In article
<[email hidden]
..au>,
Peter Moran said:<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Patients will have the chance to get some medical care, even if it's
called "experimental".
Or not. The issue here in relation to chelation (there were a number of
other charges of poor medical practice) was that Kadile was advertising in
the newspapaers that chelation would reverse atherosclerotic narrowing of
blood vessels. He had to admit in court that there is no evidence at all
that chelation ever does so.
Correct.
Quoted message said:In fact no chelationist has ever shown this happening even though many of
their patients must have had serial radiology that could demonstrate it.
It could be even demonstrated by ultrasound in carotid or other superficial
vessel atherosclerosis.
Again, correct. None of the randomized, double-blind studies done thus
far has ever produced solid evidence of such an effect from chelation.
Indeed, none of the studies, period, including non-blinded and
non-randomized studies, has shown such an effect, as far as I'm aware.
Quoted message said:Now that lack of evidence doesn't mean that "no one knows" whether it works
in this way or not. There have been thirty or forty years in which
numerous practitioners in various degrees of association with the mainstream
(where the process originated, it was never truly "alternative"😉 applying
the method might have produced such cases if such beneficial effects were
ever being observed.
Indeed. In fact, even the chelationists themselves are starting to
abandon the claim that chelation therapy causes atherosclerotic plaques
to decrease in size. Instead, they are now making new hand-waving claims
that chelation therapy supposedly improves symptoms by "increasing
nitric oxide production." There is no good evidence that it does this
or, if it does, that the nitric oxide produced is enough to cause any
objective improvement in blood flow through atherosclerotic vessels,
either, but lack of evidence never stopped the chelationists from making
claims before.
Quoted message said:On the contrary, mainstream medicos and especially cardiologists who might
benefit financially from the addition of such a lucrative procedure to their
practices abandoned the procedure.
Indeed. Mainstream cardiologists could potentially make boatloads of
money doing chelation therapy in their offices, particularly
cardiologists who don't do invasive procedures like cardiac
catheterizations and balloon angioplasty. EDTA is relatively cheap, and
the mark-up is high. Heck, it wouldn't even matter that much if
insurance won't pay for it, because people will put up their own money
for the treatment--which is even better, because the doctor could then
get paid cash on the barrel right away, rather than having to wait the
30-90 days for the insurance company to pay up. Despite this financial
incentive to set up chelation practices, the vast majority of
cardiologists choose not to, because they have quite correctly concluded
that chelation is an ineffective therapy for atherosclerotic heart
disease.
Quoted message said:One is entitled to assume that the
chelationists know full well that they are not affecting atherosclerosis,
but are prepared to exploit the variable progress and placebo-related respon
ses that are common in vascular diseases or are just plain dumb enough not
have any clue what they are doing..
I think it's a mix of the two. A few chelationists probably know full
well that it's a worthless therapy, but figure that it probably does no
harm, so they might as welll make money off it (not entirely
true--dangerous cardiac arrhythmias and even kidney damage are potential
complications). Most are probably such "true believers" that they've
somehow managed to convince themselves that all the evidence showing
that chelation does no detectable good for atherosclerotic heart disease
is a conspiracy by eeevvilll conventional medicine to "suppress" their
therapy.
--
Orac |"A statement of fact cannot be insolent."
|
|"If you cannot listen to the answers, why do you
| inconvenience me with questions?"
