimen they found was small, the goblet-shaped sponge can reach nearly 5 feet (1.5 meters) high and the same in diameter.


"When we came across the sponge, we knew immediately that this was something very different," marine biologist Karenne Tun from DHI said in a press release. 


First described in 1822, full-grown Neptune cups were used as bathtubs for children. Overharvesting for the magnificent organism, however, led to its near extinction. The sponge was last sighted in 1908 in Indonesian waters and believed to be extinct since then. However, dead Neptune's cups were found in dredge samples from northern Australia in the 1990s, providing hope that the species was still around. 


"Basically, little is known about the Neptune’s Cup, as it was never found alive," adds Tun. "Now we have the opportunity to study the biology and ecology of this impressive sponge and learn about its life cycle. [...] We've already had the first surprise: The Neptune’s cup was thought to be a very slow growing species. However, between our last visits in April and August, respectively, it had grown several centimeters." 


Evolving over 150 million years ago, sponges anchor themselves to the marine floor, feeding on plankton and other small marine animals as water passes through their filtering bodies. 





DHI and the National University of Singapore biologist taking a closer look at one of the young Neptune’s Cup sponges. Photo courtesy of DHI Group.


Read more:

14,000 Windmill Losers





I do not know how valid the count is or whether we are dealing with smaller obsolete systems.  Yet a windmill should remain operating if only to generate whatever revenue they can produce.  Creditors and other stake holders want operating relief at the least.

Government subsidies certainly got them capitalized and chapter 11 can get them recapitalized if it is necessary.  This suggests that certain designs were never into positive cash flow and should never have been built.  This should have been obvious from the first shovel in the ground.

I assume this will get sorted out for those with some economic value.

Green' debacle: Tens of thousands of abandoned wind turbines now litter American landscape

Thursday, November 24, 2011 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Literal beacons of the "green" energy movement, giant wind turbines have been one of the renewable energy sources of choice for the US government, which has spent billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their construction and use across the country. But high maintenance costs, high rates of failure, and fluctuating weather conditions that affect energy production render wind turbines expensive and inefficient, which is why more than 14,000 of them have since been abandoned.


Before government subsidies for the giant metals were cut or eliminated in many areas, wind farms were an energy boom business. But in the post-tax subsidy era, the costs of maintaining and operating wind turbines far outweighs the minimal power they generate in many areas, which has left a patchwork of wind turbine graveyards in many of the most popular wind farming areas of the US.


"Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California 'big three' locations which include Altamont Pass, Tehachapin and San Gorgonio, considered among the world's best wind sites," writes Andrew Walden of the American Thinker. "In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills."


Walden speaks, of course, about the birds, bats, and other air creatures that routinely get tangled in and killed by wind turbine propellers. And as far as the "post-industrial junk" language, well, if it costs too much to run the machines in the first place, then it definitely costs too much to uproot and remove them post-construction.


This whole wind energy mess just further illustrates how the American people have been played by their elected officials who bought into the "global warming" hysteria that spawned the push for wind energy in the first place. And now that the renewable energy tax subsidies are gradually coming to an end in some places, the true financial and economic viability, or lack of wind energy, is on display for the world to see.


"It is all about the tax subsidies," writes Don Surber of the Charleston Daily Mail. "The blades churn until the money runs out. If an honest history is written about the turn of the 21st century, it will include a large, harsh chapter on how fears about global warming were overplayed for profit by corporations."


Sources for this article include:

Going green gets the green

November 23, 2011 by Don Surber


Minnesotans for Global Warming is a website that regularly skewers Al Gore, Michael Mann and the lesser gods of global warming. As the website’s motto notes, “It is stupid to politicize the weather!”

But politicizing the weather can be lucrative. The Celebrity Net Worth site estimates Al Gore’s personal fortune at $100 million. Not all of the money comes from global warming. Some of it was from his oil and mining interests. But it is safe to say that between the books and the documentary, he has made a few million from the theory.

It sure is easy being green — and it’s lucrative. With all the federal subsidies and tax breaks out there for going green, I wonder how sensible it is for a company to fight the global warming theory?

GE, BP and now Exxon have seen the light and are going green to get the green. Indeed. Going green is a good way to reward those who raise money for one’s presidential campaign. Billionaire George Kaiser raised money for President Obama’s 2008 campaign. Kaiser and his family’s tax-exempt foundation had a 35 percent stake in Solyndra, which received federal aid from the Obama administration and a presidential visit in 2010 to tout its success.

“Kaiser’s role has been among the subjects of a congressional inquiry into Solyndra since the California company that received a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee filed for bankruptcy in September,” Bloomberg News reported. Solyndra made solar panels in a market flooded with them. Wind turbines also are a drag on the market. Minnesotans For Global Warming reported last week on what happens to some wind turbines when the subsidies run out. They die.

