The Fraud Squad----Medical "Practice":

[babe]

Are there any effective and affordable forms of health care left?

Is there good reason to allow people to be free to speak what they believe about their own health? If we don't implement totalitarian management of human beings, will humans be able to get effective and affordable treatments of their disease/illness? Rather than stack every example of quackery/medical care on one table and try to advance the medical literature where even professionals cannot all agree, I'd like to have some fun just talking about some of the less-believed medical "cures" that have been used by some, and that have some followers still alive.

Here is one of the topics that has suffered from general suppression by "mainstream" medicine: Ge-132, Germanium Sesquioxide. I once worked for a company that chemically prepared this for sale to alternative health care pill-pushers. I still have a bottle of it sitting among a thousand other bottles of quack medicines I use sometimes. I haven't been to the doctor for treatment of an actual illness since 1975. The last time I went for a check-up, two years ago, the doctors--two of them---were wondering what I was doing, what I was eating and such. "You're on track to live to be a hundred." "We don't see many patients as healthy as you are, even when they're forty years younger."

My wife who is a nurse was saying I'm a hypochondriac because I wanted her to fuss over me and she was just coming home tired of caring. . . . .

 

[babe]

Germanium, like a lot of other generally unheard-of elements, is present in soil and is taken up by plants, for no known reason. Although relatively rare as a component of the earth's lithosphere, the near-surface rock formations, it is nevertheless a mineral that is present in higher percentages in plutonic rock. It is not as heavy as many elements, but heavier than silicon, even a little heavier than iron, so it concentrated in rock at some depth during the earlier cooling phase of planet earth. It has never been found in protein structures made by living things, and has no known value as a "vitamin" or "mineral". Credible research on Germanium is practically non-existent. Still.

About thirty years ago, a Japanese doctor, a Dr. Asai, followed up on Russian reports of some medical uses of Germanium, and published some "scientific" research reports in Japanese medical journals. While working for an American chemical company, a sort of mom-and-pop small chemical manufacturer, I did the whole Index Medicus search for all the published literature. It was being claimed as acting specifically on our immune system, and was being reported as effective in shrinking tumors and cancers quite dramatically. It was being touted as having virtually no side-effects and impressively non-toxic. Dosages of a gram, sometimes twice a day, were being used.

Dr. Asai started an institute for promoting Germanium, and there was a huge fad that swept through Japan, and across the world. People were doing aquaculture using solutions of germanium in order to get "natural" or "organic" germanium veggies or grain sprouts so people could be happily trendy in believing their medicine was in tune with nature. . . . I had a fourteen-year old dog with cancer, and I gave it germanium sesquioxide from inorganic sources manufactured under my own quality control supervision. The tumor shrank, the dog lived another year. I let it go almost reverently for quality of life issues.

From a chemist's point of view, even "inorganic" germanium is available in ultra-high purity because of it's major use being in computer semiconductor materials, but it is likely that alternative pill-pushers will sell impure preparations even containing things like Arsenic in toxic amounts. . . . A perfect storm of issues that probably have not been adequately addressed by any research yet.

Today, people who try to sell preparations of germanium are rounded up, slapped with million-dollar fines, their stuff seized, and their companies bankrupted by legal proceedings not before a civil court with opportunity to rebut the charges, but before an FDA administrative judge with the prosecution bringing in a pharmaceutical-industry-paid shill from Sloan-Kettering who literally lives to shut down the competition. And unless you have a leading pharmaceutical-advertising "peer-reviewed research journal"-published controlled, double-blind study with over a hundred patients in each of three or four cohort groups, you're "cooked". So there is a huge "entry-fee", with at least a ten-year lead time and over ten million dollars cost before any small company can hope to market a germanium product.

A quick survey of the situation today will show critical reports claiming as many as 31 reported cases of adverse reactions proves it is toxic and dangerous. Are you kidding? Millions of people have eaten this stuff across the past thirty years, tens of thousands have believed it helped them. People have eaten it like sugar. . . . and nobody has ever done really good quality-control on producing it, well. . . . nobody but the semiconductor manufacturers.

 

[Scat]

Look out. Here comes One Brow to tell you that unless science has proven beyond a doubt the efficacy of any substance it is all quackery. I mean, it worked well for those taking Vioxx. Right?

I remember when L-tryptophan was banned because a few people died from a tainted batch.

There's also ephedra, PPA (nor-ephedrine) and a number of other highly effective supplements that have been banned because fat housewives thought that if 20mg works then 120mg must work even better!

 

[babe]

Look out. Here comes One Brow to tell you that unless science has proven beyond a doubt the efficacy of any substance it is all quackery. I mean, it worked well for those taking Vioxx. Right?

I'm trying to have fun here. I hope One Brow comes around. If One Brow wasn't willing to weigh in and defend the status quo, re-packaged as progress, I'd have nobody to talk to.

