Honest Medicine is proud to announce that The Faces of Low Dose Naltrexone, a free 116-page EBOOK, is now available for download. The Faces of LDN is a special resource book, created in honor of International LDN Awareness Week (ILDNAW) (October 19-25), to give the media and the public a more comprehensive, in-depth picture of the LDN Story than we could possibly give in our ILDNAW Press Release.

Approved in the 1980s by the FDA in a much higher dose for the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction, naltrexone has been used for many years at 1/10 the dosage to treat a wide array of illnesses, all with impaired immune systems: e.g., Multiple Sclerosis, HIV, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Crohn’s Disease, Lupus and Fibromyalgia. LDN is also used as an adjunctive treatment for many cancers.

It is estimated that 100,000 patients worldwide have been helped by LDN.

Please feel free to download this ebook. We hope you will enjoy reading it and that you will share it with your friends and colleagues.

Please DOWNLOAD The Faces of Low Dose Naltrexone HERE.

And please feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues – and with anyone who has an autoimmune disease, or who knows someone with an autoimmune disease.

To see the Table of Contents, click HERE:

Honest Medicine has posted many articles in the past about Low Dose Naltrexone, including:

an old drug
a controversial treatment
successful across a range of diseases linked
by immune system dysfunction
BUT
 YOU won't hear of it, and YOU won't be offered it

On October 19th, patients, physicians and researchers alike will convene at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, for the Fifth Annual Conference on Low Dose Naltrexone.

  October 19th will also kick off the First International LDN Awareness Week – a concerted push to get the word out through the media, about thousands of patients with autoimmune diseases who are benefitting from the off-label use of one inexpensive generic drug protocol, low dose naltrexone (commonly referred to as LDN).
 
  It is estimated that thousands of patients worldwide are now enjoying improved health due to LDN. Most learn about it through a combination of word of mouth, success stories, internet research, online forums, and an ever-growing number of doctors who are prescribing it for their patients with autoimmune diseases.

The LDN protocol employs approximately 1/10 the dose of naltrexone, a drug that was approved in 1984 by the FDA to treat alcoholism and drug addiction. Today, thanks to the work of patient advocates, dedicated physicians and researchers, thousands of patients are taking LDN to successfully halt the progression of diseases that are compromised by an impaired immune system, such as Multiple Sclerosis, HIV, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Crohn’s Disease, Lupus and Fibromyalgia.
 
Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) is literally changing their lives.

“Before I started taking LDN in 2003, I was an invalid,” says Linda Elsegood, one of the founders of the LDN Research Trust, a non-profit charity in England, which was formed in 2004 to raise both awareness of and research for LDN. “I had just about every symptom of Multiple Sclerosis that a person

Books have been written about LDN; websites are dedicated to LDN; patient forums discuss LDN; and an internet radio show conducts interviews exclusively about LDN.

(These resources are below.) 
 

LDN’s HISTORY:

The low dose naltrexone protocol has a long history of success treating autoimmune diseases. Over 20 years ago, naltrexone was approved by the FDA to treat addiction, at much higher doses. But in 1982 Dr. Ian Zagon and other researchers at Penn State University discovered its ability to normalize a dysfunctional immune system, when used in very low doses. Bernard Bihari, MD, a Harvard trained neurologist in New York City, observed positive clinical results using LDN for HIV, MS and other immune system disorders. His observations led to years of devoted work with patients, treating every kind of immune disease -- including HIV/AIDS – with extremely positive results, and virtually no side effects.

According to Dr. Bihari’s friend and colleague, David Gluck, MD, who also works tirelessly to get the word out about LDN: “Low Dose Naltrexone may well be the most important therapeutic breakthrough in over fifty years. It provides a safe and inexpensive method of medical treatment by mobilizing the natural defenses of one's own immune system.”

 LDN RESESOURCES: WEBSITES, BOOKS & RADIO SHOW:There are several key websites devoted to LDN, including Dr. David Gluck’s site, www.lowdosenaltrexone.org; and the websites of patient advocates, Linda Elsegood and Samantha Jo Wilkinson, www.ldnresearchtrust.org and www.ldners.org. All three of these websites are dedicated to helping patients and funding research.

In addition, books have been written on the topic of LDN, including:

1. The Promise of Low Dose Naltrexone, by Elaine Moore and SammyJo Wilkinson

2. Up the Creek With a Paddle, by Mary Boyle Bradley

3. Cris Kerr’s freely shared resource, Those Who Suffer Much KNOW MUCH, featuring a large collection of LDN testimonials as case studies. 

An Amazon.com search on "low dose naltrexone" reveals 50 book titles that include references or entire chapters devoted to LDN.
 
In addition, Mary Boyle Bradley hosts a radio program on the very popular Blog Talk Radio, which is devoted solely to discussing low dose naltrexone. Mary’s guests include researchers, physicians and patient advocates, and the show gets thousands of downloads per month.
 

For more information on International LDN Awareness Week and LDN, please contact the following patient advocates:

  Linda Elsegood, Patient Advocate, and Founder LDN Research Trust in the UK at contact@ldnresearchtrust.org, 01603 279 014
 
  Cris Kerr, Advocate for the value of Patient Testimony, in Australia at casehealth@optusnet.com.au, 61 7 3356 1777

Patient Advocates in the USA:

  SammyJo Wilkinson at SammyJo@LDNers.org,
(425) 361-2049
 
  Vicki Finlayson at vste@att.net, (530) 268-8150
 
  Malcolm West at malcolmwest@comcast.net,
(484) 580-8564
 
They will gladly put you in touch with physicians and patients who are eager to be interviewed about LDN.
 
Organization of the inaugural International LDN Awareness Week (October 19-25, 2009) has been spearheaded by:

• Linda Elsegood of the LDN Research Trust, in the UK

and internationally supported by:

• SammyJo Wilkinson, of LDNers.org

• Julia Schopick, of HonestMedicine.com

• Malcolm West, of Practical Communications Group.

Low dose naltrexone (LDN), one of the treatments I’ve showcased several times on HonestMedicine (here, here, here and here), has been in the online media quite a bit lately. It even has an online radio show devoted entirely to it! So, the word is getting out to more and more patients with autoimmune diseases (like MS, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease) that this low-cost, extremely safe, FDA-approved (at much higher doses), off-label medication is a very effective treatment, and that -- in many cases -- it has proved to be more effective than the medications doctors most often prescribe.

NOTE: LDN is one of the lifesaving, but so-called “anecdotal,” treatments I will be featuring in my upcoming book, Against All Medical Advice: Lifesaving Treatments that Work when the “Standard of Care” Fails You.

One program, Mary Boyle Bradley’s Internet radio show on Blog Talk Radio, is devoted entirely to low dose naltrexone. On her show, Mary, whose husband’s MS was helped immeasurably by LDN, interviews medical experts and patient advocates alike. In a future posting, I will tell more about this show. In the meantime, you may listen to it live on Tuesdays at Noon, and past episodes are available online.

LDN on Wellness Talk Radio with Kris Costello

Kris Costello will interview LDN advocate SammyJo Wilkinson and Elaine Moore, co-authors of The Promise of Low Dose Naltrexone, on Wellness Talk Radio on Wednesday, July 22nd, and Saturday, July 25th.

You won't want to miss this show. The Promise of Low Dose Naltrexone is an important book: It is the first to gather in one place the very impressive history of this inexpensive, off-label drug; how it works and for which conditions; and information about all of the LDN trials (to date) that are being and have been conducted. It is the perfect book for patients, who have read about LDN online, and have spoken to other patients, to show to their doctors. The authors hope that the information they provide here will convince conventional doctors to prescribe LDN for their patients who want to try it.

SammyJo’s personal experience as an MS patient who was “wheelchair bound” until she found LDN, is particularly moving. She will share it with Kris in this program.

Kris, who has interviewed lots of pioneers in the fields of holistic health and integrative medicine, says that her goal is “to connect people with health and wellness information and inspire them to better health.” Among her past guests: Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Mark Hyman and T. Colin Campbell.

You may listen to Kris on Wellness Talk Radio online several times throughout the week:

• Every Wednesday at 2pm and 10pm; and every Saturday at 4pm Pacific Daylight Time at www.newspress.com. (When you get to the site, click on AM1290.)

• Every Saturday at www.AM1440.com at 5pm Pacific Daylight Time.

I am proud and excited to announce that on Saturday, July 12th, Kris will name HonestMedicine.com as its “website of the week.”

In the near future, all of Kris’s shows will be archived at www.WellnessTalkRadio.com. I hope you will give them a listen.

When I first learned of the Obama Administration’s commitment to implementing Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) as a way of determining which treatments are effective and which ones are not, I was very hopeful. I thought that, done right, CER would assure that the best of conventional and the best of alternative medicine would finally be used together to give American patients the best results. In my enthusiasm, I decided to write articles for HonestMedicine.com on the topic of combining both medical worlds to assure the best patient care, and how CER could help to make this happen.

While doing my research, I discovered that another health writer, Daphne White, CHTP, was addressing the same topic. Her slant, very similar to mine, was the importance of including CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) protocols in the New Medicine. She, too, had both hopes and doubts that this would happen.

