If EDTA Chelation Therapy is so Good, Why Is It Not More Widely
Accepted?
James P. Carter, MD, DrPH
Dr. Carter is 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 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.
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 that occur 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 the 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 manufactured 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 by
the clinical data published in this book.
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 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-blind, placebo controlled trials.
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 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 [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,
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, 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 is 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
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 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 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 boardã1 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 of EDTA chelation therapy for atherosclerosis,
while at the same time publishing many frivolous letters to the editor and
editorial comments criticizing chelation therapy. 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 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.]
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 FludilatÆ.
FludilatÆ 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 FludilatlÆ?
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
FludilatÆ 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.
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
FludilatÆ, a proven effective drug.
By way of comparison, in the study which resulted in U. S. FDA
approval of pentoxifylline (TrentalÆ), 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 TrentalÆ 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 the information in this book, 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. Preston TA: Marketing an operation: Coronary artery bypass
surgery. J Holistic Med 1985;7(1):8-15.
# Luchi
RJ, Scott SM, Deupree RH, et al: Comparison of medical and surgical treatment
for unstable angina pectoris. N Engl J Med 1987;316(16):977-984.
# 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.
# Glagov
S, Weisenberg E, Zarins CK, et al: Compensatory enlargement of human
atherosclerotic coronary arteries. N Engl J Med 1987;316(22):1371-1375.
# Paulin
S: Assessing the severity of coronary lesions with angiography. N Engl J Med
1987;316(22):1405-1407.
# Cashin
LW, Sanmarco ME, Nessim SA, Blankenhorn DH: Accelerated progression of
atherosclerosis in coronary vessels with minimal lesions that are bypassed. N
Engl J Med 1984;311(13):824-828.
#
Winslow CM, Kosecoff JB, Chassin M, et al: The appropriateness of performing
coronary artery bypass surgery. JAMA 1988;260:505-509.
# 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.
The following is a letter from Dr. Halstead, considered by many to be the father of modern chelation
An
Open Letter To Whom It May Concern
31
May 2000
I have been involved in the development of the EDTA suppositories since the
idea was first conceived seven years ago. The suppository delivery system
was developed because it meets a special need. The primary purpose was to
produce a drug delivery system that was painless and effective for children and
for adults that found it difficult to take chelation therapy because of time
constraints.
Research studies showed that the uptake of EDTA was effective by the colonic
route. The low molecular weight of EDTA of 292.1 facilitates efficient
absorption through the colon wall. Moreover, there is an additional
safety factor because it is in a special time release formulation. There
is clinical evidence available that the suppository is not only safe, but it is
effective. It is my professional opinion that approximately 90% or more
of the EDTA is absorbed through the colon. For additional information on
this subject it will be helpful to review my book, The Scientific Basis of
EDTA Chelation Therapy, by Halstead and Rozema 1977.
Keep
up the good work.
Best
Regards,
Bruce
W. Halstead, M.D.
Director