Gordon Research Institute

School of Advanced Nutritional and Medical Research

September 28, 2001

Ron Hoffman
President ACAM
40 East 30 Street
New York, NY 10016

 

ACAM

American College for Advancement in Medicine

23121 Verdugo Drive Suite 204

Laguna Hills, California  92653  www.acam.org

 

Dear Ron,

This letter is to express to you in writing my deep concerns that become crystallized by the events that transpired at the May 2001 ACAM Chelation Workshop in Nashville, Tennessee.  This was the final straw that broke this camel’s back.  I decided to initiate direct contact rather than going through my attorney who would not permit me to lay out this much of the case in advance. However, I have far more than I’m disclosing at this time and I know how much money the attorneys on both sides stand to make on this situation, advising both of us not to settle. I just thought it remotely possible that you could get reason to prevail. We believe that I have a very tight case against ACAM. Included in this letter are several requests and suggestions that I now feel must be acted upon.   If the majority of these cannot be expeditiously met through amicable measures I will be forced to seek outside assistance and my long-standing association with ACAM will have to come to an abrupt end. 

I must receive some reply from you, in writing, within 14 days (by October 12 2001) indicating your willingness to respond.  I admit, an in-depth discussion with you is clearly warranted, but I know that our schedules may not permit this within this time frame. Frankly I doubt that it is possible to bring ACAM back to any semblance of what I consider to be reality on many of these issues, particularly since one of my primary issues is regarding the status of EDTA given by alternative routes of administration, an area you will want to fight about the hardest.

During the above-mentioned Nashville Chelation workshop, Professor Suboto visited the Longevity Plus booth and spoke briefly with me about the oral use of EDTA.  I had suggested that he become more informed about the subject of oral chelation with EDTA.  I had been involved in a trace element analysis operation located in Tokyo and I am very knowledgeable about the level of toxic metals encountered there since I still travel and lecture there regularly.

Dr. Suboto chose to immediately go back to the panel that was still in discussion at the chelation workshop upstairs and confront the entire panel by stating, “I came from Japan and I’m properly convinced that the chelation therapy is safe and effective and we have relatively easy procedures.  So, I determined to start when I come back to Japan, so I went downstairs to buy some EDTA.  I have met Dr. Gordon and he said the oral EDTA is much easier for you to taught [sic]. (teach?).  I didn’t know the status of the oral administration and he mentioned that 400 mg per day.  Although the absorption is only five to ten percent.  You can consider [using it] every day.  What is the status of oral EDTA chelation?” (I have enclosed a typed transcript of this conversation, but I strongly recommend you listen to the tape itself if you want to fully understand the legal situation you are in.)

I was completely stunned and shocked to learn that Dr. Les Breitman’s immediate response was to say, “You had the misfortune of running into the wrong guy!  Of all the people.”

This comment was entirely unwarranted and a direct malicious attack on my standing as a medical professional.  It is important for you to hear the tape to understand the tone of voice that was used; the scorn, belittlement and condemnation in Dr. Breitman’s voice are key factors in this matter.

 It is also important for you to hear the audience’s response to Dr. Breitman’s cutting remarks; how in one moment he had turned my colleagues against me as a general snicker ran through the audience. (It is important to note that this tape will be damming evidence if I am forced to go to court.)

The defamation of my character did not stop there, as Dr. Michael Schachter then added,  “I think it’s important that you need to know that this has been a long-standing controversy within the ACAM and there are people like Garry Gordon who feel very strongly one way.  I don’t know how many others agree with him.  I don’t think too many.  There are others that feel like Dr. Cranton, who was just on totally opposite sides of the fence and both of them have been long standing chelating physicians.

“Dr. Gordon of course does have somewhat of a vested interest because he has developed products related to oral chelation and I think that is important to know also when you consider these things.  And I think you have to go into the literature.  If you ask him, he will cite 200 references, but if you actually go back and read those references, I think there is really very little clinical data to show that this treatment really is of significant benefit in cardiovascular disease.”  (This was a carefully calculated response since how many articles in that same mainstream literature I quote; support the IV use of EDTA in cardiovascular disease and who said I was talking about cardiovascular disease?)

This comment directly ignores the documented benefits in heavy metal detoxification, which was the subject of that morning’s presentation by Dr. Jaffe to the chelation workshop attendees and was the context of my remarks to Dr. Suboto.

Dr. Schachter stated that my opinion in this regard was biased because I was serving as a consultant to a company that sells nutritional products that happen to involve the use of oral EDTA.  Dr. Schachter failed to point out the conflicts that he and other panel members have with supplements that they also endorse, and/or to state that his excessive reliance on income from parenterally administered EDTA could influence his statements regarding the usefulness of orally administered EDTA.

 Dr. Jaffe, as well, has supplements that he too endorses, but Dr. Schachter did not attack his credibility.  This completely prejudicial attack on me was devastating, but apparently was just what the ACAM members, who benefit from increased sales of intravenously administered EDTA, wanted to hear.  Longevity Plus has witnessed plummeting sales of related products ever since that event.   Could it be that I am a threat to the status quo of ACAM and that the use of oral EDTA is a serious threat to your member’s economic security and or the viability of ACAM as an organization that seems unable to keep up with the times and adapt to new information?  

The audience was then advised to seek the truth regarding the status of oral EDTA by going to Dr. Elmer Cranton’s website.  Dr. Schachter said, “ . . .. What I suggest if you are at all thinking that oral chelation might work in the least, go to the website I mentioned this morning www.dr.cranton.com and he gives a big treatise on it.”  

For Dr. Schachter to, in one instant, to condemn me for promoting oral EDTA because of my vested interest, and then, in the next instant, promote Dr. Cranton, who has his own agenda with trying to sell his soon to be outdated IV Chelation practice to someone, is completely unethical and prejudicial.  I am truly disappointed in ACAM’s inability to select a credible source of information for your fight against rectal and oral uses for EDTA.  ACAM is placed in a very vulnerable position when relying upon Dr. Cranton, as I believe that his credibility is lacking, which I believe I will be able to substantiate in court. 