The first article by Daphne that I found, “Sen. Harkin: Time to End Discrimination against Alternative Health Care Practices,” had been reprinted on Izabella Tabarovsky’s ProjectCreativeVision blog. I was so impressed with this posting that I

(a)  left my own comment

(b)  researched further and discovered that Daphne had originally written this, and other articles, for John Weeks’ excellent Integrator Blog. (Her articles may be found here.

and finally

(c) as originally planned, I wrote my own postings on the topic, here and here.

I am so impressed with the level of Daphne’s commitment to Integrative Healthcare – a combination of conventional and alternative medicine – that I am reprinting two of her articles here. I believe that together, our four combined postings – hers and mine – give a very accurate representation of how the alternative/complementary/integrative medicine communities must work proactively so that Integrative Healthcare will, indeed, come to pass.

Daphne White’s Postings on CER:

CAM and Comparative Effectiveness Research - Are We Going to Play?

and

The "Kabuki Play" of Monied Interests Around the $1.1-Billion Comparative Effectiveness Research Initiative

I want to thank both Daphne and John for allowing me to publish these two excellent postings, thereby giving me this opportunity to get an important message out to the public.

(This column was first published by John Weeks on TheIntegratorBlog.com.)

John Weeks’ Introduction:

In this section of a two-part series, Integrator contributor Daphne White, CHTP focuses on the political-economic dynamics behind the $1.1 billion "clinical effectiveness research" (CER) initiative. White examines what she calls the "Kabuki play" - intense dynamics as the medical industry seeks to gut the value of the initiative, while not appearing to do so.

Would you assume that this initiative would look at cost or would inform the care people receive? As White points out, Congress appears to already have caved in on key aspects of apparent value. One wonders if CER can be the point of leverage for reform which White House Budget Director Philip Orzack thinks it can be. And if Orzack can't get what he wants out of CER, what might the integrative practice community extract from this big money battle in which maybe we can't, well, talk about money. In the other section, White explores the potential value of CER for the integrative practice community. 

I am among those who excitedly greeted the $1.1-billion "comparative effectiveness research"(CER) initiative in Obama's economic stimulus plan as an excellent direction for getting a handle on a medical system in which a third to half of care is deemed wasteful, and much of that harmful, according to our own Institute of Medicine. (See From Waste to Value in Health Care, JAMA, February 2008.) Not a moment too soon for the system, it would seem, and an excellent opening for integrative practice, particularly given the key backing by friends of integrative care.

Integrator contributor journalist, Daphne White does an excellent job of analyzing why this $1.1-billion piece of the Obama stimulus package may never live up to its value for consumers and for policy makers, and may have been partially aborted at birth. This is a sobering look at one of the first battle grounds for healthcare reform, 2009. Blood, it would appear, has already been shed via restrictions placed, at the request of the wasteful industry, by members of Congress who were doing their bidding. White takes you behind what she calls the "Kabuki play" she witnessed at the first 'listening session" of the Federal Coordinating Council for Effectiveness Research. Written comments can be submitted to the Council until May 31, 2009.

Comparative Effectiveness "Listening Session": Research, Politics, Evidence and Money

What happens when you mix together science, politics and $1.1 billion in government money?

When the issue is comparative effectiveness research (CER), the resulting brew is a Health & Human Services “listening session,” with 40 lobbyists, industry reps and advocacy groups each granted three minutes to speak. What you get is a three-hour-long Kabuki play: it’s long, it’s repetitive and it’s tedious.  And you sit there feeling that even though these people are speaking in plain English, what is coming out of their mouths is not even remotely connected to that thought bubble floating above their head.

Before we look at the action, let us review the back story, as explained first by Julie Rovner of National Public Radio. “That $2 trillion we spend on health care every year, every penny of that is someone’s income,” she told an audience at the Institute of Medicine last December, not mincing any words.  “The dirtiest word in health reform [is] not rationing … [it’s] redistribution.  Every time you take one of those dollars and give it to someone else, the donor is going to yelp and hire a lobbyist.” (ED: The text of Ms. Rovner’s statement may be found here.)

There were lots of lobbyists at the listening session, which was held at the Hubert Humphrey HHS building, right down the hill from the US Capitol.  Every player in the current system understands the potential harm that could come from comparative effectiveness research.  OMB director Peter Orszag has said the U.S. could save “$700 billion a year without harming health outcomes if we could just get the more efficient practices in some parts of the country into the less efficient rest of the country.” No one wants to be on the losing end of this equation.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal had reported on Feb. 9 that “the drug and medical-device industries are mobilizing to gut a provision in the stimulus bill that would spend $1.1 billion on research comparing medical treatments, portraying it as the first step to government rationing.”  A coalition of companies has already hired Babour Griffith Rogers -- “a public-relations firm that is part of one of Washington’s most influential lobby shops,” according to the Journal -- to represent their interests.  And Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona had already tried to push a measure that would bar federal health programs from using comparative-effectiveness research to deny coverage.  The amendment was defeated, but it did manage to garner 44 votes – including those of key health care reform players Sens. Charles Grassley (R, IO) and Russ Feingold (D, WI).

“It’s hard to understand how reasonable people could oppose conducting the sort of research that aims to collect data so that we can actually know if one drug or medical device works better than another at fixing the same medical problem,” Michelle Andrews wrote in the April 17 edition of the U.S. News & World Report. “But the relatively paltry $1.1 billion” for CER “has created a firestorm of controversy, with conservative commentators and some providers raising the specter of regulation-happy government bureaucrats intruding into medical decisions that should be left to patients and their doctors.”

So you would think that when the drug purveyors and device-makers and surgeons from “less efficient parts of the country” got in the same room as “regulation-happy government bureaucrats” there would be fireworks.  There would be spirited debate and intense questioning.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  This was probably the most under-charged hearing I’ve ever covered.  The 15 members of the newly-minted “Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness” sat at a U-shaped table and listened impassively to each “panel” of presenters. The panelists were brought up 10 at a time to sit at a long table facing the “happy government bureaucrats.”  Some spoke at warp speed to cram as many words as possible into their three minutes, yet their affect was mostly flat.  They leaned heavily on words such as “transparency” and “process” and wouldn’t go near the words which populated the thought bubbles above their heads:  words such as “cost” and “cutting” and “self-interest.”

What was going on here?  This hearing was about as transparent as poker.  I decided to call an acquaintance that was also at the hearing, and works for one of the affected health care industries.  As soon as I assured him of total confidentiality, he was happy to explain the Kabuki dance.  “When government gets involved in anything, it changes the playing field and brings a different type of weight to the issue,” he said.  “When done correctly, CER takes a great deal of time and money.  Once the research is done, the temptation will be to turn it into a cost-savings thing, such as Orszag is talking about.  Instead of this industry growing at 10 percent a year – as it has been – it will just grow like the CPI. Nobody wants to get in front of the government and say you’re nuts, you can’t do this!  You’ve got to be a bit more thoughtful.”

As this acquaintance talked, I could feel the energy and passion in his voice.  His words and his thoughts were in sync:  this was the full monty.  That is why Congress – that most political of entities – wrote their report language to specifically state that this research money (a $1.1 billion investment of taxpayer dollars) was not to be used to compare or even consider the cost effectiveness of treatments, or to curtail coverage of less-effective (or even ineffective) treatments.

It takes a lot of energy to pretend that you don’t see the elephant sitting in the room:  it was all that self-restraint that kept the atmosphere so sedated.  One of the few people who actually was able to speak his mind was Steven Findlay of Consumers Union.  “It’s interesting that this process is about evidence in science, yet the process itself is more politics than science,” he told me afterward.  “The session was a little strange:  a lot of organizations are reluctant to press their case in plain terms.”

The meeting itself was transparent, yes, but that meant that a lot of competing organizations were in the room, and no one wanted to show their real hand.  “No one is going to just come out and say, ‘I’m Joe Schmoe from Pharma and please don’t do anything in this area that jeopardizes my profits’,” Findlay told me.  “The people on the Commission know what these groups think, and where they are coming from, particularly the industry groups.  The message is:  don’t mess with our cheese!”

Of course if no one moves the cheese, our health care system will remain exactly as it is right now.  So a few people – including Findlay – actually did make some suggestions about the cheese.  Findlay urged the panel to “consider steps that would make the CER program – over time – essentially free of conflicts of interest” in biomedical research and publishing.  “As a start, [the panel] should strongly favor researchers and institutions that are devoted to doing this research in the public interest and who have no current conflicts.”

After all, Findlay said, CER was created because “so much industry-funded research fails to adequately answer the critical questions that can help doctors and patients make treatment decisions.”  Acknowledging that a “conflict-free zone for CER” will take time, Findlay suggested that as an opening move the Commission could require, from the outset, “100% disclosure and transparency of all conflicts from both researchers and institutions.”

Like a number of other speakers, Findlay also stressed the issue of disparity in health care:  “CER simply must be mobilized to improve the health outcomes of various racial and ethnic populations and – over time – end the shameful gap that exists between the health status of some minority populations and other Americans.”

It became kind of a running joke that each speaker had three points to make in their three minutes, and Findlay’s third point was also made by several others:  he asked the FCC to make “a substantial effort to include consumers and patients in CER planning and implementation.  … Researchers and doctors tend to see the outcome of some treatments one way, and patients see it another way.”

The other speaker who made me sit up and listen was Winifred Hayes, president and CEO of Hayes, Inc. In answer to a question from one of the FCC panelists, Hayes said what everyone else was studiously avoiding:  “Cost effectiveness is the elephant in the room but at some point we have to address it.”  She added that we already have a lot of solid evidence related to effectiveness, “but that evidence is frequently not used.  I’d say that 20 -30 percent of the money should be used for dissemination, otherwise this would be a waste of time.”

