HipNixon
New Blood
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2008
- Messages
- 24
This is a shameless plug for an article that I printed in my newspaper last month. It has generated several letters to the editor and some harassing telephone calls.
I thought you might like to see how skepticism looks when its written for the mainstream media. I went to great lengths to make sure it was fair to both sides.
Trick or treatment?
Local doctor says he can cure severe brain and heart problems, but medical experts say the procedure is modern snake oil and may kill some patients.
By Michael Hartwell
In a small office filled with framed Bible passages and Kevin Trudeau books about medical conspiracies, Dr. Raymond Psonak confidently states that he can cure or severely reduce the effects of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Lou Gehrig’s disease and autism.
“That’s the biggest thing we’re doing now,” said Psonak of autism. He runs the Environmental Health & Complementary Medicine clinic near the Interstate 495 ramp in Gray with his wife Janet, a registered nurse. She assists him and doubles as the receptionist.
Psonak, a former engineer and a licensed osteopath, uses a technique called chelation therapy where patients are hooked up to an IV drip and receive ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid, known as EDTA.
Laura, a 38-year-old mother from Cumberland has two sons, one 6 and one 7, with forms of autism being chelated by Psonak. She asked that her last name and the names of her children be left out.
“I immediately saw changes in my sons,” said Laura. “I recovered my oldest child with it.”
She said she was frustrated with the lack of hope her regular doctor gave her in regards to treatment for autism.
“I couldn’t believe what I was being told, that there was nothing I could do,” she said. Laura said she read a couple books about biomedical solutions like chelation and found more support on the Internet.
She said before chelation, her older son could only say two words: “Momma” and “more.” Now, according to Laura, he can compose sentences and taught himself to operate a computer by watching his brother use it.
According to Psonak, chelating-agent EDTA was developed in American in the 1940s to treat shipbuilders who had high exposure to lead. EDTA binds to heavy metals in the bloodstream and it is removed by the urinary system.
Psonak said that most doctors misunderstand an array of neurological disorders. He said these disorders can be attributed to heavy metal poisoning, such as lead or mercury, and chelation therapy will remove them and help reverse the damage.
Psonak said chelation agents also work to unclog blood vessels and can eliminate the need for certain operations, although most experts are skeptical.
In a typical week, Psonak said he administers chelation therapy to 12 to 15 different patients. Some come to the office multiple times a week, depending on the diagnosis, and each visit costs between $100 and $160.
“Lou Gehrig’s disease is pretty much a death sentence,” said Psonak. “There’s nothing the medical profession can offer.”
Experts disagree
Dr. Ron Burgess of Southern Maine Medical Center in Kennebunk, on the other hand, said he knows exactly why he doesn’t use chelation to treat neurological disorders: it’s dangerous and it there’s no reason to believe it works.
Burgess is also the president of the Maine chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and said he warns parents of children with neurological disorders like autism to avoid chelation therapy.
"You have to weigh the risks and the benefits," said Burgess. "The risks far outweigh any benefit you could get."
Burgess said chelation may cause low blood pressure, low blood sugar and loss of consciousness or even death. He said on top of that, no study has concluded any benefits of chelation therapy for neurological disorders.
Psonak said the only side effects he’s aware of are to blood pressure and blood sugar, and he compensates for this by having the patient eat before treatment and slowly administering the EDTA. He said a treatment session takes about three hours and the only death he’s heard was from an allergic reaction.
"The only time chelation is effective is when someone has acute lead poisoning," said Burgess. "It’s a standard medical treatment that’s been pulled over to the complimentary medicine"
Complimentary and alternative medicine is a popular branch of medicine that is based on new age religious beliefs instead of scientific observations. Burgess said there is a lot less government regulation in complimentary and alternative medicine.
“Wherever services are scattered and uneven, you see a rise of fad cures and pseudoscience, said Vincent Strully, chief executive officer and founder of the New England Center for Children in Southborough, Mass, a school that specializes in teaching autistic children. He said autistic children need to be treated with educational approaches, “Not chemistry and psychopharmacology.”