I was also disappointed in Dr. Ralph Miranda because of his lack of control during that workshop.  He was unable to take immediate steps to minimize the damages inflicted.  Dr. Miranda should have maintained an equal balance on all potential uses of every form of EDTA.  Even if some uses might threaten the viability of the current monopoly on the use of EDTA given only by IV, which ACAM seems to aspire to possess. 

The morning session included the promotion of penicillamine for the treating of heavy metal toxic populations.  Penicillamine will never be as safe or as cost effective for the masses as oral EDTA.  When a simple question regarding any potential use for oral EDTA was asked, the panel chose to disparage my reputation, and at the same time belittle the most cost-effective therapy for metal detoxification that I believe exists for the public today.

After I was so harshly denounced I attempted to bring these, and other vital issues that I have briefly expressed in this, admittedly, long correspondence, to your attention during the membership meeting, but you immediately cut me off, as the audience will readily attest.  Until then you had invited the membership to bring up anything on their minds regarding the future of ACAM.  After that incident I understand that your open discussion policy does not apply to me. 

Later, I also spoke with Dr. Miranda, explaining how extremely upset I was.  He merely said, “You’re not planning to sue us are you?”  He never offered to undertake the task of correcting the problem.  Dr. Miranda fully knows that things got out of hand in that workshop and it was his job on behalf of ACAM, to have corrected it immediately.

I am sure that ACAM board members and directors are fine people individually, but I feel that they believe that “saving” ACAM has become more important than standing up for the truth. That is why I will not waste my time trying to file charges of unethical conduct against these Doctors with any committee you Ethics or Disciplinary committee you might convene, although your responsibility now that you are aware of the nature of their irresponsible actions should be to file charges of unethical conduct against both of them. . Your last chance to correct these issues with me is contained in this letter.

Dr. Breitman is a board member of ACAM, and Dr. Schachter is an officer of ACAM, Sergeant at Arms Pro Tem.  Since their interchange lead to the direct and documentable serious defamation of my name and reputation ACAM clearly is involved and I believe will be found liable.  Dr. Miranda is also an advisor to the board; his failure to rectify the situation directly makes ACAM, again, entirely liable.

Because of these blatant attacks on my character it is unlikely that I will ever fully recover my professional standing in the world of trace element and chelation research in which I have successfully operated until now.  Because of these devastating facts I am setting forth explicit requirements that I believe must be met if we are to settle this amicably:

 

1.   I deal directly with only the executive committee or someone fully empowered to negotiate a prompt settlement regarding all of these issues.

2.   I receive a letter of apology; the wording of this letter is key to any out of court settlement and must fully restore my standing as an expert in chelation, eliminating the “wrong guy” concept forever.

3.   This letter of apology must be made public; it must be published in the ACAM newsletter and on the ACAM website, and must be mailed to every ACAM member, and every attendee at the Nashville workshop.

4.   ACAM is to officially endorse the use of oral EDTA for lead toxicity and must, at the minimum, remain officially neutral regarding its potential benefits in other areas, such as by rectal application.

5.   ACAM is to endorse the favorable benefit to risk ratio for the long-term oral use of EDTA as an effective and beneficial detoxification strategy for the general public, specifically including anyone with so-called  “asymptomatic” increased levels of lead. This official endorsement must also be announced in the next issue of Clinical Practice of Alternative Medicine Journal, ACAM newsletter and on ACAM’s website, and be made known to all ACAM members.  (The FDA has EDTA on the GRAS list so your liability here is non-existent.)

6.   The ban of oral chelators to ACAM exhibitors is to be lifted on all future exhibits and oral-chelating agents can be displayed and freely discussed by all attendees and exhibitors, which freedom, I believe, is assured under the legal concept of free speech.

7.   I am to be permitted to present two 1-hour workshops on the uses of oral EDTA at ACAM conferences within the next 12 months.

8.   There are to be other lectures on oral and/or rectal applications of EDTA at ACAM workshops in the future.

9.   I receive the same lifetime honorary ACAM membership that was given to Dr. Walter Blumer.

10.   I receive lifetime free attendance to any future ACAM sponsored events of my choice.

11.   A copy of ACAM’s letter of apology to me is to be mailed to all ACAM members.  In this letter to ACAM members it must contain:  1) A copy of mutually agreed upon sections of my letter to you, 2) ACAM’s endorsement of oral EDTA, 3) The announcement that the ban on all other oral EDTA chelation exhibitors is lifted, 4) The endorsement of oral EDTA on ACAM’s website, and 5) Announce future workshops that will feature supporters of oral/rectal EDTA.

12.   A copy of the mutually agreed upon portions of my letter to you must be placed on the ACAM website.

13.   Within 14 days of receipt of this letter I must receive a favorable written response indicating a clear willingness to seriously negotiate these demands or I will correct them through other channels.

14.   ACAM must agree to protect the public and its members by changing its protocol to incorporate information about molecular cardiology, C-Reactive testing, etc. within the next seven months.  I must be formally invited to actively participate in that process.

15.   ACAM must immediately request its members to change their Informed Consent process to incorporate the latest information about the published nitric oxide effect that explains the benefits seen may have nothing to do with any reversal of vascular disease and they must alert their patients to the commonly observed failure to reverse coronary artery calcification.

16.   ACAM must provide a free double booth to all ACAM sponsored events, in the location of their choice to Longevity Plus for the next eight years.

 

My credibility was so strongly attacked that there is no way out of this situation without ACAM taking aggressive, remedial and appropriate actions.  This request is not for my personal gratification, but for the health of the citizens of the world and certain recommendations here are also meant to diminish the potential class action liability of all ACAM members that your continued providing of misleading information about the subjects I have outlined in this correspondence, continue to needlessly expose them to.

If any or all of the ACAM board members desire to meet with me regarding these issues during the upcoming San Diego conference I must be informed as soon as possible so that I can arrange my schedule accordingly. I do plan now to be there Thursday-Sunday.  Previously I have met with the entire ACAM Board when Dr. Janson, with Ed Shaw’s assistance, allowed me less than five minutes to resolve important issues, when one hour would have been more appropriate. I will not be treated that way again.