In her testimony, Hayes noted that one of the reasons our health care system lags those of other developed nations is our “failure to effectively and efficiently integrate scientific evidence into healthcare decision-making and clinical practice, resulting in overuse, misuse and even (in some instances) underuse of health technologies.”  She also blamed “perverse financial incentives that drive premature dissemination of new medical technologies even when they do not improve patient care or outcomes” and “insufficient focus and allocation of resources to health promotion and disease prevention.”

In fact, wellness and disease prevention – the bread and butter of CAM therapies – were hardly mentioned in the three hours of testimony.  Of the 40 presenters at the “listening session,” there were no official representatives from CAM modalities or the integrative health care world.  It is possible that they tried to speak: only 30 speakers were selected from over 100 groups who requested a hearing.  However, the panel did open up 10 spots on the day of the listening session, and people could sign up on the spot.  Thirteen people signed up, 10 were selected.  Out of sheer frustration with the lack of CAM representation, I ended up putting my name on the list and my name was actually selected.  You can read my comments to the panel here.

There will be two additional listening sessions – one in the Midwest, one in Washington.  As it is written:  if you don’t play, you can’t win.  You can also submit written comments at CoordinatingCouncil@hhs.gov until May 30, 2009. 

Note: White's linked article on this topic, focusing on the CAM and integrative practice community, is located here.

(This column was first published by John Weeks on TheIntegratorBlog.com.)

John Weeks’ Introduction:

The idea of "comparative effectiveness research" (CER), the new $1.1 billion economic stimulus program, strikes a happy chord for many in the integrative practice community. Isn't this the appropriate research terrain for showing value of integrative care?  In this first of two part Integrator series, reporter and regular Integrator contributor Daphne White, CHTP, shares how she attended the "listening session" of the government's CER advisory board to understand what was going on and see if the integrative practice community was showing up. White ended up taking off her journalist hat and testifying. She shares her perspectives on why and how the integrative practice community should be involved. White's second is a very well-reported analysis of the "kabuki dance" she witnessed as vested medical interests developed their strategies to make sure that the CER initiative does not gore their own oxes.    

CAM AND COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH: Are we Going to Play?

By Daphne White, CHTP

When I walked into the HHS “Listening Session” on Comparative Effectiveness Research on April 14, the first thing I saw was a written statement from the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and, for good measure, another from the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons.  I picked up a list of the presenting panelists, and found speakers from PhRMA, Johnson & Johnson, the Personalized Medicine Coalition, the Medical Device Manufacturers Association, the National Pharmaceutical Council, and a variety of patient groups (at least some of whom are heavily subsidized by the pharmaceutical and/or device industries.)

Where was the CAM and integrative practice community?  Missing in action, as far as I could tell:  if anyone was representing the acupuncturists, chiropractors, homeopaths or other CAM providers, they certainly weren’t leaving a paper trail.  Although I serve on the Advisory Board of Healing Touch International, I had not come with the intention of making a presentation.  I did not have an official (or even unofficial) statement. 

But since I was present and my CAM and integrative practice community did not seem to be accounted for, I took a risk and put my name on the list of possible last-minute presenters. Naturally, my name was selected and I had one hour to come up with a three-minute statement.  It seemed important, somehow, that CAM was represented at this “listening session.” As John Weeks said in a recent post, we need to start playing in all the playgrounds, just like the hip and knee surgeons.

The emerging policy debate around CER

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) is becoming a huge issue. Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) actually voted against the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius as HHS secretary because of her position on this very issue. At the other end of the spectrum, it turns out that CER is a “pet cause” of Peter Orszag, the director of Obama’s Office of Management and Budget. Orszag sees CER as “an opening to reforming American health care,” and a means of cutting unnecessary fat out of the system.  “They’re going to go after the provider community in a big way,” predicted James Capretta, who worked at OMB during President George W. Bush’s first term.

In fact, there is increasing talk among policymakers about placing more emphasis on wellness, prevention and primary care.  Isn’t that one of the areas where CAM and integrative modalities excel? Shouldn’t we be part of that comparative conversation? 

In their 2005 report called Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States, the Institute of Medicine noted that “the extent to which CAM use is a trigger for positive behavioral change is unknown […] and constitutes an important research issue because of the benefit of positive behavioral change to the public’s health.” Can we really expect the hip and knee surgeons to advocate for this kind of research? 

We talk among ourselves about “wellness” and “prevention” and “a heath care system, not a sick care system.”  Isn’t it time we took this private conversation public?

The fact is we are already players:  30 to 62 percent of adults in the U.S. already use CAM, according to the IOM report. And total out-of-pocket expenditures for CAM therapies and integrative practices were “conservatively estimated to be $27 billion in 1997,” according to the IOM.  “This is comparable to the projected out-of-pocket expenditures for all U.S. physician services.”

We’re talking about big money here, and we are being naïve if we think that we can escape the CER juggernaut.  Sure, there are problems with the way controlled randomized trials are conducted, and that type of research is not the best way to test CAM modalities and integrative practices anyway. But what kinds of research would work best for our various modalities?  And what research studies would best assist patients and other health care providers in deciding which CAM modality works best for, say, migraine headaches or chronic fatigue?

If we are going to get answers to those questions, we need to become an active part of the research conversation.  There is $1.1 billion on the table right now for CER, and HHS is looking for input on how to best spend that money.  Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IO) wrote that CER language into the stimulus package, and he is a big supporter of integrative health care.  We and our various associations can also be working with his office – as well as Sen. Mikulski’s (D-MD) -- to find ways of making sure that CAM modalities and integrative practices receive their fair share of this research funding.  While we’re at it, we can advocate for this research to be conducted in a way that is ethical, credible and appropriate to the modality and practice.

White's own, impromptu testimony to the CER panel

Here are some of the key points I made at the listening session.  It’s just an example and a jumping-off point to spur your own thinking:

"I am here to ask that you include CAM in the comparative effectiveness research program. CAM modalities are low-cost, low-tech and high-touch.  In addition, they are often highly effective. About 38 – 60 percent of Americans already use CAM, but we need more research to find out what modalities are most effective for which conditions.

"CAM modalities and integrative practices generally focus on wellness and prevention.  Preventing disease is more than screening for disease:  it’s about maintaining a healthy lifestyle and not getting sick in the first place.  By the time you can see something on a test or a screen, the disease has already started. CAM practitioners look at the whole person, and lifestyle issues that might contribute to their chronic condition.  CAM and integrative practitioners work in partnership with their clients to root out the underlying causes of disease, not just to ameliorate the symptoms.  This is a different model than the medical model, and should be included in CER research.

"The Institute of Medicine, quoting the Cochrane reviews, notes that 'there is strong evidence for the effectiveness of some CAM therapies, [but] much more research is required.'

"The Cochrane review also found that when it came to CAM and conventional therapies, the percentage of studies showing a positive effect was 'approximately equal:' 41 percent for conventional medicine vs. 38 percent for CAM.  On the other hand, CAM therapies were substantially less likely to be classified as harmful:  less than 1 percent of CAM therapies had a negative effect, compared to 8.1 percent of conventional medical techniques. 

“The fact that only one of the treatments in the Cochrane reviews fell into the harmful effect category suggests that clinical trials of CAM therapies have posed little risk to the participants,” the IOM report concluded.

"In view of these findings – high upside and almost no downside – including CAM therapies and integrative practices in this research agenda should be a slam dunk.

"Having said that, CAM therapies and integrative practices should be evaluated on the same playing field as other therapies, including pharmaceuticals.  At present, FDA requires that new drug tests just show a slight benefit – I’ve heard it can be as little as 3 – 5 percent – over a placebo to be considered “effective.”  The bar should be set at the same level for CAM modalities.

"In addition, the fact that we don’t yet understand how many of these modalities work should not be a factor in evaluating their effectiveness.  A physician friend told me that we don’t really know how aspirin works, but that doesn’t stop doctors from prescribing it. 

"Finally, I welcome the white elephant into the room, and I’d be happy to see cost comparisons between CAM modalities and conventional medicine for specific diseases and conditions."

I urge all Integrator readers to submit their own statements to the Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research at CoordinatingCouncil@hhs.gov. The deadline for written submissions is May 30, 2009.  People spoke at the listening session in Chicago on May 13, and there will be another session -– and another opportunity, in Washington, DC on June 10.

Note: The link to a variety of CER articles on the US Health and Human Services Recovery site is here.

As followers of Honest Medicine know, I have personally witnessed and reported on the outrageous amount of money that is being wasted by our healthcare system on expensive treatments that don’t work, while at the same time, ignoring inexpensive, non-toxic treatments that do work. (For two examples, please read here and here; and please take your time, while reading these articles; their contents will trouble, even shock, you.)

Because I have personally witnessed this kind of waste, I am very much in favor of the Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) that is being championed by the Obama Administration. A lot of money and three government agencies are being committed to this research. According to this March 16, 2009 Washington Post article, the $1.1 billion stimulus funds will be divided among 3 government bodies: the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality will receive $300 million of the funds, while HHS and the NIH will divide the remainder. Also according to the Washington Post article, “Experts at the Institute of Medicine will spend the next several months prioritizing the research.” And, “For now, Obama has stopped short of advocating coverage decisions that combine clinical finding with cost effectiveness.”

