HONEST MEDICINE: My Dream for the Future

Getting the Word to Washington About What REAL Comparative Effectiveness Research Would Look Like

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?

Julia Schopick’s Comment on the Institute of Medicine’s Proposed Panel: Comparative Effectiveness Research of Medical Treatments

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.

Burt Berkson, MD, PhD, Talks With Honest Medicine About His Work and Our Medical System: The Interview Transcribed

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.