If the above listed deficiencies cannot be discussed and amicably settled I believe there are ample grounds for myself, and very likely others, when they learn all of the details available, many of which I will not enumerate here, to initiate several potentially meritorious actions against ACAM. I believe I know where the bombshells lay hidden.

I am particularly concerned about the total disregard ACAM’s actions reveal for the public good and ACAM’s conflict of interest in continuing to prevent your members from becoming fully informed regarding all of the facts about other routes of administration of EDTA that perhaps may not immediately enrich your members’ bank accounts. 

I have given over 10 years of my life to make ACAM a viable entity where alternative medicine could be effectively and honestly taught.  To watch it become as unethical and hypocritical as the American Medical Association is revolting.  I will not stand by quietly and allow this to occur.  It is my passion for ACAM’s initially founded goals that forces me to affirm that if these conditions cannot be rectified amicably, I will do everything in my power to correct this injustice.  ACAM was once an honest and ethical organization, it can be again. I have won against the Medical Society and the State Board of Medical Examiners in court.  I know what it takes to win and I am prepared to put forth that effort and expense once again.  

 

Sincerely,

Garry F. Gordon, MD, DO, MD (H)

 

 

GFG/jll

Enclosures:  1) Abstract, Oral and Intravenous Chelation Therapy: Which

  One To Use and When? Dr. Gordon,  (2002)

2) Transcript, ACAM Chelation Workshop, Nashville, Tennessee,    

     (May 2001)

3) Correspondence, Terry Chappell, Dr. Gordon, October 1997

       4) Total of 26 pages of supporting data attached

 

cc:  ACAM Headquarters, Administrative Staff and other interested parties.

 

SOME DATA SUPPORTING MY STANCE

 

I have spent over 30 years of my life researching the entire chelation process and am in possession of hundreds of published references supporting my views. I will not be silent on this oral and rectal EDTA issue any longer. I have given you more than enough of these lead-based articles in the past. I fear for you that since you have been afraid to make these articles available to the membership that they were simply assigned to some lackey to read and review for you, if they were even read at all. ACAM will not be able to claim ignorance on these subjects as this suppression by you of truthful information will become widely known, thanks partly to the power of the internet.

 

Repeatedly I have tried every way possible to bring relevant information to the attention of ACAM, and repeatedly it has been ignored.  I have even been denied the opportunity to make any presentations to ACAM for the past 15 years (other than the two minutes I was able to announce my brother’s death). 

 

Undaunted, I continued to provide you with material, i.e., the attached copy of a previous correspondence with Terry Chappell in October 1997 (enclosed).  In that document I merely intended to provide ACAM with a thumbnail sketch of the relevant information regarding the benefits of oral EDTA.  I asked that ACAM make this information known to its members, but Mr. Shaw refused.   I also suggested that ACAM retain Richard Scharffenberg to complete this literature research so that everything about oral Chelation with EDTA and all other EDTA related research information found would have been steadily and regularly coming from ACAM, rather than having it come from me, but this suggestion was also refused.

 

This multitude of references and articles show just how absolutely wrong ACAM’s position has been on other uses of EDTA and other methods of administration.  Including IV calcium disodium EDTA, oral EDTA powder, EDTA suppositories, and EDTA combined with other unique ingredients for synergistic action.  This also includes, but is not limited to, the combination of EDTA with B vitamins, which has been shown in  Clin Exp Pharmacol Physiol 1999 Nov;26(11):853-6 Vol. 26, pg. 853, (enclosed) to markedly enhance nitric oxide production. 

 

This article provides an obvious scientific rational for the observed benefits patients have seen, without requiring any reversal of their arteriosclerosis whatsoever.  The withholding of this information from chelation patients who continue to hope that their treatment is really reversing their plaque is now or will soon become fraud in my estimation. If patients are warned in writing in their informed consents, that for many, the benefits are merely symptomatic, then you will help avert the potential for further government interference and/or a potential class action suit against ACAM and its improperly and incompletely informed members.

 

The Hi-speed Cat scans are the next bombshell your members are facing since there is now wide-spread knowledge that the IV EDTA therapy under the existing protocol is not successfully treating this but the rectal suppositories clearly appear to be effective for this specific indication.

 

I have also provided you with literature showing that EDTA, in the presence of sulfated polysaccharides, provides heparin-like effects.  The American Heart Association (AMA) textbook on vulnerable plaque indicates that over two billion dollars is currently being spent by the leading pharmaceutical companies of the world trying to find a safe alternative to the injectable use of heparin, and oral use of aspirin and Coumadin. 

 

Currently available anticoagulants are also unsatisfactory, as stated in the book by the American Heart Association entitled The Vulnerable Atherosclerotic Plaque:  Understanding, Identification, and Modification, edited by Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Chairman of Cardiology, Mount Sinai Hospital, NYC et al., pg. 407, 1999:

 

Aspirin interferes with only one of the three pathways of platelet activation – the one dependent on thromboxane A₂.  The other two pathways – one dependent on ADP and collagen and the other on thrombin – remain unaffected, as does the coagulation system.  On the other hand, current anticoagulant agents interfere only partially with the coagulation system and do not affect platelet activation.  It is not surprising, therefore, that aspirin or anticoagulants cannot completely prevent coronary thrombotic events, although the relative antithrombotic effectiveness of both types of antithrombotic agents is clinically similar.

 

Here orally administered EDTA appears from published literature to be a safe and useful part of the answer, for a safe way to prevent blood clots, and you choose out of greed, ignorance, or fear to suppress and ignore it. This behavior is no longer acceptable.  Further claims of ignorance of these facts and your persisting in the ongoing suppression of this vital information is immoral. Once ACAM stops the nonsense of pretending that only IV EDTA has a favorable benefit to risk ratio for human health, it will inevitably help stimulate interest of the scientists and can help lead to new and improved breakthroughs in other chelating agents, including liposome delivery of EDTA and other newer chelators.  Since, obviously, currently administered oral EDTA is also far from perfect, as is the IV therapy you continue to excessively promote; there is plenty of room for progress in both areas. We just need some balance here.