All of this sounds very even-handed; very well-thought out. So, why am I afraid that -- although the administration’s words suggest that they understand that this waste exists, and that it must be controlled -- other evidence suggests that the only treatments that will be compared for effectiveness are the “same old same old” treatments that are considered to be “standard of care”? (Of course, treatments that are considered “standard of care” have undergone the “gold standard” of double-blind randomized clinical trials that have been paid for and supervised by Big Pharma! A troubling puzzle.)

Why am I concerned that only the “same old same old” treatments will be studied?

For a few reasons. First, as I have written about before, even the panel that has been proposed by the Institute of Medicine to assess the CER has no representatives from the public who are without financial ties to Big Pharma; nor does it contain ANY representatives of non-pharmaceutical treatments, such as integrative medical treatments. (See my “Comment on the Institute of Medicine’s Proposed Panel: Comparative Effectiveness Research of Medical Treatments.”  The same criticism applies for the members of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research that was recently named by HHS. 

Recently, to spread the word about my concerns beyond Honest Medicine, I have been leaving comments on some highly respected, high-traffic blogs and websites, about the proposed Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER), and about the fact that I am worried that the CER will NOT include more sensible, less expensive, NON-Big-Pharma based therapies, such as those I have described in articles (here and here) and in audio interviews (here, here, here and here).

I have left these comments on several blogs and websites, including the Our Bodies Ourselves Blog (OBOB), created by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (BWHBC), the nonprofit, public interest women’s health education, advocacy, and consulting organization that has inspired the women’s health movement, since the publication of its first edition of the book, Our Bodies, Ourselves in 1970. (See my OBOB comment here.) I have also left similar comments on the Health Care Organizational Ethics Blog, and on the About.com Health Insurance site.

Each of my blog comments has been tailored to the CER-related posting being commented on, but they all contained some common information.

I am reprinting a variation of one of my comments here -- complete with hyperlinks to some important backup information, which I hope you will want to check out for yourselves.

COMMENT:

As a medical advocate, and also as the widow of a 15-year brain tumor survivor, I have personally witnessed a HUGE amount of waste in our medical system. I am therefore an ardent proponent of Comparison Effectiveness Research (CER), because I believe that we as a society must start to keep medical costs down. If we don’t, our healthcare system will surely go broke. CER could provide a much-needed answer.

However, I have some tremendous concerns about exactly HOW the treatments will be compared and -- just as important -- WHICH treatments will even be considered for comparison.

I fear that the CER will end up recommending more of the “same-old-same-old” kinds of treatments; it’s just that they will be less costly versions! In other words, I fear that some of the far less expensive, yet very effective, lifesaving treatments -- whose only crime is that they do NOT have pharmaceutical ties and/or funding -- will be totally omitted from the research.

I don’t think that ANYONE so far -- at least anyone in the Obama Administration -- has adequately addressed this point.

I am referring here specifically to two kinds of treatments: (a) “alternative” treatments, including diet, vitamins and the many healing modalities; and (b) lots of other treatments -- many of which are “science-based,” but are, unfortunately, often labeled as “anecdotal.” The treatments I am referring in this second group are called “anecdotal” for only one reason: because they haven't gone through the billion+ dollar double-blind randomized clinical trials. (And as most of us know, the majority of these “trials” are conducted and paid for by Big Pharma!)

I have interviewed pioneers in the successful use of several of these science-based, so-called-“anecdotal” treatments on my website, HonestMedicine.com. The specific treatments I have written about so far are: LOW DOSE NALTREXONE for autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and lupus; the KETOGENIC DIET for pediatric epilepsy; and INTRAVENOUS ALPHA LIPOIC ACID, for diabetic neuropathy and organ regeneration. Each of these three treatments has been helping thousands of people with very serious, often life-threatening conditions for OVER THIRTY YEARS. (You may read about them on my website.)

Why, then, don’t I think that these treatments (and others like them) will be included in the comparative effectiveness research?

For proof that my suspicions are well-founded, all you have to do is watch this video of the recent Senate Hearings on Integrative Medicine and the new health plan, where Drs. Mehmet Oz, Mark Hyman, Andrew Weil and Dean Ornish testified.

There, you will find the following interchange between Dr. Mark Hyman and Sen. Tom Harkin (at 142:00 to 142:36) :
 
DR. HYMAN: (re Comparative Effectiveness Research): "What are we comparing things TO? Drug to drug? Procedure to procedure? Or are we comparing the current medical practice with the best available things we're talking about [e.g., integrative treatments]?"
 
SEN. HARKIN: "I'm afraid -- I share your fear -- that it's going to be a comparative analysis between this treatment and that treatment.”
 
DR. HYMAN: "Within the allopathic model."

And by the way, without stating it, when he refers to the “allopathic model,” Dr. Hyman is, of course, referring to the PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY MODEL. It’s the only model the American Medical System acknowledges.

Please listen to my interview with Dr. Burt Berkson (MD, PhD), pioneer since the 1970s of the use of Intravenous Alpha Lipoic Acid. In it, Dr. Berkson speaks eloquently about how our medical education system teaches doctors NOT to be curious about more innovative, less expensive treatments -- such as the three I have written about, both here and on my website.

I realize that my comment here contains almost "too much information"! But I hope that you will check out all my links, and join with me to help get "the word" to the folks that will be administering the CER in Washington, DC.

I wish us ALL the best of luck with our new healthcare system!

Thanks very much.
Julia Schopick
www.HonestMedicine.com

I just posted the comment below to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), recommending that they include people with knowledge of integrative medicine on their panel that will be comparing the effectiveness of medical treatments. Click here to leave your own suggestions/comments about the composition of the proposed panel. (Comments will be accepted until March 23, 2009.) At the end of this posting, I'll give links to other websites with relevant information about this issue.

I urge you to access the above link and offer your own input to the IOM about this very important issue.

TO: The Institute of Medicine

I would like to thank the Institute of Medicine (IOM) for giving me this opportunity to submit my comments and recommendations concerning this panel, which has been slated to make recommendations for the $1.1 billion earmarked for comparative effectiveness research of medical treatments.

In my opinion, it is important to have the right people in on the job from the very beginning, so that the a full range of treatments will be compared, once the real comparative effectiveness research begins.

When I looked at the names on your site of the selected panelists, I could not help but notice that TWO very important groups are not being represented:

1) As has been pointed out by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, there are NO TRUE PATIENT OR CONSUMER REPRESENTATIVES on the panel. In their words, “the only patient or consumer representative named to the panel’s tentative roster was from the Alzheimer’s Association, a single-issue patient advocacy group that RECEIVES SUBSTANTIAL SUPPORT FROM THE DRUG INDUSTRY.” (A coalition of 20 consumer, public health and patient advocacy groups has written to the Institute of Medicine, asking that at least three consumer representatives be added to the panel.)

2) Also, and of equal importance: There are NO MEMBERS ON THE PANEL WHO ARE EITHER CAM PRACTITIONERS, OR CAM ADVOCATES. (By the acronym CAM, I am referring to complementary/holistic/”alternative”/integrative practitioners and patient advocates.)

I was amazed at (and extremely surprised and troubled by) both omissions. But I find the SECOND omission especially puzzling, since in late February, two extremely exciting events took place:

(a) First, the IOM convened a 3-day Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public, which was attended by hundreds of people from across the country, excited at the prospect that the new healthcare system would include CAM treatments. The consensus was that the effective use of CAM treatments would save our healthcare system HUGE amounts of money. (Here is a description of this Summit, which integrative healthcare activist and Huffington Post blogger, Alison Rose Levy, called “groundbreaking.” You may also listen to audios of all the speakers’ presentations.)

(b) During the same week, Senate hearings were convened, with several integrative healthcare luminaries testifying. For a video of the complete hearing, go here. 

I would like to suggest that speakers at this hearing, including Drs. Andrew Weil, Mehmet Oz, Mark Hyman and Dean Ornish (as well as several of the Summit speakers and attendees), would be excellent additions to this IOM panel.

As a matter of fact, each of these four practitioners offered publicly to serve the administration in any capacity in which he might be asked to contribute.

In addition to these very well-known integrative practitioners, there are also many, many other people
-- some, but not all, of whom are not as well known -- who have been equally active in bringing integrative medicine to the forefront. For instance:

1) Ronald Hoffman, MD –- For 30 years, one of this country’s foremost integrative physicians. Dr. Hoffman uses the best treatments from both conventional and alternative medicine to provide truly integrative (or as he calls it) “intelligent” care. Dr. Hoffman is Medical Director of the Hoffman Center in New York, author of several books about integrative medicine, and has a very popular daily radio program, Health Talk, on WOR-Radio in New York. (To listen to Dr. Hoffman's interview with Honest Medicine, click here.)

2) Burt Berkson, MD, PhD -- Famous in the integrative medicine community, Dr. Berkson is a pioneer in the use of several low cost, non-toxic treatments (e.g., intravenous alpha lipoic acid and, more recently, also of low dose naltrexone), to successfully treat conditions as far-ranging as chronic liver disease, autoimmune diseases (e.g., MS, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis), and even some cancers. In the 1970s, the NIH was very supportive of Dr. Berkson’s work with intravenous alpha lipoic acid, and under their auspices, several scholarly papers were published on his work. In the end, however, interest in Dr. Berkson’s work with these kinds of non-pharmaceutically based treatments, waned. (Many integrative practitioners have expressed the belief that this eventual lack of interest in Dr. Berkson’s work stemmed from the fact that no one [read “Big Pharma”] would be able to make “big money” on these inexpensive treatments, and therefore, no costly trials were ever funded.)

