Kelatox Suppositories
"Removes and Improves"
Heavy Metal Detox System
Twenty
Reasons American Orthodox Medicine Hasn't
Widely Prescribed Chelation Therapy
Notes
from Chapter Five of
"The Chelation Answer" by Dr Morton Walker (1982)
With
nearly thirty years elapsing since chelation therapy was reported
beneficial in reversing hardening of the arteries, it still is not
generally accepted by orthodox medicine. The use of this treatment
remains relatively unknown and controversial in the United States,
although a number of countries such as Russia, West Germany, Czechoslovakia,
Japan, Norway, Sweden, Yugoslavia, and others have begun to make
it their first choice for rejuvenating the cardiovascular system.
It's logical for you to ask why such a circumstance exists in our
own country. I've wondered as well. In studying the history of chelation
therapy, the participating physicians of the American Academy of
Medical Preventics acknowledge twenty reasons that could be responsible.
1)
During the early times when EDTA was first injected for reversing
heart and blood vessel diseases, the medical researchers were still
looking for a one-shot *'magic bullet" to do the job. They
failed to take into ac count that specific lifestyle improvements
were required by the patient whose arteries had deteriorated over
many years. The doctors permitted patients to continue smoking,
get no exercise, eat a high-fat and high-sugar diet, take no nutritional
supplements, and do other damaging things to their bodies. No comprehensive
therapeutic approach was employed, as it is to day, to minimize
the potential for unsuccessful treatment of vascular disease. Consequently,
there were failures, some of which were at least partially
due to continued heavy smoking and other defective lifestyle problems
such as improper diets, mineral and vitamin deficiencies, or other
nutritional imbalances. All of these failures were entirely blamed
on EDTA chelation therapy....
2) Only recently has hardening of the arteries been understood to
come from a combination of complex causes, including the repeated
abnormal subdivision of a smooth muscle cell, aberrant calcium metabolism,
binding of this calcium with lipids and polysaccharides and other
substances into a cement like material, cross-linking of collagen
and elastin, platelet aggregations, and vasospasm. Medicine's new
comprehension of the complexity of arterial disease has finally
caused doctors to abandon their search for a single therapeutic
"magic bullet." They finally are also beginning to understand
that the complex causes take years to develop and are reversible
processes.....
3)
Medicine and the media have grossly overemphasized the simplistic
blood fat theory of hardening of the arteries. Orthodox physicians
tend to approach the problem of narrowed blood vessels as if it
was an obstruction of inert tubes. Arteries and veins, of course,
are comprised of living, pumping, flexible cells. ... (Chelation
therapy) simply doesn't fit the old atherosclerosis model that doctors
were taught....
4)
Current advances in bioengineering have produced significant developments
in noninvasive blood vessels and circulation testing. Use of some
of this new technology is easily accomplished in any physician's
office if he or she makes a financial investment to acquire the
equipment and takes time to learn about it. Painless, noninvasive
tests will predictably eventually replace the expensive and dangerous
angiograms performed today in hospitals, which all too often lead
to coronary artery bypass operations. The primary reason angiograms
are performed are as diagnostic precursors to open heart surgery.....
5)
Angiography has unfortunately been relied on for over thirty years
to provide a supposedly accurate diagnosis and then to determine
the success or failure of any treatment. As I reported in the last
chapter, now we have proof of just how erroneous these readings
of angiograms have been, even when done by the most renowned angiologists
in the field. They simply have not been giving correct, reproducible
information. Yet, surgeons are still operating based on these imprecise
studies—and patients are dying from operations they did not
need! ...
6)
By training almost 1000 catheter-oriented specialists each year,
American medicine is forcing itself to favor invasive techniques
of diagnosis and surgery. Cardiologists have a vested interest in
continuing the use of invasive coronary angiographic procedures
far in excess of our needs. Cardiovascular surgeons have proliferated
in number, as well. Neither group of specialists has any interest
in promoting the use of noninvasive therapies that could be performed
in-office by the average family physician....
