Other unexpected benefits
which chelation therapy has produced in many patients include
a reduction in the amount of insulin which diabetics require
to maintain a stable condition, as well as marked improvements
in many patients with kidney dysfunction (see also Chapter 6
on the potential danger to kidney function under certain conditions
of wrong use of EDTA). More surprisingly, perhaps, a great deal
of functional improvement in patients with Alzheimer's disease
and Parkinson's disease is sometimes seen. Just how chelation
could help in these states is not clear, apart from the unpredictable
benefits of circulatory enhancement, and it may be that patients
who appear to find relief from the symptoms of Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's diseases might have had a faulty diagnosis, despite
displaying all the classical signs associated with them.
New York studies on hyperactive
children, using EDTA, have shown remarkable benefits, thought
to relate to the removal of lead which may have accumulated in
greater quantities in some of these children, due to their relative
deficiency of major protective nutrients such as zinc and vitamin
C, not uncommonly observed in such children.
As described in Chapter 5,
there is also welldocumented Swiss evidence of chelation
therapy offering marked protection against the development of
cancer as well as a suggestion that it could be useful in treating
some forms of this disease.
Safety
The safety aspect of the use
of EDTA in therapy has been phenomenal, with hardly any serious
reactions being recorded amongst the host of seriously ill people
to whom chelation therapy has been correctly applied. The commonest
shortterm sideeffects, as well as precautions associated
with EDTA usage, are discussed at length in Chapter 6.
By 1980 it was estimated by
Bruce Halstead, MD, (Halstead 1979) that
there had been over 2 million applications of EDTA therapy involving
some 100 million infusions, with not a single fatality, in the
USA alone. The most effective use of chelation therapy
has, over the 30 years of its successful application, been consistently
found to be related to those diseases in which heavy metal or
calcium deposits are major factors.
Have there been double blind
trials, the yardstick by which so much in medicine is judged?
Hardly any, because, as Halstead states: 'It is impossible to
administer EDTA blindly (i.e., so that neither the doctor nor the patient knows whether
real EDTA or a substitute is being used), because it can be readily differentiated
from an innocuous placebo by even one unacquainted with the
compound'.
This is a major obstacle to
its acceptance by mainstream medicine, but should not prevent
those interested in its claims from examining the objective evidence.
It should not require doubleblind control studies to impress
the observer with the possibility that people are actually getting
better when severely ill people, with advanced circulatory problems,
sometimes involving gangrene, show steady improvement in their
functions, better muscular coordination, the disappearance
of angina pain, increased ability to walk and work, restoration
or improvement of brain function, better skin tone and more powerful
arterial pulsations, along with the restoration of normal temperature
in the extremities. This is particularly true in many patients
who are slated to undergo bypass surgery, and this brings us
close to one reason for orthodox medicine's rejection (in the
main) of chelation's claims.