But if too many folks don't see where I'm heading here too quickly, maybe I'll eventually get to discuss some of the more orthodox and government-approved scams. . . . Ge-132 is an ideal subject for One Brow's convenience in exemplifying his points. I don't anticipate seeing a huge tidal shift in human nature anytime soon, and as long as there are any humans left to fret about their health, there will always be some kinds of cherished hopes. For some, it's government-packaged, and for some it's the village shaman's skill. And everything else we will forever find encouraging. The Codex Alimentarius will not change any of that, but it will for a while support some cartel interests. And become unpopular to mankind. Within thirty years no self-respecting human will admit they ever thought it would work. Maybe I'll still be alive with a cracking voice to tell youngsters to rely on their own intelligence more than any authority.

 

[One Brow]

Look out. Here comes One Brow to tell you that unless science has proven beyond a doubt the efficacy of any substance it is all quackery. I mean, it worked well for those taking Vioxx. Right?

It certainly helps to have a plausible means of efficacy. What is germanium sesquioxide supposed to do to cancer cells, but not not regular cells, and how does it make that determination? How can it separate out the 50+ different types of cancer, each with it's own biological peculiarities?

Vioxx was real medicine, and like any real medicine it had real effects, and therefore real side effects. Germanium does seem to have real side-effects, it's just lacking in the real effects.

I remember when L-tryptophan was banned because a few people died from a tainted batch.

There's also ephedra, PPA (nor-ephedrine) and a number of other highly effective supplements that have been banned because fat housewives thought that if 20mg works then 120mg must work even better!

Yet, vitamin A is poisonous in large doses, but has not been banned. It's almost like there is something more to it.

Scientists who study cancer are afraid of getting cancer, or having a family member get cancer, just like everyone else. Pharmaceutical company executives are afraid of getting cancer, or having a family member get cancer, just like everyone else. Politicians are afraid of getting cancer, or having a family member get cancer, just like everyone else. Believing that all these highly effective treatments are being suppressed for amount amounts to believing that these human beings are choosing money over family members. That's the result of the conspiracy. I'm being asked to believe that large groups of people in diverse sectors of society are all such compete pyschopaths that they don't care if their parent, spouse, or child dies from cancer, as long as it doesn't affect their profits. Needless ot say, I'm skeptical.

 

[Scat]

Look out. Here comes One Brow to tell you that unless science has proven beyond a doubt the efficacy of any substance it is all quackery. I mean, it worked well for those taking Vioxx. Right?

It certainly helps to have a plausible means of efficacy. What is germanium sesquioxide supposed to do to cancer cells, but not not regular cells, and how does it make that determination? How can it separate out the 50+ different types of cancer, each with it's own biological peculiarities?

Just because science hasn't yet shown how it works does not mean it doesn't work. Do you recall our in depth discussion on ephedra? You get so caught up in the specifics that you throw out the real world results and decide that it is nothing more than voodoo science.

Steroids are a great example. Athletes and weightlifters used anabolics for years with real world results all while the medical community poo-pooed them as being worthless. It wasn't until the early 80's that science finally started to take a closer look only to find that steroids indeed were highly effective and started researching as to why they were. By the mid 80's they were federally banned and a controlled substance in the same class of drugs as cocaine. That doesn't mean they were worthless until science showed otherwise.

 

[babe]

I don't have an active file on Germanium sesquioxide, but as I recall there were some reports, all or mostly in Japanese with only abstracts in English, which observed measureable changes in some immune system factors like interferon, macrophage activation, and other indications of immune system attack on the cancers. The specific role of germanium was never measured in any way, in terms of looking for or finding germanium on cell surfaces or bound to receptors or functional proteins. That is where I would think you need to look for any understanding.

I worked for two years on a research project that studied heavy metal binding to metallothionine proteins from yeast, mice, rats and dogs. The responding proteins were inducible and expressed only when there was some heavy metal in the diet/environment of the species. It was hard getting funding for continuing this project because it was not politically correct to discover how living things can adapt to pollution. . . .and still survive. A few generations of things living in these circumstances began to select for those that could adequately sequester and eliminate the toxic substances. Sorta like pathogenic infections develop resistance to antibiotics and populate hospitals. . . .

But I'd be glad to take the plastic cover off my atomic absorption spectrometer and start looking for germanium bound to immune cells or cancer cells or proteins in living things. . . . NIH probably would put my proposal on the back burner. . . . so you will just have to wait for the management of some pharmaceutical giant to see their way clear to patent germanium. Then some congressmen, maybe some officials at the NIH, will get calls from important and credible folks about the need for research.

Whether human or not, psychopathic or not, professionals are folks who have placed faith in the system and learned not to rock the boat very noticeably, and above all else they believe in our basic institutions and professionals and won't go out on any uncredible limb for any reason. We are indeed social creatures, some say sheep. Reluctance to expose ourselves to the sneers of mainstream followers is why we wait for science to move forward in every age, until some upstart succeeds in starting a new fashion of thought.