7)
Ignorance, hostility, and misinformation from cardiovascular surgeons,
peripheral vascular surgeons, and other specialists whose income
is gained from the employment of invasive studies and traditional
therapies, have kept patients from knowing enough to bother about
investigating chelation therapy as a viable alternative. Laypersons
are frequently given completely false information regarding chelation
therapy. The best estimate is that heart surgeons and other vascular
specialists will lose 75 to 80 percent of their referrals, since
most chelation patients are restored to a pain-free and active lifestyle.
8)
It's only within the past couple of years that chelation clinicians
have been able to document their cases, using the new, sophisticated,
and ac curate radioisotope studies. Until now, the refusal
of these holistic doctors to subject their patients to dangerous
before-and-after angiography studies has contributed to the lack
of recently published information in the scientific literature regarding
the dramatic clinical improvements seen in arteriosclerotic heart
and blood vessel diseases in patients receiving chelation therapy....
10)
Although only approximately 5 percent of EDTA is absorbed from the
gastrointestinal tract, some physicians, not wishing to be bothered
with the expense and effort of the intravenous route of administration,
have utilized oral EDTA in the treatment of chronic lead or other
heavy metal poisoning. This oral use of EDTA is considered dangerous
by toxicologists and poor medical practice by the American Academy
of Medical Preventics. The oral administration of EDTA tends to
increase systemic absorption of lead, since it gets chelated
from the gastrointestinal tract into body cells. These negative
reports regarding the use of EDTA by mouth in lead poisoning have
further confused the average orthodox physician about the potential
value of chelation therapy.
11)
A particularly devasting negative conclusion in one of the eight
articles on chelation therapy written by Drs. Kitchell and Meltzer—-their
1963 * 'reappraisal" of the treatment—has been quoted
repeatedly by opponents of chelation therapy such as the National
Research Council as the definitive statement on the subject. 37
If one carefully reads the other seven favorable articles by Kitchell
and Meltzer, and then focuses on the two paragraphs immediately
preceding this eighth widely quoted "negative" conclusion,
you will find that the authors had found chelation therapy for the
legs actually was useful. The two researchers reported that chelation
caused "improved blood flow" in small arteries below the
knee, but not in larger vessels. Their statement clearly indicates
that they did find benefits from chelation therapy in vascular disease
even though Kitchell and Meltzer were incorrectly using it as a
"magic bullet." ....
12)
Excessively large doses of intravenous EDTA were originally injected
much too quickly into patients in the 1950s by the early medical
researchers. The result was that some people died not too long after
the treatment and EDTA was blamed. These are cases which I shall
report on in Chapter 6. As much as 10 grams of EDTA injected daily
within ten to fifteen minutes were utilized, and later changes
seen in the kidneys were considered evidence of the "apparent
nephrotoxicity" of the drug. Without realizing it, a classic
mistake in medicine had been made.
It
was later found that so-called chelation deaths were actually due
to the toxic effects of lead on the kidneys. Too frequent and too
fast infusion of high doses of EDTA will send excess lead from the
blood suddenly into the kidneys. Lead and other heavy metals are
well known to be toxic to the kidneys.
Such
incorrect conclusions nonetheless produced a distorted picture regarding
the kidney toxicity of EDTA, which still persists with the careful
assistance of the opponents to chelation in organized medicine.
The dosage schedule as currently employed by doctors following the
American Academy of Medical Preventics Protocol makes EDTA safe.
13)
Clinicians not fully informed about the way EDTA acts in the human
body have expressed fear that patients might lose essential calcium
from bones and teeth in addition to the pathologic calcium in the
arteries. In fact, one research study on rhesus monkeys that were
administered repeated EDTA infusions did show loss of skeletal calcium.