 

Oral EDTA should become a “commodity”, not unlike vitamin C, widely and affordably available to all since its cost is very similar.  No company should or will have a corner on this market.  Currently Douglas, Vitaline, Merit, and Vitamin Research all sell oral EDTA containing products, along with many compounding pharmacists.  It should become obvious that it will one day soon oral EDTA could be in all of the health food stores, particularly with ACAM important endorsement, to the benefit of every metal toxic person in our country. Even without your help, the truth will always prevail in the end.

 

The most dangerous aspect of the entire incident at the Spring Conference Chelation Workshop, from your legal standpoint, is that just six weeks previously I had composed an extensive review article that was published in the Clinical Practice of Alternative Medicine Journal, your own journal.  This article contained 176 carefully researched references in relation to Chelation, and brought out many favorable aspects regarding oral EDTA.  Dr. Schachter claimed that if these references were really read that there would be very little clinical data to show that this treatment really is of significant benefit in cardiovascular disease. 

 

As a member of the Editorial Board of the Clinical Practice of Alternative Medicine, your Journal, who clearly has expressed a negative opinion about the value of my Review Article on EDTA in your Journal and in fact attempted to block its publishing, it will be interesting if we go to court to query him in depth about what efforts he undertook in his review of my article. We will plan take each article and check his knowledge regarding each of the references he so flippantly characterized for the your attendees.

 

It may turn out that he actually had no access to any of those references before he told the audience how useless they are. This might make the court decide that this peer- review process by ACAM is nothing but a sham effort to protect ACAM’s status quo. It will be very interesting in court to learn when and where he gained access to which articles and when he ACTUALLY reviewed them and what he finds useless about each one.  I have found over the past 30 years that substantive review takes time.  I hope his appointment book indicates there was adequate “review time” in his schedule, since our board recently had to discipline someone who alleged similar facts, but his office staff turned him in and revealed that no study had a ever been undertaken.  I hope he will have proof that he had access to most of these references and they were actually IN HIS POSSESSION at a time when this review was accomplished. If, as I suspect they all merely reside from my 1997 submission to ACAM under DR. Chappell in some remote storage area, we of course will question ACAM staff about when these articles are actually located and supplied to you as you need them now for sure, and I will not help you locate them again.

 

In any case, rest assured that any claim by Dr Schachter or Breitmen or anyone else you can might try at this late date to find to defend your hopeless position, there is no way you will convince anyone without a conflict of interest that there are not adequately documented substantial potential benefits to human illness in many forms in those references, which are all that your journal would allow me to cite. There are many more where those came from. I hope for your sake you do not have to read the rest of them for the first in court. That will be an expensive education for you, far worse than the FTC fiasco I believe ACAM could also have entirely avoided if you learn to apologize and admit you are wrong.

 

How could Dr. Schachter say this?  It is clearly evident to me that he is the one who has not read either these references or the others I have laboriously previously supplied ACAM (see enclosed 1992 letter to Chappell).  That is the only excuse I can come up with for this intemperate comment by Dr. Schachter.  If he had read them, any of them, they would have specifically demonstrated that oral EDTA offers significant potential benefit to improve human health, especially in heavy metal overload, that we all suffer, at little cost and with great safety. That was the answer the audience deserved to hear and they will hear it sooner or later.

 

Fortunately, Dr. Cranton has significantly helped support my argument about the importance of removing toxic metals, (which ACAM must admit, oral EDTA is doing) when he suggests in that in the very same issue of your journal in his article entitled EDTA Chelation Therapy: A more Comprehensive, Scientific Rationale. Here he explains that some forms of heart disease are simply a direct result of heavy metal overload.   Clinical Practice of Alternative Medicine Journal, Vol.2, Number 1, Spring 2001, pg. 27:  This admission shows that he too is fully aware that IV EDTA is NOT really reversing arteriosclerosis and he is attempting to circle the wagons before the final study comes out proving how wrong that concept was.

 

“Trace Elements Increase to Toxic Levels in Ischemic Tissues

Essential trace elements accumulate in diseased tissues.  Those essential elements are toxic in excess.  Ischemic myocardium accumulates a spectrum of essential, nutritional trace elements at quite high levels compared with myocardial cells of healthy control subjects.  Cobalt increases 500%, chromium increases 520%, iron increases 400%, and zinc increases 280%.  Metallic trace elements have a narrow margin between normal and toxic levels.  Such 3- to 4- fold intracellular elevations can poison metabolism.  Toxic metals also increase in ischemic myocardium, but to a lesser extent than essential elements.  It is quite possible that EDTA chelation therapy produces its benefits by restoring a more normal distribution of essential trace elements in vital tissues and organs.  This mode of action may be more important than renal excretion of toxic metals.  It is unknown, at this time, which is more important.”

 

Dr. Cranton, by publishing this in your Journal, which your instructors had clearly not read before teaching in Nashville, shows that dismissing the value of oral EDTA to deal with toxic metals in cases of cardiovascular disease as Dr. Schachter and Breitman are trying to do is really 180 degree off the target. Dr Cranton further makes my case for me even stronger by supporting the concept that merely controlling the availability and/or redistributing levels of toxic heavy metals, without even necessarily excreting them, may be enough to improve function in toxic tissues, such as the heart.  ACAM’s ongoing efforts at discrediting the benefits of taking oral EDTA are clearly laughable, just from reading your own journal.

 

In fact Dr. Lonsdale, in the editorial of that issue stated, “There is agreement that EDTA removes lead when administered orally or parenterally . . .. It simply does work, whatever the complex mechanisms involved.”

