Over the years, I’ve had conversations with a handful of health conspiracy theorists. They claim there is a cure for the common cold, but the makers of symptom relief medicines block that cure from making it to the marketplace. OR, they claim certain cancers can be cured, but the cures have been developed by the companies that manufacture the machines and drugs that keep it at bay, and more money can be made over time by keeping someone partially sick instead.
I have no idea who is right or who is wrong. I do believe that these kinds of coverups take place. I’ve read about them and written about them. And I had my own experience with an oncologist who wanted to make money from putting me through chemo when I didn’t really need it.
Several months ago, I blogged about a treatment for lymphoma patients that is kept secret by most oncologists. Since it can only be offered at academic medical centers, meaning most oncologists can’t profit by it, they don’t tell their patients about the treatment which could save their lives. Instead they offer an inferior treatment option that provides profits to them, but doesn’t do as much for the patient as the unmentioned drug administered at another center.
The big problem, of course, is that there are charlatans across the globe claiming to have developed treatments for any malady large or small. Patients diagnosed with a lifelong or life threatening disease or condition seek any small piece of hope, and spend money and waste their time to pursue that hope, only to have their hopes dashed. It’s a sad fact of medicine. And it becomes difficult to weed out who is being truthful.
A few days ago, I was contacted by a physician scientist who asked me to alert you about a cure for kidney disease if it’s caught in the early stages. Now — I’m not a health professional, so I’m very VERY reluctant to showcase these kinds of things, or to comment on them. But I did ask for an explanation of how it works, and it turns out that it is a treatment that is based on genetic code.
It’s based on the concept of personalized medicine. In this case, the genes responsible for kidney disease are reviewed, and, according to David Moskowitz from Genomed, the company that has applied for a patent for this treatment, if the patient is in the earliest stage of kidney disease, then it can be reversed. That’s been documented with more than 1,000 patients, published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the basics are available at PubMed.
Reversed? Good grief — that means cured, doesn’t it? So if that’s true, then why don’t we hear about it in the mainstream press?
The answer, for those who buy in to conspiracy theories, is that the info doesn’t make it to the mainstream because too many others stand to make too much money as long as patients are tied to kidney dialysis, surgeries, drugs and other profit-producing treatments.
I can’t tell you whether this approach for reversal of kidney disease works. But I can tell you that they have applied for a patent — not FDA approval, but a patent. Also, they don’t administer any treatment. Instead, they work with your doctor to help you. It does sound on the up and up, doesn’t it?
So if you are in the early stages of kidney disease, or if you are at risk because others in your family have suffered from kidney disease, you might want to take a look. The same holds true for people with COPD or high blood pressure. They’re developing life saving treatments for those diseases, too.
Conspiracy theories? Just because we’re all paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to make money from us.
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There are a lot of types of kidney failure.
So I wonder about a claim that would say they can cure early kidney failure. Some examples of reasons for kidney failure: diabetes, apolipoprotein-L1 homozygosity (two genes) and unknown factors related to that, untreated high blood pressure, and strep or septicemia, excessive doses of Ibuprofen.
Probably it’s a misunderstanding? and they can cure some kind or kinds of kidney failure?
I’d welcome any of them. Most doctors in medicine would. Dialysis is not all that profitable. Doctors don’t control dialysis in most places, it’s done by clinics. Very often large commercial clinics. One of the biggest has a very devoted doctor (who I interviewed with about ten years ago) and I know that guy lives and breathes keeping kidney patients alive and would give up his “profits” if he could cure them. Some of the other management created the company so they could offer leading edge dialysis medicine as well as improved standard treatments. They are all near retirement age
and since the clinics are a success have made a lot of money.
And they only run the dialysis clinics. So they don’t have a say in where a patient goes. Or how the patient is treated in early stage kidney disease. Actually, even a nephrologist isn’t going to see most patients in early stage kidney disease. They are going to be seen and treated by primary care and internists and other clinically based doctors. There are a lot of patients.
The most grievious to me are the patients with type II diabetes (insulin insensitive) diabetes. If they knew what was coming they would do much more to stop the diabetes before it took them to kidney failure. Who wants to sit in a clinic every other day for four or more hours?