However, the study's procedure was faulty. The monkeys never received
mineral supplements and were confined to small cages. They weren't
ever allowed to exercise. Lack of exercise alone will promote loss
of calcium from the bones....
14)
Medical and health insurance companies have generally refused reimbursement
for claims from patients who had received chelation therapy and
its related testing. This failure to reimburse policy holders stems
primarily from a special meeting held by the Social Security Administration
a dozen years ago to formulate an official policy regarding whether
Medicare should pay the costs of chelation therapy. Immediately
following this meeting, a directive to all Social Security offices
was received forbidding Medicare reimbursement for chelation
therapy when administered for hardening of the arteries. Yet, no
testimony was permitted to be taken from chelating physicians despite
their flying to so testify at the Washington, D.C., meeting called
by Theodore Bidwell, then the Director of the Social Security Administration.
After
Medicare stopped paying for chelation therapy, the other major private
health insurance carriers adopted the same policy.... The Medicare
rules are now changing....
15)
Before the Kefauver-Harrison Act of 1962 was passed to protect the
public from harmful and ineffective pharmaceuticals, following the
thalidomide tragedy, the package insert for EDTA listed the drug
as "possibly effective" for hardening of the arteries.
It was listed as useful in the treatment of angina, vascular claudication,
and cerebrovascular disease. After 1962, the PDA was required by
law to demand that Abbott Laboratories and other pharmaceutical
manufacturers of EDTA prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the drug
was effective for the indications contained in the package insert.
But the patents on EDTA were expiring and the required medical research
to substantiate prior claims would cost the manufacturers from twenty
to fifty million dollars and take from eight to ten years. They
were forced to remove the "possibly effective" claim by
failing to make the heavy research investment, leaving behind with
no explanation the misleading statement that "it is not recommended
for the treatment of generalized arteriosclerosis associated with
advancing age." This statement was probably allowed to stay
as a legal protection from potential product liability actions against
the manufacturer.
Today,
the PDA will not remove the misleading warning without the manufacturer
initiating such a request and providing substantial documentation
to justify any change. With EDTA no longer being a patentable drug
by itself, no pharmaceutical company will make the investment for
such research documentation. And the misleading statement continues
to appear on the package insert, frightening away any orthodox physician
who might consider using EDTA for hardening of the arteries.
16)
Historically, the dead hand of orthodoxy has routinely delayed the
advance of knowledge in medicine. Most major medical developments
such as vitamin C for scurvy and other more re cent modalities
have required over thirty years before gaining general acceptance.
17)
Most orthodox physicians are trained to only accept the results
of double-blind studies. Performing double-blind tests with EDTA
chelation therapy can't be done, because patients are aware of the
drug's action in their bodies from various symptoms I shall discuss
in the next chapter. No one is likely to accept a placebo when he
is enrolled in a treatment series for reversing or preventing hardening
of the arteries. It requires sitting for four hours each time over
twenty or thirty treatments. While placebo testing is standard procedure
for trials with new drugs on terminal patients, chelation physicians
don't consider it justified to give a placebo to someone dying from
vascular disease who could be saved by giving him the real EDTA....
18)
Before the establishment of the American Academy of Medical Preventics
six years ago, there was no group of physicians competent to judge
the standards for delivering chelation therapy. The AAMP went about
setting those standards and in October 1980 adopted a protocol for
the procedure. But until now, nonchelating orthodox doctors were
sitting in judgment on physicians using a therapy with which mainstream
medicine was unacquainted.
19)
Practically all physicians have been inadequately trained in the
new field of using minerals for an organic effect—bioinorganic
chemistry—of which chelation is the basic biological mechanism.
Indeed, the entire pharmacology and therapeutic applications of
chelating agents in medicine are totally new. The average doctor
simply does not understand how and why chelating agents work, even
in simple lead poisoning.
20)
It's not uncommon for physicians to fail to read their own medical
literature in which chelation therapy is extensively described,
discussed, and explained...."
