• In Latest Effort To Gouge Health Insurance Pools National Institutes of Health and Pharmaceutical Interests Ignore A More Economical Remedy In Favor Of A Patent-Applied-For Drug

    Posted February 15, 2014: by Bill Sardi

    Examples of price gouging in medicine are growing.

    There is now the $1000-a-day pill for Hepatitis-C that is curative if taken over a 9-month course ($270,000 cure) while natural remedies go ignored.

    There is the $18,000-$35,000 surgical procedure (gastric bypass) to cure diabetes that can be accomplished by simple blood donation to reduce iron stores.

    There is the revelation that sudden-death heart attacks are caused by a calcium plaque that suddenly ruptures inside a coronary artery, not as the result of cholesterol buildup, a falsehood that is used to sell billions of dollars of cholesterol-lowering drugs.  Modern medicine hides evidence that economical vitamin C prevents that type of mortal plaque in heart arteries.

    Then there is the drug company that first proved an anti-cancer drug that eye doctors purchase for ~$26 per dose can cause new blood vessels that invade an oxygen-starved retina to recede, thus averting permanent vision loss.  Medicare gets billed $30-50 for a 1.25-milligram dose of Avastin drawn out of a 400 milligram. But the drug company that makes Avastin chose to develop a single-use vial of a similar molecule (Lucentis), obtain FDA approval for it rather than the less expensive Avastin and charge ~$2000-per dose.

    Lucentis and Avastin are injected directly into the eye of the patient in a doctor’s office procedure and produce equivalent results.  Some eye doctors continue to use the more economical non-FDA approved Avastin rather than the more expensive FDA-approved Lucentis.

    In 2010 the cost to Medicare for Avastin totaled $27 million, the cost for Lucentis $1.1 billion.  Lucentis has become the single largest medication expense for Medicare.  To make matters worse, a $25/month oral pill poses to eliminate the need for needle injection directly into the eye but is being ignored by the eye care industry.

    And now modern medicine is setting up the public for another ruse to gouge insurance pools.

    In a landmark study that is largely being ignored by the news media, researchers discovered that hydrogen sulfide gas restores ability to dilate (widen) arteries to control blood pressure, avert mortal heart attacks and strokes and even send healthy signals throughout the body that promise to prolong human healthspan and lifespan.

    The lead author of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, is associated with a developmental drug company that is said to be developing hydrogen sulfide therapeutics based on a patent application (60/511, 244) filed by the National Institutes of Health.

    Buried in the tables and footnotes of the paper is the revelation that molecules from garlic exhibit equivalent hydrogen sulfide-generating properties as hydrogen sulfide gas itself.  Likely due to the commercial interests of its primary authors, there was no mention in news interviews that garlic molecules produced favorable results in this study,

    In order for garlic to optimally produce the sulfur-based molecules that activate hydrogen sulfide, allicin must first be produced.   However, allicin cannot be reliably produced from a garlic pill because stomach acid destroys the enzyme (alliinase) that produces allicin.  Crushing a garlic clove prior to ingestion will produce allicin, but then the garlic macerate is too pungent to swallow.

    Allicin is the key molecule produced in fresh crushed garlic cloves that cannot be produced by common garlic powder because stomach acid destroys the enzyme (alliinase) that activates allicin.  Even enteric-coated garlic pills designed to for latent dissolution in the less acidic intestines are not reliable.  Despite the many label claims that various garlic pills provide allicin, only alkaline-buffered garlic capsule that negates the acidic stomach environment assuredly produces allicin equivalent to that provided in a fresh-crushed garlic clove.

    Researchers concede that “despite early clues of the beneficial effects of hydrogen sulfide, it has been neglected as a potential biological actor” and has only been studied cursorily in recent years.  Hydrogen sulfide gas has been demonstrated to protect the heart prior to a heart attack by activating internal enzymatic antioxidants.  Unlike drugs, hydrogen sulfide gas is able to penetrate into the depths of every tissue and cell in the body to exert anti-inflammatory, blood pressure-controlling and mitochondrial-renewing effects (the mitochondria are the energy producing compartments inside living cells).

    Hydrogen sulfide exerts broad biological action, protects against some of the adverse effects produced by diabetes, can kill cancer cells, slows the aging process in a manner similar to life-prolonging calorie restricted diets, activates the Sirtuin1 survival gene that red wine resveratrol and limited calorie diets control, normalizes the immune response, protects brain cells, reduces undesirable homocysteine levels in the brain, stimulate insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas and help overcome insulin resistance (inability of insulin to produce energy inside cells).

    Last year researchers said: “the available data strongly suggests hydrogen sulfide may become the next potent preventive and therapeutic agent for preventing and ameliorating the symptoms of aging and age-associated diseases which should be addressed in future studies.”

    Research into the many health promoting effects of hydrogen sulfide is intensifying and continues in the pursuit of drugs rather than low-cost dietary supplements that are already proven.  ©2014 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.  Bill Sardi has a commercial interest in dietary supplements.

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