Burgess said that even when children come in with acute lead poisoning, chelation therapy isn’t always the answer.
"We're always very hesitant to chelate kids because it could cause more damage," said Burgess. He said that chelation therapy pulls heavy metals that have settled into the bones and tissue. These metals travel through the blood stream and into the brain, where they may cause additional damage.
Strully said doctors like Psonak believe their treatments are working because of confirmation bias. That is, when they see a patient who seems to be approving they attribute it to the treatment. When patients don’t improve they write it off as a fluke. In something as fluid as human behavior, it’s easy to think the patient is improving when they are staying the same.
“Wherever services are scattered and uneven, you see a rise of fad cures and pseudoscience,” said Strully. He said until evidence surfaces that shows otherwise, autistic children need to be treated with educational approaches, “Not chemistry and psychopharmacology.”
Parents swear by chelation
Laura said she is confident that chelation worked for her children.
“They’re wrong, they absolutely wrong,” she said of doctors who reject chelation. “I have two sons in my living room who have been cured. How is it that parents are not being told about this?”
She now heads a support group in Portland made up of more than a score of mothers with autistic children who use chelation therapy.
Speaking in general about parents who give their children chelation therapy, Dr. Robert Baratz, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and an active researcher, said it’s not uncommon for parents to see positive results that aren’t there.
“When you want to believe, you believe,” said Baratz. He said some autistic children naturally show improvements or receive false diagnosis. Baratz said a parent who has tried an unconventional treatment will attribute any positive results to that treatment, even if they are using mainstream treatment at the same time.
He said to see if a treatment works, large studies need to be made by “Objective, dispassionate observers.” He said it’s a bad idea to take the word of desperate parents and doctors who are already selling the treatment.
“In science, you make an observation and you try to figure out why it happens. What these guys are doing is starting with a conclusion and trying to prove it,” said Baratz. He said the research clearly shows that chelating autistic children doesn’t help them and puts then at risk of serious side effects.
“The fact of the matter is, this is a form of child abuse,” said Baratz. “And they’re absolutely in danger of dying.”
Metal poisoning
“All the autistic kids we have tested have heavy metal poisoning,” said Psonak. He said autism is caused by mercury poisoning and most of the people he tests show some form of heavy metal poisoning and are in need of chelation treatment.
Burgess said the problem is there is no standard for what amount of heavy metal exposure is a cause for concern.
“I call that the penny stock argument,” said Baratz. “When a penny stock doubles in value, how much did you make?”
“A penny,” he said. He said the levels being observed by chelation doctors like Psonak are usually a few parts per billion.
“No one has a level of zero,” said Baratz. He said tests have shown trace amounts in the graves of indigenous people.
Psonak said that autism rates used to be one in 3,000, but now the rate is 1 in 150. He said this jump can partially be explained by thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was present in vaccines until 1999. He said some vaccines still have some heavy metals in them.
“The rates of autism have continued unaffected by the introduction and removal of thimerosal,” said Strully
Burgess said children will get more than four times the amount of mercury from eating a predatory fish meal, like tuna or swordfish than they would have got from a vaccine when thimerosal was used.
Psonak said that when most doctors test for heavy metal poisoning, they use a standard blood test and will often come up with negative results. He said this is flawed because heavy metals may have been absorbed into tissues and bones.
He said when he tests a patient to see if they have heavy metal poisoning and are in need of chelation therapy, he gives them a single chelation treatment to draw out the metals and then checks their blood for heavy metals.
“The recommendation for chelation is typically preceded by a phony test for heavy metals, following by a phony claim that the cause of the autism is heavy metal poisoning,” said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist who operates the website Chelation.watch.org. He said the treatment is worthless for anything other than acute lead poisoning.
Cleaning blood vessels
Psonak said that chelation therapy can also clear blood vessels of calcium buildups. He said in the 11 years he’s been giving chelation therapy, he’s seen numerous patients make miraculous recoveries.
