HONEST MEDICINE: My Dream for the Future

Important Message for all LDN (Low Dose Naltrexone) Users

To: Everyone who has benefited from taking LDN or who knows someone who has Benefited from it

There are now TWO WAYS to take the LDN POLL: Online and by Email.

The LDN Research Trust and LDN Aware need your help TO GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT LDN during International LDN Awareness Week in October!!

We’ve only got 10 days—till the end of September—to get over 2000 people to TAKE PART IN THE POLL at this link:

http://forum.ldnresearchtrust.org/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F1759-ldn-media-poll-pleas

Several people have had difficulty with signing on at the above link to take the poll. IF YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE, you can take the poll OFFLINE and send the results to contact@ldnresearchtrust.org.

Please HERE to see the POLL QUESTIONS:

SOS -- Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Poll

LDN USERS

LDN Research Trust/LDN Aware POLL -- Please answer these questions. Send answers to contact@ldnresearchtrust.org.

(THERE ARE 10 QUESTIONS. By answering them, you are helping to make International LDN Awareness Week a SUCCESS. Thank you!)

A:  Where did you hear about LDN?
1    From a fellow sufferer
2    In the media
3    Research on the internet
4    My doctor
5    Other

B: How much time passed between you hearing about LDN and starting to use it?

1    I started immediately 
2    Less than a month 
3    1– 6 months 
4    6 – 12 months 
5    More than a year

C: After you heard about LDN what prompted you to use it?

1    I waited until I had researched it for myself
2    I found out more about other sufferers
3    I felt there was no other alternative
4    My family persuaded/friends me to use it
5    My doctor recommended it

SiCKO "Hitman" Lee Einer on the new Health Care Act--Guest Column

Exposing the Myths of “Health Reform”

(Editor's Note: For other SiCKO-related postings, please go here. Thanks!)

    *****************

The Democratic Party has recently launched a PR push to assure voters of the wonders of the newly enacted “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” It seems to me that the Democratic Party is at least a little concerned that this controversial legislation might be an albatross around their necks come midterm elections. They should be.

I recently attended a public presentation on the Act, a presentation delivered by an aide to Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat, who sat on the HELP committee which produced this bill in the senate. Bingaman's aide made some glowing claims for the legislation, and while some were true, others were not just inaccurate but outrageously, incredibly false.

Bold-faced lies about matters of public welfare tend to get under my skin, and in this case, they motivated me to take keyboard in hand and address some of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding the Affordable Care Act.

Bernard Bihari, MD: 11-11-31 to 5-16-10

 Share your thoughts and memories

of Dr. Bihari.

 

Last Sunday, the world lost a truly wonderful man: Dr. Bernard Bihari, a medical hero, and one of my personal heroes, as well.

Dr. Bihari was the genius who discovered that a very low dose of naltrexone, a drug that had been approved at a higher dose by the FDA for another purpose entirely, could help people with some of the most difficult-to-treat diseases.

Thanks to Dr. Bihari, tens of thousands (some say hundreds of thousands) of people with multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, HIV/AIDS and even cancer are now living better lives. Many are symptom-free.

Dr. Bihari had the highest of credentials: a Bachelors degree from Cornell, and his MD degree from Harvard. But he never lost sight of his true mission: to lessen the suffering of real people.

Free Ebook Now Available for International LDN Awareness Week: "The Faces of Low Dose Naltrexone"

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.

The Story of Low Dose Naltrexone is, indeed, impressive.

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.

International Low Dose Naltrexone Awareness Week: October 19-25th, 2009

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

Low Dose Naltrexone on Wellness Talk Radio & Blog Talk Radio

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.

Guest Columns by Daphne White About Comparative Effectiveness Research -- Reprinted from TheIntegratorBlog.com

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.

The "Kabuki Play" of Monied Interests Around the $1.1-Billion Comparative Effectiveness Research Initiative, By Daphne White, CHTP

(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.)

CAM and Comparative Effectiveness Research: Are We Going to Play? (By Daphne White, CHTP)

(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.”