“The U.S. experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying. In most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion.

“Nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms,” Minnesotans For Global Warming reported.
The figure — 14,000 dead wind turbines — comes from Andrew Walden of the American Thinker in his report on the demise of a wind farm at Kamaoa, Hawaii. It was abandoned in 2006 after 21 years of haphazard operation. Besides killing migratory birds and bats — leading some smart alecks to call them Cuisinarts — wind turbines are expensive to operate.

“The ghosts of Kamaoa are not alone in warning us,” Walden wrote. “Five other abandoned wind sites dot the Hawaiian Isles — but it is in California where the impact of past mandates and subsidies is felt most strongly. Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy’s California big three locations – Altamont Pass, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio — considered among the world’s best wind sites.”

Wind isn’t the most important thing about wind turbines. It is all about the tax subsidies. The blades churn until the money runs out. If an honest history is written about the turn of the 21st century, it will include a large, harsh chapter on how fears about global warming were overplayed for profit by corporations.
Solyndra is just the iceberg’s tip.

14000 Abandoned Wind Turbines In The USA

Posted by Tory Aardvark



There are many hidden truths about the world of wind turbines from the pollution and environmental damage caused in China by manufacturing bird choppers, the blight on people’s lives of noise and the flicker factor and the countless numbers of birds that are killed each year by these blots on the landscape.

The symbol of Green renewable energy, our saviour from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the  taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or  the wind speed is too high.

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms.

The US has had wind farms since 1981:

“Some say that Ka Le is haunted—and it is. But it’s haunted not by Hawaii’s legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are “Na leo o Kamaoa”– the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm…

The ghosts of Kamaoa are not alone in warning us. Five other abandoned wind sites dot the Hawaiian Isles—but it is in California where the impact of past mandates and subsidies is felt most strongly. Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy’s California “big three” locations—Altamont Pass, Tehachapin (above), and San Gorgonio—considered among the world’s best wind sites…

California’s wind farms— comprising about 80% of the world’s wind generation capacity—ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa. In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills…”

The problem with wind farms when they are abandoned is getting the turbines removed, as usual there are non Green environmentalists to be seen:

The City of Palm Springs was forced to enact an ordinance requiring their removal from San Gorgonio. But California’s Kern County, encompassing the Tehachapi area, has no such law

Imagine the outraged Green chorus if those turbines were abandoned oil drilling rigs.
It took nearly a decade from the time the first flimsy wind turbines were installed before the performance of California wind projects could dispel the widespread belief among the public and investors that wind energy was just a tax scam.

Ben Lieberman, a senior policy analyst focusing on energy and environmental issues for the Heritage Foundation, is not surprised. He asks:

“If wind power made sense, why would it need a government subsidy in the first place? It’s a bubble which bursts as soon as the government subsidies end.”

“It’s a bubble which bursts as soon as the government subsidies end” therein lies a lesson that is going be learnt by those that sought to make fortunes out of tax payer subsidies, the whole renewables industry of solar, wind and biomass is just an artificial bubble incapable of surviving without subsides from governments and tax payers which many businesses and NGO’s like WWF, FoE and Greenpeace now think is their god given right, as the money is going on Green Climate Religion approved clean energy.

The Green evangelists who push so hard for these wind farms, as usual have not thought the whole idea through, no surprises for a left agenda like Climate Change, which like all things Green and socialist is just a knee jerk reaction:

Altamont’s turbines have since 2008 been tethered four months of every year in an effort to protect migrating birds after environmentalists filed suit. According to the Golden Gate Audubon Society, 75 to 110 Golden Eagles, 380 Burrowing Owls, 300 Red-tailed Hawks, and 333 American Kestrels (falcons) are killed by Altamont turbines annually. A July, 2008 study by the Alameda County Community Development Agency points to 10,000 annual bird deaths from Altamont Pass wind turbines. Audubon calls Altamont, “probably the worst site ever chosen for a wind energy project.”

The same areas that are good for siting wind farms are also good for birds of prey and migrating birds to pass through, shame for the birds that none of the Green mental midgets who care so much about everything in nature, thought that one through when pushing their anti fossil fuel agenda.

After the debacle of the First California Wind Rush, the European Union had moved ahead of the US on efforts to subsidize “renewable” energy–including a “Feed in Tariff” even more lucrative than the ISO4 contracts.

The tax payers who paid for the subsidies to build the wind farms, then paid over the odds for an unreliable source of power generation will, ultimately be left to pick up the bill for clearing up the Green eco mess in the post man made Global Warming world.

Updated November 24th

In answer to several allegations that the number of abandoned wind turbines was made up,  the following quote from the article and link will confirm this figure to be true:

California’s wind farms — then comprising about 80% of the world’s wind generation capacity — ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa. In the best wind spots on earth,over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.