I recently conducted an interview with Dr. Berkson for Honest Medicine. I hope you will listen to it. It is both fascinating and mind-opening. You will also find a transcript of the entire interview there -- complete with links to several of Dr. Berkson’s published papers.

3) Jim Abrahams, Hollywood writer/director (“Airplane,” “Naked Gun,” “Hot Shots”) and president of the Charlie Foundation, has worked tirelessly for many years to educate medical professionals and the public, in order to bring the Ketogenic Diet into the mainstream as a respected treatment for epilepsy. This diet, which has been championed by Johns Hopkins since the 1940s, has cured thousands of children throughout the world (including Jim Abrahams’s son Charlie) of intractable epileptic seizures, when expensive, toxic drugs would not. Jim is tireless, dedicated and brilliant. (To read an article that cites Jim's tireless efforts, click here.)

In addition, there are countless other holistic/integrative practitioners and healers –- some are MDs, others are not –- as well as thousands of patient advocates of every stripe, who are NOT connected with big institutions OR with Big Pharma, and hence, have none of the baggage that may possibly be held by some of those on this IOM comparative effectiveness panel. (Many people at both February integrative healthcare events expressed the hope that Big Pharma would not be a major player in the new Healthcare Plan.)

The IOM panel as it now stands was described by the Center for Science in the Public Interest as “five physician specialists, three medical technology assessment experts, three insurers (two of which are also provider networks) and three officials currently or formerly associated with Medicare.” Every one of the panelists is connected with a mainstream professional medical organization and/or a large institution. As we now know –- from the many books and articles that have been written in recent years, which have exposed Big Pharma and Big Industry’s influence -- it is a sad fact that far too many of our mainstream medical institutions and physicians unfortunately have pharmaceutical-company  connections.

Hasn’t the time finally come to include people who are more independent -- as well as representative of more diverse points of view -- in the discussion?

I hope you will call on me to lead you to possible people to add to the panel, so that it will include some of the voices who have –- thus far –- been muted. I also hope that I can play my part in making the Obama Health Plan more all-inclusive.

Thank you very much. I hope to hear from you.
Julia Schopick
www.HonestMedicine.com

I know that several people have already listened to my interview with Dr. Burt Berkson and have found him to be truly inspirational. My decision to transcribe the interview (a very time-consuming process!) began because I wanted my 92-year old Mom to be able to hear it. I knew she would love it: She has been a fan of using innovative treatments, ever since she was 11 years old, when her own mother’s life was saved by going to Germany in the 1920s to receive a treatment -– radiation –- which was not yet available in the US. Since my Mom is now hard of hearing, I knew it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for her to listen to it. Hence, the transcript that follows.

I hope that others of you who are hard of hearing, as well as those without good computer speakers -- and others, who would simply rather read than listen -- will enjoy the printed version this terrific interview!

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, this is Julia Schopick, for HonestMedicine.com. Today, I am honored to have as my guest one of the few people in this world I consider to be a true visionary: Dr. Burt Berkson.

Dr. Berkson’s story, which you’ll hear today, is also the incredible story of how the pharmaceutical industry has kept one very valuable, inexpensive (non-income producing) treatment from becoming standard of care, even though it has cured many patients with some of the most life-threatening conditions for over 30 years.

This treatment is alpha lipoic acid, an antioxidant therapy that Dr. Berkson has been using successfully since the mid-1970s -- first to treat people with terminal liver disease; and then, in ensuing years, also to treat people with many other diseases and conditions, including diabetic neuropathy, several autoimmune diseases, and the very deadly pancreatic cancer -– the cancer that is considered to be one of the most hopeless.

You’ll notice that I haven't started out by listing Dr. Berkson’s credentials. Frankly, that’s because he has so many. Reading them would take too much time away from our interview. Instead, I am posting them on HonestMedicine.com.

Suffice it to say that Dr. Berkson has both an MD degree and a PhD –- the PhD degree came first. In addition, for 23 years he was the principal FDA investigator for the intravenous use of alpha lipoic acid. He is also the expert consultant to the Centers for Disease Control on alpha lipoic acid and liver poisoning. Dr. Berkson has published scientific papers in medical journals throughout Europe, and is an active scientific writer, researcher, and speaker. He is the author of 4 books, including The Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough. I’ll have links to all his books on the website at the end of this transcript.

Today, Dr. Berkson has a very busy nutritional and integrative medicine practice in Las Cruces, NM, where patients come to him from all over the world. He is also an adjunct professor of applied biology at New Mexico State University.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Welcome, Dr. Berkson. The dramatic story of how you first used Alpha Lipoic Acid when you were a young medical resident is the stuff movies are made of. Hearing and reading about your experience was a paradigm-shifting event for me because it taught me, very sadly, that the medical establishment is NOT in the business of saving lives. Can you please tell us the story?

DR. BERKSON: I was a resident in internal medicine in a teaching hospital in Cleveland Ohio, and one day the chief of medicine came by and said, I am very upset with you.” And I said “Why?”. (I thought he was kidding.)  And he said, “You have no deaths on your service. Most people have seen several deaths by now and you haven't seen any.” And I told him that I really try to keep people alive. He said, “It’s very unusual. I’m going to give you two people who will surely die. They have acute and fulminant liver disease. They ate poisonous mushrooms, and the expert on liver disease said we cannot get a transplant for them, and nothing can save them.  So I want you to go upstairs, watch them die, take notes and present this to grand medical rounds.”

And I went upstairs and I looked at these two very sick people. And as a medical doctor, especially in internal medicine, you're supposed to follow the orders of the chief, just like a private would follow the orders of a sergeant.  But I had six years of education above my medical training, for a masters and a PhD in microbiology and cell biology, and I was always looking for new things. So I called Washington and spoke to the head of the National Institutes of Health in Internal Medicine, Dr. Fred Bartter, and I asked him, “Is there anything in the world that he knew of that might regenerate a liver?”  And he said he was studying alpha lipoic acid because he knew it would reverse diabetic neuropathy and other complications of diabetes. But when he gave it to people, it seemed to regenerate their organs. It seemed to stimulate their stem cells and to start growing and regenerating new organ tissue.

He sent the lipoic acid to me. I picked it up at the Cleveland airport about three hours later. The commercial pilot handed it to me. I ran back to the hospital and injected it into these two people for a period of two weeks. And in two weeks, they regenerated their livers fully. And they’re still alive and well, in their 80s, thirty some years later.

(NOTE: One of the people whom Dr. Berkson saved by "not following orders," Eunice Goostree, wrote a very personal review of The Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough on Amazon.com.)

I was all excited. Washington was all excited. But the chiefs were not happy with me.

JULIA SCHOPICK – They were actually angry at you?

DR. BERKSON: Well, they seemed to be angry. They said, “We told the families that these people were going to die, that there was no hope. And now they’re alive and well. You know, it makes us look bad. And you did something without asking us for permission.” And I said, “You told me that these people were my responsibility, so I did what I thought was correct.”

I said, “Do you want to know what I did?”

“No.”

JULIA SCHOPICK: They were not even curious?

DR. BERKSON: They said: “This is not an approved drug. And it’s not on our formulary. And you did not follow orders like a good internal medicine doctor.”

I was sort of depressed by this. You know, it was very different from what I had seen as a professor of biology. You know, when I discovered something new in biology, everybody would pat me on the back and give me awards. In medicine, it seemed to me that if you discovered something new, you were sort of thought of as an outlaw.

JULIA SCHOPICK – If I had not heard this story -- I heard you speak at NOHA so long ago, and of course, I read your book -– it’s too depressing.

DR. BERKSON: Well, anyway, more people came in, and I was told I should not do this again. They'd also eaten poisonous mushrooms, which really destroys the liver, and there’s not much you can do for these folks, except a transplant or, in this case, lipoic acid.

And the National Institutes of Health started supporting my work. I think because of that, the people at the hospital I was at had to go along with what I was doing, and eventually Dr. Bartter and I published a paper on 79 people with so-called terminal liver disease, and 75 of them regenerated their livers, with just intravenous lipoic acid.

There was no interest in the United States; almost nothing.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Where was your article published?

DR. BERKSON: My first short note was in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

And they weren’t really interested in a big study. My own personal opinion was that it was because there was no large pharmaceutical company sponsoring the work. There was no one to take out ads in the magazines (i.e., the medical journals), or to buy reprints from them.

But, Dr. Bartter and I were invited to Europe to be visiting scientists at the Max Planck Institute and we published it in Europe.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Was that in the Medischinik – I can never pronounce that.

DR. BERKSON – The Mediscinice Klinik? No, that was my paper on hepatitis C. That’s the German journal of Internal Medicine.

DR. BERKSON: This was in the proceedings of the conference on liver disease and mushroom poisoning.

JULIA SCHOPICK – There was a symposium where you were the chief speaker on this topic.

DR. BERKSON: After we had 4 patients with such remarkable results, Dr. Bartter and several other doctors flew into Cleveland and set up a national conference on organ regeneration. I was the lead speaker. I don’t think the older doctors liked that very much.