 

Dr. Lonsdale also discussed how the editorial board of the Clinical Practice of Alternative Medicine Journal, (Vol.2, Number 1, Spring 2001, pg. 18-19) fought to prevent my article from being printed, by stating:

 

There are, however, 2 major “bones of contention.”      The other is even more contentious and is supported by only a small minority of physicians, namely, the subject of oral EDTA chelation, particularly for treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD).  Thus, the review by Gordon in this issue was distributed to no less than 14 physicians conversant with this therapy.  An even split existed in the opinions expressed.  Seven physicians were vehemently opposed to the publication of the review; the worst criticism voiced was that it would harm ACAM, destroy the journal, and ruin the reputation of its editor.  On the other hand, there were 7 highly respected physicians, with impeccable qualifications, who were in favor of the publication of the review and who said that they wished to know more about it.  They pointed out that it might initiate a debate to spark interest in the methods by which we must always press onwards and upwards in our search for the truth.

 

 Knowing this resistance to be so entrenched, it is not too surprising to find that the information contained in my article was totally ignored at that ACAM workshop only a few weeks later where I, as its author, was also attacked and also completely discredited.  It should make ACAM the laughing stock of the scientific world to have its board members not even care to read or respect your own published literature in their tape-recorded training session.  I, too, had hoped that my article might spark interest among ACAM members.

 

 This anticipation was completely lost on the directors of ACAM, particularly when the facts contained therein represent a threat to the “status quo” you hope to get away with a little longer. This is the reason why I will not waste much time or energy with any ACAM convened “Kangaroo Court” or in dealing with any self- serving appointed committee in resolving these issues which I believe are now adversely affecting the health of the general public.

 

Clearly Dr Schachter does not come with clean hands, as the courts will readily determine. We know he was one of the reviewers for your Journal. There would be little doubt that we can prove that he was one that tried to prevent my article from being published. However, honesty and ACAM’s duty to the attendees would REQUIRE him to refer the audience of health care professionals to my article in YOUR journal just for balance, not just to Cranton’s totally one-sided and misleading Web site.

 

I believe that way the attendees could have at least have read and drawn their own conclusions, but as a loyal ACAM Director, his allegiance was clearly primarily to maintaining status quo for ACAM to keep the game going that only IV EDTA works and not to HONESTLY provide BALANCED information to the attendees who are paying dearly for what they believe was accurate information I can prove that they have therefore been seriously misled, which leads to their misleading their patients. This must stop now. I believe they my well all be entitled to a substantial refund of all their expenses in coming to the conference in Nashville.

 

Previously, I naively expected ACAM would at least try to remain fully informed and interested in every new development in the field of EDTA. It is astounding how totally uninformed ACAM is on a subject they purport to teach physicians about. ACAM is continually misinforming their members; tragically this is to their patients’ detriment.  ACAM has shown its true colors and they are not pretty.

 

You had the opportunity when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) first confronted you about making excessive claims. These excessive claims should have been stopped long before your were rightfully brought to task by the FTC.  Rather than firing the responsible people on the spot and admitting to FTC that the claims being made were not supportable, you wasted nearly $750,000 dollars of your members’ money, trying to cover up your serious errors. In fact, Dr. Janson, as President of ACAM tried unsuccessfully to prevent the membership from even knowing that this entire legal fiasco existed, when it was their medical licenses at risk!  Just as I brought this ugly subject to the attention of the general membership, I will not now be thwarted about oral EDTA.

 

Doctors attending ACAM workshops are under the assumption that they are receiving balanced and accurate information, when in fact, I believe, just the opposite is occurring.  The true facts about the limitations of IV EDTA and potential benefits of other modes of administration are not being taught.  To plainly illustrate, if ACAM were responsible for teaching the molecular structure of water, ACAM’s material would only state that water consisted of only hydrogen, completely ignoring the fact that water also consists of oxygen.  Then for ACAM to collect fees for training physicians with this imbalance of data is appalling.

 

Teaching one method of administration of EDTA does not preclude the potential of significant benefits to health from another form of administration of this miraculous lifesaving molecule.  They also should be informed about reversing the calcium build-up in coronary arteries using for now a rectal based EDTA program, preferably aided with orally administered EDTA and enzymes and antibiotics in a protocol designed to be more effective for that purpose, than ACAM’s current protocol. Also I believe that Molecular cardiology should be taught as a new specialty where doctors learn the value of new tests like fibrinogen and C- Reactive Protein

 

In the lecture I am presenting February 3-10, 2002 for the Institute of Integrated Medicine, I am covering this topic, when to use IV, when to use oral EDTA, (and when to use rectal suppository EDTA). The abstract of that lecture (enclosed), along with just a couple of the references that prove how far you are out of touch with reality regarding claims that oral EDTA is dangerously depleting minerals, is included in this submission to you.  Please, be wise and ACTUALLY submit review these references to a competent and unbiased scientist before deciding to act negatively in this matter, as your claims of ignorance cannot protect you after the receipt of this correspondence and the publication of my article in your journal.

 

How can ACAM and its members passively sit by and refuse to search for the truth about cost effective ways to improve the health of our nation?  You try to pretend that unless the EDTA is given intravenously it will harm you. This is really impossible since the rotifers all lived 50% longer with daily exposure to EDTA and they did not die of mineral depletion or cancer of the rectum.  In fact, we were not able to give it to them intravenously.

 

ACAM’s negligence regarding the truth in these matters can only be interpreted as a lust for monetary gain.  It certainly could not be interpreted as a concern for their fellowman. I, unlike ACAM, have a conscious need to stop the harm being done to the public by your lack of candor and I have chosen instead to give ACAM one final opportunity to change its ill informed policies on these subjects involving various aspects of chelation therapy.

 

If any ACAM members were to try and stand up against your all powerful opposing board members and state that they have carefully reviewed the published literature on oral EDTA and concluded that there are indeed substantial potential benefits for many health conditions, they would obviously be treated as I am being treated.  Ridiculed, belittled, and condemned.  This is so very wrong and I believe will be a contributing factor behind the rapidly increasing membership of the International College of Integrative Medicine (ICIM), and declining membership of ACAM. There are doctors out there that want the truth, not your fabrications.

