Classical Values :: Free Speech

January 24, 2010

Free Speech

It seems a lot of folks are upset by the recent Supreme Court decision on corporate free speech. Let me reprise a discussion at Talk Polywell on some aspects of health care that have a bearing on why corporate free speech is important. The discussion was about life extension and how cooling the body in trauma situations helps prevent damage until treatment can be obtained. Currently such methods only gain you an hour or an hour and a half. It is often enough.

kurt9

The most common long-duration medical procedure performed in the U.S. is bypass surgery. Traditionally, the patient is put on a heart-lung machine while the surgery is performed. It is believed that the brain damage that results from bypass surgery (bypass surgery almost always reduces patient IQ by around 15 points - this is real brain damage) is due to the heart-lung machine. I do not believe this. However, most of the medical community does and as such, they are very eager to utilize a technology to cool the patient to near zero C such as to eliminate the need for the heart-lung machine.

I expect all hospitals and clinics that do bypass surgery to utilize this technology within 5 years. Of course, it is much better to chelate with EDTA than to under go bypass surgery. However, the FDA and AMA do not recognize EDTA chelation as effective. The reason is economics. Bypass surgery cost $100k, which is paid by insurance. EDTA chelation typically runs around $3k, which is usually not paid by insurance. Since EDTA chelation actually works in 75% of the cases, the medical industry would loose a considerable income stream if EDTA chelation become popular. Since bypass surgery is one of the most common surgeries performed in the U.S., this presents a significant percentage of the income revenue for the MD's, clinics, and hospitals. They are loath to loose this income stream. Don't be surprised. The medical field and its players are just as greedy, corrupt, and evil as any other private industry or government-funded milieu (e.g. NASA, Tokamak fusion, climate research, etc.).

So I asked:

A lot of this sort of thing was sorted in the electrical industry with UL which was designed to lower insurance losses.

If only we had a medical UL instead of the FDA.

So my question is: why aren't insurance companies pumping for lower cost therapies?

And I got this reply:

kurt9

I think the recent supreme court ruling on free speech will help to end FDA tyranny.

One would think that the insurance companies would be interested in lower cost therapies. One would also think that an effective anti-aging therapy would be considered a form of preventive medicine. Why the industry is slow to respond to this kind of thinking is not clear to me.

Aubrey de Grey thinks its due to cultural inertia, which we calls the "pro-aging" trance. I think its due to medical bureaucracy and that the industry itself does not favor such an approach because it will lead to radical downsizing. Nothing will down size the medical industry more than an effective cure for aging. Curing aging will do to the medical industry what the mp3 downloads are doing to the music industry.

I think the founders had it right. The answer to bad speech is more speech. With the internet multiplying the venues available for people to speak their minds (you are reading me - an unknown with no access to big media aren't you?) the risks from corporate speech are much less than they were when big media was a one way street.

Update: 1319z 25 Jan 2010

Before you run off to your nearest chelation therapy provider see what Jeff has to say in the comments.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

posted by Simon on 01.24.10 at 10:40 PM

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Comments

You may have picked a poor example; it's not clear that the evidence supports the efficacy of EDTA chelation for atherosclerotic coronary artery disease. I have attached the following abstracts from a PubMed search; if you have other evidence in support, it would be interesting; I have no personal dog in the fight.

Am Heart J. 2000 Jul;140(1):139-41.

Chelation therapy for coronary heart disease: An overview of all clinical investigations.
Ernst E.

Department of Complementary Medicine, School of Postgraduate Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Exeter, United Kingdom. E.Ernst@exeter.ac.uk

Comment in:

Am Heart J. 2002 Nov;144(5):E10; author reply E11.
Am Heart J. 2000 Jul;140(1):4-5.

BACKGROUND: Chelation therapy is popular in the United States. The question of whether it does more good than harm remains controversial. AIM: The aim of this systematic review was to summarize all the clinical evidence for or against the effectiveness and efficacy of chelation therapy for coronary heart disease. METHODS: A thorough search strategy was implemented to retrieve all clinical investigations regardless of whether they were controlled or uncontrolled. RESULTS: The most striking finding is the almost total lack of convincing evidence for efficacy. Numerous case reports and case series were found. The majority of these publications seem to indicate that chelation therapy is effective. Only 2 controlled clinical trials were located. They provide no evidence that chelation therapy is efficacious beyond a powerful placebo effect. CONCLUSION: Given the potential of chelation therapy to cause severe adverse effects, this treatment should now be considered obsolete.

also:
Medscape J Med. 2008 May 13;10(5):115.

Why the NIH Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) should be abandoned.
Atwood KC, Woeckner E, Baratz RS, Sampson WI.

Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Newton, Massachusetts, UAS. katwood@partners.org

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) was begun in 2003 and is expected to be completed in 2009. It is a trial of office-based, intravenous disodium ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetic acid (Na(2)EDTA) as a treatment for coronary artery disease (CAD). A few case series in the 1950s and early 1960s had found Na(2)EDTA to be ineffective for CAD or peripheral vascular disease (PVD). Nevertheless, a few hundred physicians, almost all of whom advocate other dubious treatments, continued to peddle chelation as an office treatment. They claim that chelation dramatically improves symptoms and prolongs life in 80% to 90% of patients. In response, academics performed 4 controlled trials during the 1990s. None favored chelation, but chelationists repudiated those findings. We have investigated the method and the trial. We present our findings in 4 parts: history, origin and nature of the TACT, state of the evidence, and risks. We present evidence that chelationists and their organization, the American College for Advancement in Medicine, used political connections to pressure the NIH to fund the TACT. The TACT protocols justified the trial by misrepresenting case series and by ignoring evidence of risks. The trial employs nearly 100 unfit co-investigators. It conflates disodium EDTA and another, somewhat safer drug. It lacks precautions necessary to minimize risks. The consent form reflects those shortcomings and fails to disclose apparent proprietary interests. The trial's outcome will be unreliable and almost certainly equivocal, thus defeating its stated purpose. We conclude that the TACT is unethical, dangerous, pointless, and wasteful. It should be abandoned.

Jeff · January 25, 2010 08:07 AM

Jeff,

Thanks for that. The fact that the placebo effect is so strong is interesting.

Still. I think a UL tied to health insurance companies is a better model than the FDA.

And the use of body chill to avoid heart/lung machines seems like an advance.

M. Simon · January 25, 2010 08:16 AM

I've always been confused about this notion that delaying aging is somehow going to save scads of health care dollars. If I'm missing something I hope someone can set me straight. Unless you're arguing that eventually we'll be able to halt aging and people can live (and work, pay taxes, etc.) forever, isn't delaying aging just pushing the high end-of-life health costs further down the line? And if we're adding an extra 20-30 years per person--20-30 years of SS payments, routine health care, etc., aren't we setting ourselves up for just as much fiscal trouble, just in a different form? Please enlighten me.

Gene · January 25, 2010 12:25 PM

Gene,

I dunno. It wasn't my idea. I just liked the bit about free speech.

M. Simon · January 25, 2010 01:34 PM

Chelation therapy is debunked at Quackwatch.org:

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/chelation.html

Still, the FDA is crazy. I think it would be better to let the trial lawyers have a field day sorting it out.

Also, the fear of cognitive decline being a result of bypass surgery is largely groundless. According to the latest studies, any cognitive decline that occurs among heart patients is similar, with or without bypass surgery.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/575122

Considering the age group most of them are in (as well as their overall vascular condition), it shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, diseased arteries feed the brain as well as the heart.

Eric Scheie · January 25, 2010 03:43 PM