JULIA SCHOPICK – This must have just been the biggest shock! I know that Dr. Bartter was very, very disappointed that there was no more interest. You really do think that this lack of interest was because the pharmaceutical companies weren’t interested in going with it and doing more investigation?

DR. BERKSON: I’m not criticizing the pharmaceutical companies. I think this is just business. It’s just the way things are done. If somebody wants to get a drug approved by the FDA, they have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do this. Even if the research has already been done in prestigious hospitals in Asia or in Europe, they still have to do them all over again in the United States. And if a drug has a patent that’s owned by the Germans, an American company cannot control that patent. Or if the drug is a natural product, there’s difficulty getting a valid patent on it. They're not willing to spend all that money to get this approved by the FDA. Would YOU? I mean, if you were a multi-millionaire, would you spend all this money to get a drug approved?

JULIA SCHOPICK – Well, to me, it’s just as shocking as it was to you that the chiefs were upset with you because, I guess, my question comes in because I know from talking with you before and reading your book that alpha lipoic acid is used in Germany and Europe and this is, to me, puzzling that -- it’s upsetting, more than puzzling. I do get it, though.

DR. BERKSON: Well, the problem here is that no one has found a way to make big money on it. So, even though it’s efficacious, it’s a losing endeavor for any corporation to promote this.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Ah, now we’ve come to something where I really think that this is just the missing link. And that is this: OK, we understand pharmaceutical companies, right? But how about the doctors? I mean, you told me some stories where people went back to their doctors after their doctors had said, “You're a goner, you have six months to live, you need a transplant,” etc. These patients came to you, and their livers regenerated. And I believe you told me that the doctors weren’t even interested in what they had done. Is that the case?

DR. BERKSON: Well, I can give you a specific story. A woman from the San Francisco area was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and metastases to her liver. She went to a large university medical center. They told her that nothing could be done.  But she had a friend who was a biologist who had read some of my work. And she and her friend flew out to New Mexico (where Dr. Berkson practices), and her friend actually had to help her walk into the office, she was so weak and cachectic – (NOTE: Cachexia is a condition of starvation, often associated with cancer.) We started her on intravenous alpha lipoic acid four days a week, and I also gave her low dose naltrexone, which modulates the immune system (at bedtime). I saw her first in December.

By May, there was no sign of cancer. The tumor in the pancreas was gone, and the metasteses in the liver had disappeared. This will be appearing in an upcoming publication in Integrative Cancer Therapies in the next several months.

JULIA SCHOPICK – I know you have another study in that publication and the person is alive 8 years later.

DR. BERKSON: Yes. But in this case, the cancers disappeared within five or six months. I was amazed. But she couldn't stay in New Mexico forever. She had to go home. And when she went home, there weren’t any doctors in her area who would even consider giving it to her. I don’t know if they just didn’t want to learn about this, or if they were afraid of being different.

JULIA SCHOPICK – So, what did they say? Weren’t they shocked that she looked so well? You said she was almost dying of starvation when she came in to see you.

DR. BERKSON: Oh, I think they were amazed. In fact, her doctor called me and we talked for a long time, and I said that she could do this and the patient could continue the treatment in San Francisco. And she said, “You know, I really would not want to do anything different because the medical boards might look down on me. I’m not an oncologist, and if I treat the cancer, the oncology people might get angry about it. So I can’t do it.”

JULIA SCHOPICK – See, I think this is the missing link. If the doctors would start saying, “Hey, we’re not just going to do. . . ” You know, the standard of care is just fine if it’s working. But this is very troubling. I don’t think that anyone has said, “OK. We understand that the drug companies do what they do. They are in business to just make a profit.” But, the doctors don’t seem to be fighting it, correct?

DR. BERKSON – Well, you know, my son’s a doctor. And he said that, if I wasn’t his father, he would look very differently on his profession.  He said that, all through medical school, he was stroked, and told how smart he was, and how brilliant he was, and how he was one of the chosen people. And, if he actually believed this, he would think he knew absolutely everything after he graduated. He wouldn't have anything to learn from anybody else. But this isn’t just in medicine. Imagine in plumbing. If a young person comes along with a new idea, do you think the journeyman plumbers would listen to a young person just starting out?

JULIA SCHOPICK – No, I agree with you that they wouldn't. It’s just so DANGEROUS in medicine.

DR. BERKSON: But that’s human nature. Who ever told you that medical doctors are any smarter than the general population? They're just people. Many are very smart, and many are very ignorant.

JULIA SCHOPICK – But doesn't it upset you? If there are other treatments for a condition, that’s one thing. But, for instance, if you have something like hepatitis, and the person is in the last stage of liver disease, and they get the ALA, it turns them around and then the doctors say, “Oh, it couldn't have worked.” That’s what they do, right?

DR. BERKSON: Yes, some do. Many are that way because they consider themselves the experts in gastroenterology or hepatology. And really, these folks don’t get a lot of peer education. Most of their work is TRAINING. In medicine they talk about training. In biology, we talk about education. And there is a big difference. When I started medical school in Chicago many, many years ago, I remember, I used to ask questions, and the anatomy professor took me aside. He said, “You know, we give you information and you memorize it, and you give it back to us. And if you do this, and you pass the test, in four years, you're a medical doctor. We tell you what to do, and you do things just like we do it.” Do you remember “watch one, do one, teach one”?  It’s training; it’s technical. It’s not like a biological education.  It’s a very different type of thing.

I didn’t like this idea, and I didn’t want to be a medical doctor at that time. I didn’t want the responsibility; I was very immature. I always wanted to be a professor and I quit medical school and went to the University of Illinois. I went on for a PhD and became a professor at Rutgers University. But medicine is training, and if people are trained, they’ll all do the same thing in the same way.

JULIA SCHOPICK – I think you went back to medical school partly because your wife had been having miscarriages and you went to the top doctors in the field. And what did you find?

DR. BERKSON: This was back in the 70s. My wife had several miscarriages, and I still did not want to be a medical doctor. She had had 5 miscarriages, and at that point, I thought that, if a person was the head of a department at the University of Chicago or Harvard or Stanford, they really knew more than anybody else.  We went to doctors like this and she’d have these miscarriages in the 4th to the 6th month, in the 2nd trimester. Their answer was always, “These babies are normal; just get her pregnant again. Maybe next time she’ll be able to carry the baby.”

I went to the medical library, and read some of the journals in obstetrics and I saw that there was a doctor in India by the name of Shirodkar, and he said that when people had normal babies with second trimester miscarriages, it was usual that, when they had a D and C on one of the first miscarriages, the cervix was injured or lacerated, so when the baby got to a certain size, the cervix couldn't hold that baby. (Here is a 1973 paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal about Dr. Shirodkar’s technique.)

So, I went back to her doctor at this so-called prestigious university, and told him about it. He looked at me, and he said, “You're a microbiologist. I don’t tell you how to practice your field. Don’t tell me how to practice gynecology.” I said, “Here’s the article. Why don’t you read it?” He said, “I’m the head of the department. I know what I’m doing. Just get her pregnant again.”

So, I looked all around the United States for a medical doctor who had studied with Dr. Shirodkar, and found Martin Clyman in New York. Ann became pregnant again, and I took her to Dr. Clyman’s office, and he said, definitely, put a little stitch in there -– a little ligature, a simple little circular stitch. And she had a normal baby. And then she had another one, right afterwards.

So, I started losing faith in many people in the medical profession.  And I thought, I don’t want to be a medical doctor, but it might be a good idea for me to have an MD, in addition to my PhD. It would help me at the university, it would give me more power at the university. And also, I could be an ombudsman for family members, if they had to deal with medical doctors. That’s why I picked up the MD. And I never thought that I would ever stop being a professor. It was after that experience with alpha lipoic acid in Cleveland that drove me into the medical profession.

JULIA SCHOPICK – I've been thinking about your experience with the alpha lipoic acid and the response of your higher ups, and it occurred to me that, say you had just been medical resident Burt Berkson, and you found this alpha lipoic acid, and you didn’t have any connections at NIH, you probably would have lost your job. It was the fact that NIH was involved, correct?

DR. BERKSON: Exactly. I think I would have been fired if Dr. Bartter didn’t come in and protect me by supporting my work.

JULIA SCHOPICK – As I think you expressed it, they “had to put up with” you.

DR. BERKSON: I think so. And as time went on, I saw that I could never be an internal medicine doctor. I couldn't do things exactly like everybody else. I had to think, and tailor treatments to each patient, rather than just follow an algorithm.

JULIA SCHOPICK – And this led you to the kind of medicine you practice now, which is not in an institution, correct?

DR. BERKSON: Exactly. I left, and took my family as far away from academic medicine as possible. Became a country doctor not far from Lubbock, Texas.

JULIA SCHOPICK – I believe your wife did not enjoy it there.

DR. BERKSON: No, she didn’t. But it was fun for me. I became like a cowboy. My kids thought they were a cowboy and a cowgirl. They had a lot of fun, and had a wonderful education. The schools in this area were really strong on reading, writing and arithmetic, and sports. And most of the kids graduated and went to college, unlike in lots of cities in America, where they spend a tremendous amount of money on education and most of the kids never do anything with their lives. It was really an experience to see a school system that had very low funding but very strong parent support where the kids really grow up and become good citizens.

JULIA SCHOPICK – So you would have stayed there, if it had worked out differently?