 

ACAM obviously fears the possibility that fewer patients will choose IV chelation, once patients are presented with balanced information that includes an option of other routes of administration of EDTA.  To be given the choice of losing days from work and paying out thousands of dollars versus no work lost and minimal costs, it is evident which would at least initially be selected.  Is this the main function of ACAM – financial benefit for its members at the expense of truth, or the health and welfare benefits of humankind? 

 

ACAM’s financially motivated efforts to suppress information regarding the use of EDTA in other than the now badly outdated and soon to be discredited standard intravenous disodium edetate protocol must soon come to an end.  The stigma ACAM doctors will earn from this is that they have simply become greedy, and you are no longer any different than the standard allopathic profession, entrenched in the past.  It will appear that ACAM doctors have chosen to protect their precious monopoly on the intravenous use of EDTA, while the world is searching for cost effective heavy metal detoxification, antiplatelet, and anticoagulant substances and other benefits available from EDTA utilized in newer and more cost-effective ways. 

 

It seems that the world is seeking the most cost-effective ways of providing symptomatic relief, which is what I believe the IV route of giving EDTA is doing for patients at great cost and inconvenience, by enhancing Nitric Oxide production. There is pretence on ACAM’s part that because so many patients have been treated with IV EDTA in the past that it must be right and therefore oral use of EDTA must be wrong.  Just as the ancient theory of bleeding patients was a failure, that argument will fail you. Someone may simply ask, ‘What about the relative morbidity and mortality of both treated groups over time and at what cost?’  Here your ignorance regarding special oral EDTA formulations will come back to haunt you. How many ACAM members need to die with arteriosclerosis before it becomes evident that the king is wearing no clothes.

 

It is unfathomable why ACAM does not opt to teach oral, rectal and IV EDTA along with the other useful IV therapies, such as oxidative therapies.  Becoming knowledgeable in diverse oxidative therapies similar to Dr. Riordan’s work with massive infusions of vitamin C would benefit so many diverse conditions that are not readily responding to other therapies today. (The use of Dehydroascorbate is now being officially researched by Progenics under an NIH grant in stroke.)

 

Think of how busy and productive ACAM physicians would be if they became adequately trained in oxidative therapies.  In a world of increasingly antibiotic-resistant infections, which are being found in virtually every chronic degenerative disease, the potential is limitless.  For example, ultra-violet irradiation will treat these infections cost effectively and requires doctors willing to do intravenous therapies.

 

A clear example of just how biased, imbalanced, and self-serving ACAM has become is your current website.  It claims that you want to develop awareness of alternative methods of medical treatment. Yet purposely you continue to totally prevent your members from learning anything about the benefits of other more affordable routes of administration of EDTA or about other simple chelators, such as garlic, malic acid and d, l, methionine, etc.  You also totally fail to warn members about the limitations of the intravenous EDTA you continue to champion at the expense of wrongfully putting down all competing therapies.  

 

You further state on your website that physicians who utilize Chelation therapy are “treating atherosclerotic vascular disease”. This suggests to most readers that you believe you are not just treating the symptoms by enhancing blood flow with the induction of nitric oxide, but are actually reversing arteriosclerosis, I fear you will never be able to prove reversal of arteriosclerosis, so why not start not begin now to prepare for that eventuality.  I believe it is essential that you prominently warn your members and their patients regarding the knowledge we have gained from hi-speed CAT scans that, in fact, many patients are not seeing any reversal of their coronary disease, and calcium build up on their arteries is often simply proceeding unabated while you take your IV chelation treatments. It would seem apparent that you must clarify this information for the doctors and the public that they serve. I believe I will be able to prove that long before now you have been fully aware of this problem, but again you choose to withhold damaging facts. Clearly you need every member you can get now after the fiasco in Salt Lake City at the Board meeting has undoubtedly cost you a significant loss of revenues and membership. It will be very difficult to get new members if it turns out that IV Chelation is not reversing arteriosclerosis, but is merely an expensive symptomatic therapy.

 

I believe that it is essential that ACAM make a complete about-face and publicly acknowledge on its website these and other deficiencies and admit that oral EDTA may help lower the level of toxic metals, particularly lead, and that lowering these levels of toxic metals could have beneficial effects on many conditions. Remember, even Dr. Cranton now proposes that maybe this is all that IV chelation is doing.

 

Imagine the implications this admission from you could have on children with learning difficulties that are now being improperly treated with drugs such as Ritalin, Prozac and the like. Many would safely and cost effectively become far healthier by lowering toxic heavy metals with oral EDTA, yet you selfishly suppress this vital information for business reasons.

 

Imagine the effects this admission from you might have on individuals who suffer from chronic immune suppression due to their toxic metal overload. Imagine the positive good that would result from widespread use of this inexpensive oral EDTA therapy that you have been wrongfully suppressing. As your should know, the FDA illegally suppresses useful information about supplements. Therefore the potential companies that might meet the publics need for oral EDTA can not easily get this valuable information to the public without the risk of having to sue FDA again, as Jonathon Emord has already successfully done.  Your open and unrestricted endorsement that this miracle molecule will lower toxic metals safely in children and adults cheaply, by mouth, has the potential to do so much good for everyone, that I am making this condition a major part of any out-of-court settlement we might reach. I feel it is just as valuable to lower toxins safely, with a substance that we know has life extension potential, as it is to take in Vitamins. There are many who would agree with my position.

 

Isn’t it time for ACAM to finally do something good for all humanity? With your about-face open endorsement regarding oral EDTA any nutritional company can openly and cost-effectively offer oral containing EDTA products to the public in any formulation they believe will be beneficial for their market. They may choose to combine it with vitamin C, garlic, d, l, methionine, alginates, lipoic acid, or whatever they feel best addresses the needs of the particular market they serve.  I do not believe that this action will harm ACAM; I believe it will bring you increased credibility and stature in the world.

 

Both sides of these issues must be available for a balanced, unbiased and factual website to be maintained.  Of course it would be unfair for me to demand that individual ACAM members or exhibitors are no longer able to state their own personal beliefs about how much they hate oral EDTA, just as it is currently unfair to deny me equal recognition regarding the facts that there is a benefit to oral EDTA. This would seem to be vital since you are supposed to be a 501 C-3 professional organization with CME granting power.