He said one patient had a gangrene leg that three different surgeons said should been amputated. Psonak said gangrene is when blood is unable to feed oxygen to tissue and he chelated the man to improve blood flow. He said the gangrene got better over the next month and the surgeon said he no longer needed to amputate if it continued to improve. It improved, according to Psonak, and no amputation was ever needed.
On his website, Psonak says most coronary bypass operations are unnecessary.
“If you have been told that you need a coronary bypass operation, you can "bypass' the bypass with Chelation therapy,” it reads.
Psonak said the Food and Drug Administration has approved chelation therapy for lead poisoning, but nothing else.
“The FDA has not approved it for taking plaque out of arteries,” he said. He said the way the law works, physicians are allowed to experimentally use treatments on patients if they think it can help.
Baratz said he’s encountered this approach before and finds it unethical.
“They are in fact doing an experiment on their patients, the question is for what gain, and the answer is for money,” said Baratz.
The American Heart Association has a section on its website devoted to chelation therapy and claims of blood vessel cleansing.
“After carefully reviewing all the available scientific literature on this subject, the American Heart Association has concluded that the benefits claimed for this form of therapy aren’t scientifically proven. That’s why we don’t recommend this type of treatment,” it reads.
The webpage also lists potential side effects as kidney failure, bone marrow depression, shock, low blood pressure, convulsions, allergic reactions, disturbances of hearth rhythm and respiratory arrest.
In 1998, the Federal Trade Commission charged the pro-chelation American College for Advancement in Medicine with false advertising. Among other claims for chelation therapy, the FTC banned the organization from advertising chelation as a treatment for any form of circulatory disease. However, this ban affects the organization as a whole while individual members are still able to continue to make these claims.
When asked, Psonak said he hadn’t heard about the FTC ban and would look into it.
Back in Gray, Dr. Psonak and his wife said they believe they’re helping a lot of people with chelation therapy and business is booming. Psonak announced this week he is changing the name of his clinic to the Chelation Medical Center, LLC and is looking for another location.
“We’ve outgrown our space here,” said Psonak. He said he’s hoping to replace his 1,200 square foot clinic with a place atleast twice as large.
I thought you might like to see how skepticism looks when its written for the mainstream media. I went to great lengths to make sure it was fair to both sides.
Trick or treatment?
Local doctor says he can cure severe brain and heart problems, but medical experts say the procedure is modern snake oil and may kill some patients.
By Michael Hartwell
In a small office filled with framed Bible passages and Kevin Trudeau books about medical conspiracies, Dr. Raymond Psonak confidently states that he can cure or severely reduce the effects of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Lou Gehrig’s disease and autism.
“That’s the biggest thing we’re doing now,” said Psonak of autism. He runs the Environmental Health & Complementary Medicine clinic near the Interstate 495 ramp in Gray with his wife Janet, a registered nurse. She assists him and doubles as the receptionist.
Psonak, a former engineer and a licensed osteopath, uses a technique called chelation therapy where patients are hooked up to an IV drip and receive ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid, known as EDTA.
Laura, a 38-year-old mother from Cumberland has two sons, one 6 and one 7, with forms of autism being chelated by Psonak. She asked that her last name and the names of her children be left out.
“I immediately saw changes in my sons,” said Laura. “I recovered my oldest child with it.”
She said she was frustrated with the lack of hope her regular doctor gave her in regards to treatment for autism.
“I couldn’t believe what I was being told, that there was nothing I could do,” she said. Laura said she read a couple books about biomedical solutions like chelation and found more support on the Internet.
She said before chelation, her older son could only say two words: “Momma” and “more.” Now, according to Laura, he can compose sentences and taught himself to operate a computer by watching his brother use it.
According to Psonak, chelating-agent EDTA was developed in American in the 1940s to treat shipbuilders who had high exposure to lead. EDTA binds to heavy metals in the bloodstream and it is removed by the urinary system.
Psonak said that most doctors misunderstand an array of neurological disorders. He said these disorders can be attributed to heavy metal poisoning, such as lead or mercury, and chelation therapy will remove them and help reverse the damage.