That said, we should probably not expect government to finance innovation from the general taxpayers funds, or expect any financially-interested organization to promote their own competition. I just think folks ought to be free to try.

 

[LogGrad98]

Scientists who study cancer are afraid of getting cancer, or having a family member get cancer, just like everyone else. Pharmaceutical company executives are afraid of getting cancer, or having a family member get cancer, just like everyone else. Politicians are afraid of getting cancer, or having a family member get cancer, just like everyone else. Believing that all these highly effective treatments are being suppressed for amount amounts to believing that these human beings are choosing money over family members. That's the result of the conspiracy. I'm being asked to believe that large groups of people in diverse sectors of society are all such compete pyschopaths that they don't care if their parent, spouse, or child dies from cancer, as long as it doesn't affect their profits. Needless ot say, I'm skeptical.

How does this reconcile with big tobacco and the tobacco lobby lining politicians' pockets?

 

[One Brow]

Just because science hasn't yet shown how it works does not mean it doesn't work.

Since when does science show that some potential cure does not work? The most it can show is no detectable effect discovered so far.

Do you recall our in depth discussion on ephedra? You get so caught up in the specifics that you throw out the real world results and decide that it is nothing more than voodoo science.

Vaguely. However, ephedra has, AFAIK, a known metabolic interaction with human cells that explains its effects (as do steroids). What does that have to do with this discussion? What is the proposed effect of germanium sesquioxide?

 

[One Brow]

How does this reconcile with big tobacco and the tobacco lobby lining politicians' pockets?

Because it's much easier to convince politicians to permist selling a poison to than to suppress valuable medicine.

 

[One Brow]

I don't have an active file on Germanium sesquioxide, but as I recall there were some reports, all or mostly in Japanese with only abstracts in English, which observed measureable changes in some immune system factors like interferon, macrophage activation, and other indications of immune system attack on the cancers.

There were also follow-up studies, where the results were not confirmed.

 

[babe]

There were also follow-up studies, where the results were not confirmed.

Sometimes even science boils down to incompetent he said/she said disputes. In the general population, there are maybe one percent who could read a scientific publication with adequate comprehension to pass a high shool quiz on what it was about and whether it said yea or nay. That is why I presume you prefer to defer to the "experts", but it is also why we should not. Someone who can read one of these papers and form an opinion on the methods and data other than that advanced by the researcher is rare. Hopefuly, some of those folks are the reviewers who look at it before publication. But there is no actual guarantee that will happen.

 

[Gyp Rosetti]

I'm sort of, sort of, with Babe here. Any of you ever heard of or know about DMSO? I myself never used it but my dad (who was a legit marathoner--2:39 was his PR I think) told me about it and said some of his running buddies, one of whom held the world record for Masters marathoners, used it and some swore by it. Like it was a cure all. But that one person died using it in the 70's or something and so the FDA shot it down or something and that's that. You can buy it online via the internet I think from Canada and I've considered it. I'm not in anyway saying go ahead and buy it but from I've heard it sounds like a remedy that is amazing for aches and pains, illness, a bunch of stuff. One side effect he said was that your breath evidently becomes God awful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfoxide

 

[babe]

I'm sort of, sort of, with Babe here. Any of you ever heard of or know about DMSO? I myself never used it but my dad (who was a legit marathoner--2:39 was his PR I think) told me about it and said some of his running buddies, one of whom held the world record for Masters marathoners, used it and some swore by it. Like it was a cure all. But that one person died using it in the 70's or something and so the FDA shot it down or something and that's that. You can buy it online via the internet I think from Canada and I've considered it. I'm not in anyway saying go ahead and buy it but from I've heard it sounds like a remedy that is amazing for aches and pains, illness, a bunch of stuff. One side effect he said was that your breath evidently becomes God awful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfoxide

DMSO is a powerful solvent for many things. I had a bottle of it in one research lab, the anti-cancer research group where I worked for some years. It absorbs through skin and into the bloodstream almost instantly, and can carry some other active pharmaceuticals with it. It could serve as an alternative to popping pills down the hatch and hoping they get absorbed, maybe help in some cases "target" an active agent to the exact site where you want it, as a skin cancer or an organ. Just inject the medicine in situo using the quickly absorbed carrier. Speculative possibilites that could be researched. . . . . if research funds were directed at the possibilites. At first blush it could hugely hurt the pill pusher folks but I don't see why they couldn't profit from that method just as well as the pills.

And yes, within seconds of letting it contact your skin, you can smell it on your breath.

 

[Scat]

As Babe mentioned, DMSO is great at getting substances into your body bypassing the need for oral or injectable methods. It also allows the substance to be utilized by the body without passing through the liver rendering it more potent in smaller doses. Again, to use the steroid analogy, mixing certain steroids with DMSO and then applying it to the skin is much more effective than taking that same steroid orally.

Also as Babe mentioned, it gives you horrid breath. Akin to someone having eaten raw garlic.