 

It is a proven fact that we all have some degree of low level lead toxicity in our bodies today. This detail can be backed with the facts available from Dr. Claire Patterson of Cal. Tech., which has been presented and recorded at prior ACAM conferences.  It has also been widely published in peer-reviewed literature that the average bone lead level of a deceased person today averages approximately 1000 times higher than that of deceased persons some 400 to 500 years ago. This clearly establishes the fact that we are all somewhat lead burdened.  As previously cited from page 18 of the Clinical Practice of Alternative Medicine, “There is agreement that EDTA removes lead when administered orally or parenterally.”  It is also a proven fact that the excretion of lead induced by oral EDTA can increase by as much as 5 to 10 fold.  Los Alamos Research Laboratory has documented this, in spite of the previously estimated five to eighteen percent absorption.

 

This information simply reaffirms the statement approved by the FDA and published in the 1960’s in the Physicians Desk References (PDR).  This information no longer appears in the PDR since the patents have long since expired and there was some abuse of oral EDTA by industrial physicians who used the tablets to keep workers on the job by controlling blood lead levels rather than requiring the employers to clean up the work environment.

Then ABBOTT Laboratories widely sold 500 mg tablets of oral EDTA. The FDA’s approval of their indications for the use of oral EDTA appears to be carrying no validity for ACAM.

 

Riker Laboratories-Calcium Disodium Versenate  - P 847 1965 PDR lists under INDICATIONS:

1.   As a follow-up to parenteral therapy.

2.   To increase excretion of Lead in asymptomatic patients who present laboratory evidence of lead accumulation.

 

Dose- The average adult dose is 4 gm per day in divided doses. For children, the dose should be adjusted on the basis of 1 gm per 35# of body weight.

 

The fact that the FDA allowed ABBOTT to sell this substance for enhancing lead excretion while also using that language has obviously had no effect on ACAM and their tireless efforts to attempt to discredit oral chelation therapy.

 

The following quote is from an unsubstantiated and unreferenced statement made by ACAM board member, Dr. Julian Whitaker, found on his website at:
http://www.drwhitaker.com/nc/news_ddrw_chelation8_01.php

In contrast, because of its poor absorption, oral EDTA, even when taken on a daily basis, produces only a low concentration at cell surfaces. This is unlikely to reduce the body's burden of toxic heavy metals. It is, in fact, far more likely to reduce the body's stores of essential trace minerals, since EDTA also binds to and removes them. Replacing these minerals when oral EDTA is taken every day can be difficult, if not impossible.  Loss of minerals is not a concern with IV chelation,

I now can see just how deep seated this problem is how corrupt ACAM has become in its self-serving distortion of the truth. It may be best to simply form a new organization and let ACAM leadership continue to live with their fairy tale. It may already be too late to try reeducate the members after they have been given so much misinformation from every direction for so long that it is now completely believed by all members.

 

If ACAM is right about oral EDTA being useless, it means that all the government-published materials on this molecule and all of the references I have cited are completely wrong and only ACAM directors and board members have the truth. You must have special knowledge and insight. I hope you can produce it when they start asking for it. I believe several agencies may be interested in this problem.

 

The following abstract is just one example of the scientific documentation that I will be producing. This is from Food and Chemical Toxicology, Vol. 38, pg. 99-111, 2000.  I believe this will carry a little more weight with the proper authorities than Dr. Cranton or Dr. Whitaker’s pronouncements on their websites to the contrary.  It is written by J. Heimback et al., taken from the article entitled: Safety Assessment of Iron EDTA [Sodium Iron (Fe³⁺) Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid]:  Summary of Toxicological, Fortification and Exposure.  

 

Abstract – Iron EDTA [Sodium Iron (Fe³⁺) Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid], show to have a significant beneficial effect on iron status by increasing iron bioavailability in human diets, has been proposed for use as a fortificant in certain grain-based products including breakfast cereals and cereal bars.  This paper presents an assessment of the safety of iron EDTA for its intended uses in these products.  Iron EDTA, like other EDTA – metal complexes, dissociates in the gastrointestinal tract to form iron, which is bioavailable, and an EDTA salt; absorption of the metal ion and EDTA are independent.   Because of this dissociation, consideration of information on EDTA compounds other than iron EDTA is relevant to this safety assessment.  EDTA compounds are poorly absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract and do not undergo significant metabolic conversion.  They have a low degree of acute oral toxicity.  EDTA compounds are not reproductive or developmental toxicants when fed with a nutrient-sufficient diet or minimal diets supplemented with zinc.  In chronic toxicity studies, diets containing as much as 6% EDTA were without adverse effects.  EDTA compounds were not carcinogenic in experimental animal bioassays and are not directly genotoxic.  This lack of significant toxicity is consistent with a history of safe use of other EDTA compounds (CaNa2EDTA and Na2EDTA) approved by the FDA for use as direct food additives.  An upper-bound estimated daily intake (EDI) of EDTA from iron EDTA (1.15 mg/kg bw/day for the US population) is less than half the acceptable daily intake (ADI) for EDTA of 2.5 mg/kg bw/day established by JECFA.  The data collected and published over the past 20 to 30 years demonstrate that iron EDTA is safe and effective for iron fortification of food products and meets the standard of “reasonable certainty of no harm”.  Based on the published record, iron EDTA may be regarded as generally recognized as safe (GAS) for the intended food uses and maximum use levels. 

 

Simply put this states that EDTA is not toxic when taken orally and that it enhances iron uptake.  This is just one of many references now available in my files indicating that EDTA will not induce the serious trace element depletion as ACAM continues to allege by “legitimizing” Dr. Cranton’s website and book.  I will hold the rest of my extensive references for a more useful time and place.

 

With the extensive documentation now available regarding the direct effects of low levels of lead on IQ, I believe the continued action on the part of ACAM to ignore this is criminal.   Every research paper shows the lower the level of lead the higher the IQ and the presumed higher the functioning of the immune system. There is now more than enough information to offset any theory about trace element depletion (see further references in the enclosed abstract). Furthermore, a recent issue of the Journal of Cardiology clearly documented and fully endorsed the importance of calcification of the coronary circulation, which you are fully aware is not generally responding to the current, but now out of date, IV protocol for EDTA that ACAM teaches. 