Psonak said chelation agents also work to unclog blood vessels and can eliminate the need for certain operations, although most experts are skeptical.
In a typical week, Psonak said he administers chelation therapy to 12 to 15 different patients. Some come to the office multiple times a week, depending on the diagnosis, and each visit costs between $100 and $160.
“Lou Gehrig’s disease is pretty much a death sentence,” said Psonak. “There’s nothing the medical profession can offer.”
Experts disagree
Dr. Ron Burgess of Southern Maine Medical Center in Kennebunk, on the other hand, said he knows exactly why he doesn’t use chelation to treat neurological disorders: it’s dangerous and it there’s no reason to believe it works.
Burgess is also the president of the Maine chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and said he warns parents of children with neurological disorders like autism to avoid chelation therapy.
"You have to weigh the risks and the benefits," said Burgess. "The risks far outweigh any benefit you could get."
Burgess said chelation may cause low blood pressure, low blood sugar and loss of consciousness or even death. He said on top of that, no study has concluded any benefits of chelation therapy for neurological disorders.
Psonak said the only side effects he’s aware of are to blood pressure and blood sugar, and he compensates for this by having the patient eat before treatment and slowly administering the EDTA. He said a treatment session takes about three hours and the only death he’s heard was from an allergic reaction.
"The only time chelation is effective is when someone has acute lead poisoning," said Burgess. "It’s a standard medical treatment that’s been pulled over to the complimentary medicine"
Complimentary and alternative medicine is a popular branch of medicine that is based on new age religious beliefs instead of scientific observations. Burgess said there is a lot less government regulation in complimentary and alternative medicine.
“Wherever services are scattered and uneven, you see a rise of fad cures and pseudoscience, said Vincent Strully, chief executive officer and founder of the New England Center for Children in Southborough, Mass, a school that specializes in teaching autistic children. He said autistic children need to be treated with educational approaches, “Not chemistry and psychopharmacology.”
Burgess said that even when children come in with acute lead poisoning, chelation therapy isn’t always the answer.
"We're always very hesitant to chelate kids because it could cause more damage," said Burgess. He said that chelation therapy pulls heavy metals that have settled into the bones and tissue. These metals travel through the blood stream and into the brain, where they may cause additional damage.
Strully said doctors like Psonak believe their treatments are working because of confirmation bias. That is, when they see a patient who seems to be approving they attribute it to the treatment. When patients don’t improve they write it off as a fluke. In something as fluid as human behavior, it’s easy to think the patient is improving when they are staying the same.
“Wherever services are scattered and uneven, you see a rise of fad cures and pseudoscience,” said Strully. He said until evidence surfaces that shows otherwise, autistic children need to be treated with educational approaches, “Not chemistry and psychopharmacology.”
Parents swear by chelation
Laura said she is confident that chelation worked for her children.
“They’re wrong, they absolutely wrong,” she said of doctors who reject chelation. “I have two sons in my living room who have been cured. How is it that parents are not being told about this?”
She now heads a support group in Portland made up of more than a score of mothers with autistic children who use chelation therapy.
Speaking in general about parents who give their children chelation therapy, Dr. Robert Baratz, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and an active researcher, said it’s not uncommon for parents to see positive results that aren’t there.
“When you want to believe, you believe,” said Baratz. He said some autistic children naturally show improvements or receive false diagnosis. Baratz said a parent who has tried an unconventional treatment will attribute any positive results to that treatment, even if they are using mainstream treatment at the same time.
He said to see if a treatment works, large studies need to be made by “Objective, dispassionate observers.” He said it’s a bad idea to take the word of desperate parents and doctors who are already selling the treatment.
“In science, you make an observation and you try to figure out why it happens. What these guys are doing is starting with a conclusion and trying to prove it,” said Baratz. He said the research clearly shows that chelating autistic children doesn’t help them and puts then at risk of serious side effects.
“The fact of the matter is, this is a form of child abuse,” said Baratz. “And they’re absolutely in danger of dying.”