DR. BERKSON: No. I was there for 7 years, though.  One day my wife said, “I’d like to go back to Chicago or El Paso or Albuquerque. I’m taking the kids and leaving. You can stay here and continue practicing, or you can come with us.” I had privileges at two hospitals, one a big regional hospital where I had privileges in internal medicine, pediatrics and gynecology. I did everything. And when I left, the hospital administrator said, “You'll never get these kinds of privileges again.” But I didn’t care.

LOW DOSE NALTREXONE

JULIA SCHOPICK – Tell me how you started working with low dose naltrexone and alpha lipoic acid together?

DR. BERKSON: Let me tell you how I found low dose naltrexone. A man came into my office about 12 years ago. I’d worked for the Department of Defense as an internal medicine doctor out at White Sands Missile Range. I’d been there for several years and I thought, “I’m going to open a small practice close by in Las Cruces, New Mexico, do what I think is right, not argue with anyone, or fight with anyone at the universities, and just try to do a good job. One day, a man came in with a walker. He could hardly even move. He was about 70 years old. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he had just been to MD Anderson Cancer Hospital, and they told him he had metastatic prostatic cancer -- metastatic to his bones. But he also had lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. They told him he only had a few months to live. Nothing could be done. So I asked him, “Why are you in MY office?” He said he had a wife with dementia and a son with a mental disability, and he had to have them placed in a nursing home before he died. I asked what I could do for him. He said he really needed some narcotics to handle the pain. I said I’d be glad to write that prescription for him.

Then he asked me if I’d ever heard of Dr. Bernard Bihari in New York. This was 12 years ago. I said no, I never heard of him. He told me that he had heard that Dr. Bihari was curing cancer. I said, “I don’t know why you're in my office, or MD Anderson or the Mayo Clinic. I don’t see any great results for curing cancer from any of these places. I don’t know how to cure cancer. They treat cancer at MD Anderson and at the Mayo Clinic, but I haven't seen any great results with complicated cancers. So why don’t you go up and see him?” So he said, “Well, he’s just in a little office in New York. What does he know?” And I told him the story of when I was at a university hospital with alpha lipoic acid, which was really effective at regenerating livers and many other organs, too, and they just didn’t want to hear about it. They were in the liver transplant business. So I said, “Maybe if he was at a big medical center like Sloan Kettering or MD Anderson, and he discovered a simple cure for cancer, they'd probably throw him out, because it would put them out of business.” So he went up and saw Dr. Bihari. And I didn’t see him for 3 years.

Three years later, he walked in, without his walker, a normal guy. I said, “John, how are you doing?” And he said, “You know, the wind’s blowing, my nose is stuffed. I really need something for these allergies.” I said, “No, John, what about the cancer?” “Oh, Dr. Bihari cured that” – in a very relaxed way. I said, “What about the lupus and rheumatoid arthritis?” “Oh, he cured that, too.” I said, “What did he use”? He said, “Did you ever hear of naltrexone?” I said, “Sure, it’s something I've given to heroin addicts, because it occupies their opiate receptors. When they shoot up, they don’t feel the heroin.” He said, “Well, Dr. Bihari found that if you take a tiny amount of naltrexone, a very low dose, and you take it at bedtime, it sort of tweaks the opiate receptors in the brain and on the immune cells and by morning, it modulates the immune system to reverse autoimmune disease and it seems to stop many cases of terminal cancer from growing.”

I was very skeptical. But my wife had two aunts who had lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. They were actually on chemotherapy drugs, like methotrexate, and steroids like prednisone, that swelled them up. And the methotrexate was killing their bone marrow, affecting their heart. And they weren’t getting any better. So, I asked them if they wanted to try this low dose naltrexone.  They said, “Sure.” In one month, they were completely normal, off all drugs, and just taking this $12 a month prescription.

Then we had maybe 100 patients who were rheumatology patients with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, dermatomyositis. I would say that within one month, 95% of them are off all medications and feeling normal.

But I never force anybody to do these things. I ask them, “What do you want to do? Do you want to stick with the rheumatologist?” (Actually, I tell them always to stick with their rheumatologist or their oncologist.) “But do you want to try something a little different?” Many of them say, “No, I’m really happy with what I’m doing.” And I say, “That’s fine.” I would never want to force anything on anyone, and I don’t want anybody to force anything on me. Almost all of these patients we treated with autoimmune disease got better.

Then, a man walks in with pancreatic cancer, a young man in his 40s.  He told me he was an MD Anderson patient. He had biopsy-proven pancreatic cancer, with metastases to the liver. He had a young son, and a very pretty young wife, and he said he couldn't die. MD Anderson had told him that he would die within a few months. I asked him if he wanted to try this. He said, “Of course.” Within 3 months he went back to work. He’s in his 8th year now, and there's no sign of cancer. I published that in 2006 in Integrative Cancer Therapies. (See a clearer copy here.) He is still alive.

Then a fellow came in with B-cell lymphoma from a prestigious hospital in Chicago. They had tried all sorts of things with him. Nothing seemed to work. They told him the lymphoma would kill him unless he received more chemotherapy. We put him on this program. He had softball size tumors in his neck and his groin. We did a PET scan; it showed that these tumors existed and were active. Within 6 months, there was no sign of the cancer. We did another PET scan, and there was no sign of disease. We published that in 2007 in Integrative Cancer Therapies.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Did you get any interest from the oncology community?

DR. BERKSON - Zero

JULIA SCHOPICK – Did any patients take the study to their doctor and say, “I want to try this.”?

DR. BERKSON: Several did, and they were told, “This is investigational. It’s only with a few people. I think you should do what's been proven to be effective.”

JULIA SCHOPICK – But chemotherapy is NOT proven to be effective.

DR. BERKSON: I believe that, and you believe that. And maybe even the oncologists believe that.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Did you know that they did a survey of a lot of oncologists, and they said that they wouldn't take chemotherapy?

DR. BERKSON: Most of the oncologists I know would not take it.There’s an interesting story. Do you know Hugh Reardon? He was a good friend of mine. He had an international conference every few years. I used to speak at his conference. He had patients who had various forms of cancer that he was treating with intravenous vitamin C, and he added intravenous alpha lipoic acid. He was getting very good results. He was a professor, I won't say at which medical school. And the oncologists went to the dean of the school and said, “You know, he’s not an oncologist. He has no right to treat cancer at our institution.” And they actually stopped him from doing it.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Even though he was having such good results?

DR. BERKSON: They didn’t care. This is a story that Hugh related to me. The oncologist that had him stop the work was actually diagnosed with a very serious form of cancer, and people suggested to him that he’d better go to Hugh because Hugh could probably handle it. But he said no, he wanted chemotherapy. He died very soon afterwards.

JULIA SCHOPICK – I had thought that the punchline would be that he went to Hugh.

DR. BERKSON - No, like I say, many people are trained, rather than educated. Like my son was told, “You know everything there is to know about your field. You're board certified. That means you know everything. Anyone who tells you anything different doesn't know what they're talking about.”

JULIA SCHOPICK – I could understand that, if they had great success. I’m especially amazed with the kinds of conditions we've been talking about: terminal liver disease, cancer (especially pancreatic), rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, where there really aren't any good treatments. Multiple sclerosis. You know that I wrote an article about four anecdotal treatments that aren't so anecdotal after all. Three of the treatments I featured were ALA, LDN and the Ketogenic Diet. In the case of LDN, the doctors would rather prescribe $2000 a month prescriptions for drugs that make these people sicker.

DR. BERKSON: In 2007, I was invited by the National Cancer Institute to fly to Washington and give them a teaching session on what I’m doing with autoimmune disease and cancer. I was very surprised that it was very well received. (NOTE: Dr. Berkson received a standing ovation!) Dr. Maira Gironi from Italy flew in, and she said she is having magnificent results reversing MS with just a little bit of low dose naltrexone at bedtime. But you hear nothing about it because there are no very wealthy corporation promoting it.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Around the time that Dr. Gironi spoke at one of the conferences here recently, I did a big search of the public relations that came from the conference. I searched on Dr. Gironi’s name, as well as the names of her  co-investigators (I forget their names). It turned out that had done several studies, individually and together. Several of these studies were funded by Pharma; the other one, not funded by Pharma, was on LDN. Of course, as you and I know, the LDN study turned out to be much more paradigm-shifting; much more interesting. Guess which ones got the publicity?

DR. BERKSON - The ones that didn’t work.

JULIA SCHOPICK – The ones that were funded by the pharmaceutical companies!

DR. BERKSON - Of course.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Obviously. And I will give links to the public relations that followed, so that everyone can see it. The PR came from the pharmaceutical companies that had funded the studies.  (See the article, “Pharmaceutical News by Press Release? [OR: Low Dose Naltrexone Study Doesn't Make the News]”)

DR. BERKSON: This is all a given.

JULIA SCHOPICK – I hear you say that it’s a given. But it’s going to take people exposing it. I think that many of the people in this country would be shocked. They are not shocked about the money-making aspect. They get it. What they are shocked about is that when something works and no doctors are interested. They're not shocked that the drug companies aren't interested.  They are shocked that the doctors aren't. 

DR. BERKSON: You know, most doctors don’t know anything about these kinds of treatments, because there isn’t a pharmaceutical rep going into their office telling them about them.

JULIA SCHOPICK – But people are still shocked that the doctors aren't interested. For instance, with Silverlon – when it was the only thing that was able to heal my husband after 8 months of a non-healing wound.

