Morton Walker - Dmso : natures healer

The medical information and procedures contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting your physician. All matters regarding your physical health should be supervised by a medical professional.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walker, Morton

DMSO:natures healer/Morton Walker.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-101-66234-2

1. Dimethyl sulphoxideTherapeutic use. I. Title.

RM666.D56W337 1993

Copyright 1993 by Dr. Morton Walker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Preface

13. Misreporting of DMSO for Scleroderma and Interstitial Cystitis

Epilogue

To that singular humanitarian who loves people, Chrystyne M. Jackson, publisher of Explore magazine, who has saved more peoples lives with counseling, lectures, referrals, and publications than have most individual physicians who use conventional medical practices.

My appreciation is extended to the medical consultant for a first edition of this book. Ten years ago, William Campbell Douglass, M.D., then of Sarasota, Florida, put together a three-day medical conference comprised of experts on dimethyl sulfoxide. They came to Sarasota from around the United States and six foreign countries and brought specialty knowledge of DMSO with them. They shared this knowledge with each other, and I was the medical journalist who recorded their information, produced magazine and clinical journal articles, and eventually the first edition of this book. The present second edition is an update and then rewrite of that initial published effort.

The American Medical Association (AMA) held a leadership conference the weekend of February 14, 1981, and one of its speakers was Otis R. Bowen, M.D. Dr. Bowen is former governor of Indiana, a leader in medicine, management, and politics. In his presentation to the AMA, he shocked the assembly by admitting that he took the law into his own hands and used an illegal drug to ease his wifes pain while she was dying. Beth Bowen died January 1, 1981, after months of agony from multiple myeloma, a type of bone cancer.

Dr. Bowen, who was preparing to step down from the governorship at the time, turned to dimethyl sulfoxide, or DMSO, to ease his wifes intense pain. He had obtained the liquid solvent from a veterinarian and found that it relieved his wifes suffering in minutes, he said.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) forbids the use of DMSO in humans except in treating a rare urinary bladder condition. Even in the face of the government ban, Dr. Bowen did what he knew was right for his wife by administering intravenous DMSO. Why cant dying persons, with severe pain, have easy prescription access to it? he asked in his speech. The only excuse I could find was that, after prolonged use and heavy dosage, it caused an occasional cataract in dogs only.

Before youve read very far into this book, youll probably be asking questions similar to Dr. Bowens. It wont be difficult to identify with the patients involved here, some of whom have been forced to take treatment into their own hands by turning to DMSO.

In fact, DMSO has not been found unsafe for humans. Any side effects are merely minor irritations. DMSO stops bacterial growth. It relieves pain. As a vasodilator, the drug enlarges small blood vessels, increasing the circulation to an area. It softens scar tissue and soothes burns. DMSOs anti-inflammatory activity relieves the swelling and inflammation of arthritis, bursitis, tendinitis, and other musculoskeletal injuries. And it does many more good things of a therapeutic nature for anyone who is injured or ill.

I recommend that you use DMSO strictly under the supervision of a doctor who is skilled in its application. Only the pure pharmaceutical grade should be employed, not the crude industrial grade.

DMSO is both a drug and a good solvent. Industry values it for removing paints and varnishes, and dissolving certain plastics such as rayon, polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane, methacrylate, and acrylic. It doesnt affect cotton, wool, nylon, leather, or polyesters.

More important, it benefits human body cells, tissues, and organs in unique ways. DMSO is the twenty-first centurys newest healing principle with a very wide range of usefulness. It represents an entirely different means of treating diseasesnot as an ordinary drug that works for a given disease, but as a holistic ingredient that brings whole-body cellular function back to normal.

Dimethyl sulfoxide has had a battered thirty-year history. But because of the general public outcry about its ban, DMSO has become a household word and a medical-political cause clbre. Those of us who have been using the drug for twenty-six to twenty-eight years never dreamed that it would become a focal point in the continuing battle between individual freedom and the power of government.

My colleagues and I have been criticized, ridiculed, and even persecuted in some medical circles for promoting and using DMSO. But I, and others like me, came to the conclusion, having observed establishment medical thinking for forty years, that the only way a truly revolutionary treatment principle can be brought to the patient is by appealing to the general population through the information media. That is the purpose of this book.

Much of my material will appear anecdotal to the scientist, but such language is what the public understands best. And sometimes a hundred patient stories, heard by a sensitive and intelligent physician, are as good as or better than a double-blind research project. Double-blind studies are often just thateveryone involved is blind and stays that way until, many years and thousands of patients later, it is discovered that the particular drug doesnt work or is too toxic to warrant its use.

Good current examples of toxic drugs are the arthritis agents Motrin, Tolectin, Nalfon, and Naprosyn. They all underwent extensive double-blind testing. All are weak organic acids and prostaglandin inhibitorslike aspirin. About as effective as aspirin, these four drugs have two distinct differences: they are more toxic than aspirin and cost ten to thirty times more money. So much for double-blind studies.

Whether you agree or disagree with current claims, its likely youll affirm that if a drug has been proven safe, doctors should be free to use this agent when they believe it will help their patients. With all the extremely potent and dangerous drugs on the market, it is absurd to keep such an effective product as DMSO from pharmacy shelves.

Certainly not all of the claims for DMSO will prove to be valid, but in my opinion, many of them have already shown themselves to be true. And the most dramatic use of the medication is likely yet to be discovered.

Another purpose for my book is to point out the myriad applications of this unique substance. Once DMSO is legalized for use in all states and ethically produced for topical, parenteral, and oral administration, people wont have to smuggle the feed-store grade and the crude industrial grade into their homes to paint on their arthritic joints.

DMSO will eventually find its place in the armamentarium of American medicine. We who believe in the substance want to see it happen sooner than later. The clinical evaluation of DMSO began in the United States in 1963 and now, in 1992, the FDA still has not approved the drug for more than one use. This situation gives rise to some underlying questions you may find running throughout this book. How do we get the FDA to see beyond its blind spot? How can we either bring DMSO to the people or declare the substance useless once and for all?