Metal poisoning
“All the autistic kids we have tested have heavy metal poisoning,” said Psonak. He said autism is caused by mercury poisoning and most of the people he tests show some form of heavy metal poisoning and are in need of chelation treatment.
Burgess said the problem is there is no standard for what amount of heavy metal exposure is a cause for concern.
“I call that the penny stock argument,” said Baratz. “When a penny stock doubles in value, how much did you make?”
“A penny,” he said. He said the levels being observed by chelation doctors like Psonak are usually a few parts per billion.
“No one has a level of zero,” said Baratz. He said tests have shown trace amounts in the graves of indigenous people.
Psonak said that autism rates used to be one in 3,000, but now the rate is 1 in 150. He said this jump can partially be explained by thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was present in vaccines until 1999. He said some vaccines still have some heavy metals in them.
“The rates of autism have continued unaffected by the introduction and removal of thimerosal,” said Strully
Burgess said children will get more than four times the amount of mercury from eating a predatory fish meal, like tuna or swordfish than they would have got from a vaccine when thimerosal was used.
Psonak said that when most doctors test for heavy metal poisoning, they use a standard blood test and will often come up with negative results. He said this is flawed because heavy metals may have been absorbed into tissues and bones.
He said when he tests a patient to see if they have heavy metal poisoning and are in need of chelation therapy, he gives them a single chelation treatment to draw out the metals and then checks their blood for heavy metals.
“The recommendation for chelation is typically preceded by a phony test for heavy metals, following by a phony claim that the cause of the autism is heavy metal poisoning,” said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist who operates the website Chelation.watch.org. He said the treatment is worthless for anything other than acute lead poisoning.
Cleaning blood vessels
Psonak said that chelation therapy can also clear blood vessels of calcium buildups. He said in the 11 years he’s been giving chelation therapy, he’s seen numerous patients make miraculous recoveries.
He said one patient had a gangrene leg that three different surgeons said should been amputated. Psonak said gangrene is when blood is unable to feed oxygen to tissue and he chelated the man to improve blood flow. He said the gangrene got better over the next month and the surgeon said he no longer needed to amputate if it continued to improve. It improved, according to Psonak, and no amputation was ever needed.
On his website, Psonak says most coronary bypass operations are unnecessary.
“If you have been told that you need a coronary bypass operation, you can "bypass' the bypass with Chelation therapy,” it reads.
Psonak said the Food and Drug Administration has approved chelation therapy for lead poisoning, but nothing else.
“The FDA has not approved it for taking plaque out of arteries,” he said. He said the way the law works, physicians are allowed to experimentally use treatments on patients if they think it can help.
Baratz said he’s encountered this approach before and finds it unethical.
“They are in fact doing an experiment on their patients, the question is for what gain, and the answer is for money,” said Baratz.
The American Heart Association has a section on its website devoted to chelation therapy and claims of blood vessel cleansing.
“After carefully reviewing all the available scientific literature on this subject, the American Heart Association has concluded that the benefits claimed for this form of therapy aren’t scientifically proven. That’s why we don’t recommend this type of treatment,” it reads.
The webpage also lists potential side effects as kidney failure, bone marrow depression, shock, low blood pressure, convulsions, allergic reactions, disturbances of hearth rhythm and respiratory arrest.
In 1998, the Federal Trade Commission charged the pro-chelation American College for Advancement in Medicine with false advertising. Among other claims for chelation therapy, the FTC banned the organization from advertising chelation as a treatment for any form of circulatory disease. However, this ban affects the organization as a whole while individual members are still able to continue to make these claims.
When asked, Psonak said he hadn’t heard about the FTC ban and would look into it.
Back in Gray, Dr. Psonak and his wife said they believe they’re helping a lot of people with chelation therapy and business is booming. Psonak announced this week he is changing the name of his clinic to the Chelation Medical Center, LLC and is looking for another location.
“We’ve outgrown our space here,” said Psonak. He said he’s hoping to replace his 1,200 square foot clinic with a place atleast twice as large.