DR. BERKSON - It was so simple.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Elegant, even. When I tell people that none of the neurosurgeons that I told about the Silverlon were the slightest bit interested, they cannot believe it. They say, “We know you to be an honest person. But are you telling the truth?” 

DR. BERKSON: But you see this in all aspects of American life, of human life. Money talks.  If a person does his homework and wants to do chemotherapy and radiation, that’s fine with me, especially if they know the chances that it may help them. But I think people should have a choice to do other things too, if they want.

JULIA SCHOPICK – That’s exactly how I feel.

So, as we come to the end of this interview, I’d like to say that I think it’s your sense of humor that has kept you, not only sane, but has kept you going. I mean, you give lectures all over the world. You’ve been invited to speak in Scotland, at the upcoming low dose naltrexone conference. In fact, you’ve spoken at just about every LDN conference that has been presented. I think it’s your wonderful sense of humor that keeps you from getting bitter.

DR. BERKSON - Well, there was a time I was very bitter, but it doesn't get you anywhere.

JULIA SCHOPICK – I am going to surprise you with something that attests to your sense of humor. The other day, I reread your pancreatic cancer study, and I want to read a section of it, and then we can discuss how funny it is. I almost died when I read it. This is what you wrote about one of your pancreatic cancer patients, “JA,” who responded so well to a combination of Alpha Lipoic Acid and Low Dose Naltrexone. You wrote:

"The authors say that the lack of progression of JA’s disease cannot be solely attributed to the single dose of chemotherapy that he received. It has been reported that gemcitabine’s effect on response rate and survival is disappointing."

This is perfect. It reminds me of my husband’s experience with Silverlon. We had a very similar experience: This very new, very innovative, relatively inexpensive treatment worked, when the standard-of-care treatments (i.e., repeated surgeries), only made Tim worse and worse. Do you know that the doctors really were convinced that it was the treatments they gave him 6 months earlier that “kicked in” -- on the very day we started the Silverlon?!

DR. BERKSON - I’m not surprised.

JULIA SCHOPICK – But this is, of course, what you were referring to?

DR. BERKSON: Yes.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Do you not think it’s your sense of humor that keeps you sane?

DR. BERKSON - I have a lot of interests outside of medicine. I like to go to the gym. It makes me happy. I love to go into the woods, and spend the day doing nothing, but sitting on a log, looking for mushrooms and things.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Don’t even mention mushrooms! I hope you know the difference. Well you’d know how to cure it.

DR. BERKSON - I’ve never seen sicker people than those with hepatotoxic mushroom poisoning. I eat very few wild mushrooms. And I like walking my dog, and doing all kinds of things like that. And reading books, fictional books.

JULIA SCHOPICK – You really are an “un-MD” kind of person. You really are much more like a PhD.

DR. BERKSON - I think I use my PhD more than I do my MD.

JULIA SCHOPICK – You think more like a PhD. I did a lot of reading about MDs versus PhDs. It made the MD seem more like military.

DR. BERKSON – I think medical education is a very militaristic type of program.

JULIA SCHOPICK – I have great hopes that, in this time of near-Depression in this country, that you may be the happy recipient of a lot of acclaim. I really do.

DR. BERKSON - From your mouth to God's ears.

JULIA SCHOPICK – I just know it. Pharma’s going to be very upset with this. I think we discussed earlier that Pharma is not happy with what's going to happen (i.e., the comparing of treatments with regard to their effectiveness). They're fighting it.

DR. BERKSON - Big Pharma does a lot of very important things. There are a lot of drugs that I use on my patients that are wonderful. Some of the antibiotics are very effective. Some of the blood pressure medications are wonderful drugs, and I use them every day. But some of them, I think are worthless.

JULIA SCHOPICK – You're right: Pharma has done an incredible amount of work. The problem comes, unfortunately, when they become involved in commissioning the studies that are done on their own medicines, and they literally hire the researchers and they tell them what results they want. Then they write the papers that go into the journals, and pay creditable doctors to sign their names to these articles. I’ll put up medical writer Melody Petersen’s interview on PBS, so people can read about how pharmaceutical companies often go the extra mile and lose their credibility. (Ms. Petersen's book, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs, is really excellent!)

DR. BERKSON: The alpha lipoic acid studies with diabetic neuropathy. This work was done in Germany originally, and they just had to repeat it over again here.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Now, why is that?

DR. BERKSON - That’s the system.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Why? We don’t trust any other country, do we?

DR. BERKSON - No, it has nothing to do with that. It’s a bureaucratic type of system. That’s City Hall, and you can't fight with City Hall.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Well, guess what? This could be a wonderful thing happening with this recession: that City Hall may have to be fought.

DR. BERKSON - I’m not so sure.

JULIA SCHOPICK – We were going to have a bet. But I would want to win that bet, because I would like to see alpha lipoic acid and low dose naltrexone and the ketogenic diet and Silverlon, and all the other treatments that are inexpensive and don’t have terrible side effects and they help people, become mainstream treatments. That’s what I would like to see.

DR. BERKSON: Julia, what I would like to see is for people to have medical freedom and to have a choice. And if somebody wants to get the full treatment with chemotherapy, that’s fine with me. But they should have a choice to do something else if they decide to do that.

JULIA SCHOPICK – Do you know who introduced the Access to Medical Treatment Act in the mid-1990s? Tom Daschle. That’s why I am so sad about him. I read his book, and he said exactly what you and I have been talking about –- that there are many treatments out there that are ignored and could help people, if they were more mainstream. This is the sad thing. I had been hopeful that his influence would bring some of that change.

Dr. Berkson, I would like to thank you for being my guest today for HonestMedicine.com. This has been one of the most interesting interviews!

DR. BERKSON - Thank you, Julia.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Dr. Berkson’s phone, email, website, and how to find his articles:
575-524-3720,Bberkson@nmsu.edu, www.drberkson.com
And to read his full-text papers on medical matters and in biology, google: Berkson, BM

LINKS/REFERENCES/RESOURCES

DR. BERKSON'S BOOKS

Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough: The Superb Antioxidant That May Slow Aging, Repair Liver Damage, and Reduce the Risk of Cancer, Heart Disease, and Diabetes -- publsihed in 1998.

Eunice Goostree’s review of The Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough – Eunice Goostree is one of the first patients whose life was saved by Dr. Berkson's use (against his superiors' orders) of ALA in the 1970s. Her Amazon.com review of the book was written in 1999, one year after the book was published.

User’s Guide to the B-Complex Vitamins, written with Dr. Berkson’s son, Arthur Berkson, MD

Syndrome X: The Complete Nutritional Program to Prevent and Reverse Insulin Resistance, written with Jack Challem and Melissa Diane Smith

A Users Guide to the B Vitamins, published by Basic Health Publications, Inc., one of the premier publishers of books on integrative medicine topics.

VIDEOS

Scroll down to hear/watch Dr. Berkson’s talk at the Fourth Annual Low Dose Naltrexone Conference.

LDN RESOURCES

The Promise Of Low Dose Naltrexone Therapy: Potential Benefits in Cancer, Autoimmune, Neurological and Infectious Disorders, a book by medical writer Elaine A. Moore and LDN advocate SammyJo Wilkinson. This book tells the complete story of LDN; an extremely valuable resource for patients to share with their physicians; contains the history of LDN research, including that of Dr. Berkson.

www.lowdosenaltrexone.org -- This website is lovingly maintained by Dr. David Gluck, a close childhood friend of LDN pioneer, Dr. Bernard Bihari. Dr. Gluck dedicates his life to carrying on Dr. Bihari's mission of educating both the public and the medical profession about the many uses of LDN. In addition to lots of other information, this website contains audios and videos from the LDN conferences have been held every year forthe last several years. Dr. Berkson's work and videos are included here.

www.ldners.org - This website is the brainchild of SammyJo Wilkinson, MS patient and LDN patient-advocate and author. (See her book above.) She works tirelessly to raise money for LDN research, and to get the word out to the public about LDN. Read SammyJo's inspiring LDN story here.

It is my honor to introduce you to Dr. Burt Berkson, one of the few physicians I believe to be a true visionary. In this interview, you will hear the true story of Dr. Berkson's successful use for over thirty years of Alpha Lipoic Acid to regenerate livers and other organs. It is also the story of the unfortunate link between money-driven medicine and medical research.

Dr. Berkson’s story originates in the mid to late 1970s, just as the shift from true scientific research to pharmaceutical-company based (and pharmaceutical-company-controlled) research was beginning to take place.

This is the story of an inexpensive, very effective treatment which initially received support from the National Institutes of Health, but was, in the end, abandoned, because no pharmaceutical company would take up the expensive task of officially studying the drug.

In the meantime, though, several studies were conducted, including one, conducted by Dr. Berkson and the National Institutes of Health’s Dr. Fred Bartter, of 79 people with extreme liver disease. 75 of these people fully recovered. Still, no pharmaceutical company was interested in pursuing this drug.

Dr. Berkson suspects that this lack of interest was because liver transplants were becoming very popular and Big Pharma didn’t want to interfere with the business of making money. (Don’t forget. Big Pharma makes a lot of money producing anti-rejection drugs for patients who have undergone organ transplants.)

Dr. Berkson practices medicine in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Patients come to him from all over the world. I know you'll find Dr. Berkson's story fascinating.

DOWNLOAD DR. BERKSON’S INTERVIEW HERE:

(The Interview is also transcribed here.)