 

Even Dr. Cranton freely admitted to me in writing the significant number of failures he has seen in which the calcium score in coronary vessels in his patients was often worse and certainly no better.  His proposed answer is to this failure of your treatment program is to try to discredit the value of the CAT scan! 

 

The many patients across the United States who are not helped in spite of your Chelation therapy are frequently brought to my attention, since many still see me as the father of the chelation movement.  This is in spite of ACAM’s ongoing efforts to make me become discredited and/or unknown to its members.  I have found that in the majority of cases I have been able to make these patients respond by incorporating oxidative therapies for the infection component of their illness, and also by incorporating knowledge that I have gained, for example, from www.hemex.com. That permits me to safely lower viscosity of blood and diminish the potential for fatal heart attacks and or strokes from the blood clots that are now believed to be involved in over 85% of cardiovascular deaths.

 

Why should I sit quietly by and just help the few patients that find me after your outdated Chelation protocol has failed them, when the time to change everything has clearly come so long ago, based on extensive new information you seem incapable of assimilating or even trying to study.

 

ACAM can no longer withhold the fact that your standard protocol for IV Chelation therapy is not able to reliably or routinely reverse advanced vascular disease in most patients.  When you give nitroglycerine to treat angina, no one claims this is reversing the coronary disease, yet it appears that ACAM may well find it self in this exact situation. The increasing availability of affordable CAT scans that reveal the level of calcium in patients’ coronary arteries will bring out the authorities who must protect the public from improper claims made by their licensees. Your members and their patients will be irate when they learn that you knew your protocol was not adequate to reverse this calcification and you withheld this vital information from them and their patients. For what? To save ACAM?

 

ACAM must finally take an honest courageous stand to protect its members and their patients.  ACAM is too heavily relying on the outmoded and inadequate Informed Consent Procedure currently utilized by all ACAM members around the world.  This no longer provides adequate information regarding the limitations of effectiveness or details about potential alternative therapies for patients, particularly rectal suppositories.  It further fails to instruct in the diagnosis of every form of metabolic risk factor for cardiovascular disease from C- Reactive protein and fibrinogen to Homocysteine and Lpa. ABCT certified physicians are required to be knowledgeable in all these areas.

 

I am sorry you have decided that you no longer need them as a neutral body to certify to the competence of any Chelation therapies being offered by your members. This step has removed standard well- established methods for PROTECTING the public from incompetence and misinformation. Were you afraid that since ABCT understands and instructs on oral chelators including oral EDTA, that this again would diminish your attractiveness to potential new members that want simply want to enhance their income but do not want to deal with the complexities that truth and knowledge brings to the practice of GOOD medicine.

 

This inadequacy of knowledge on the part of your members will seriously hurt them if you are faced with a class action suit brought on by patients who have spent $3,000 to $6,000 undergoing a therapy that they may later feel was excessively represented incorrectly as having an anti-atherosclerotic or “roto-rooter” effect. Dr. Morton Walker and the publisher of The Chelation Answer, has already been the subject of just such a class action lawsuit. I believe only your expeditious corrective actions taken now will protect you and your members.

 

I challenge ACAM to take a survey of patients in ACAM members’ chelation clinics.  I anticipate that eight out of ten patients will tell you that they believe that IV EDTA was being give to help clean their arteries. The possibility for fraud charges being filed based on this misinformation is quite evident and ACAM’s failure to act now is like Firestone and Ford - you are simply watching a ticking time bomb.

 

How can ACAM hope to ignore the new research that explains why intravenous EDTA given with B vitamins is simply increasing nitric oxide production?  Following is an abstract from the website www.Entrez-PubMed.htm:

 

Effects of chelation with EDTA and vitamin B therapy on nitric oxide-related endothelial vasodilator function.
Green DJ, O'Driscoll JG, Maiorana A, Scrimgeour NB, Weerasooriya R, Taylor RR.

Department of Human Movement, University of Western Australia, Australia.

1. 'Chelation therapy' with EDTA is being frequently used in patients with cardiovascular disease, despite limited objective evidence of effectiveness. Depressed nitric oxide (.NO)-related endothelial function accompanies atherosclerosis, and even the vascular risk factors alone, and is improved by numerous interventions that also improve prognosis in vascular disease. 2. The aim of the present study was to determine the influence of chelation therapy with EDTA alone and EDTA in combination with B vitamins on endothelial function. 3. After a control series of saline infusions, we examined the effects of a series of EDTA infusions (1.5 g, 10 times over 6 weeks) in eight subjects with coronary artery disease. In addition, because EDTA is commonly supplemented by other components, particularly B group vitamins, we subsequently examined the effect of a similar series of vitamin-supplemented EDTA infusions. 4. Forearm blood flow (FBF) was assessed by plethysmography and graded intrabrachial infusions of the endothelium-dependent vasodilator acetylcholine (ACh) and the endothelium-independent dilator sodium nitroprusside (SNP). 5. There was no difference in vasodilation to either drug after EDTA alone compared with the control periods, but the response to ACh was augmented after combined therapy (P < 0.03, ANOVA). The latter was accompanied by a small but consistent mean (+/- SEM) fall in plasma homocysteine of 1.6 +/- 0.5 mumol/L (P < 0.05). 6. The selective increase in the vasodilator response to ACh after therapy with EDTA and several B group vitamins indicates that NO-related endothelial function was improved. The absence of response to EDTA alone suggests that the supplementary vitamins were necessary for this benefit, which may have been related to the accompanying decrease in plasma homocysteine. These results, along with the current interest in the possible cardioprotective effects of vitamins and the increasing administration of 'chelation therapy', call for more definitive studies on these aspects of 'alternative medicine'.

PMID: 10561804 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

 

Why are your members and their patients entirely unaware of this information? This article alone more than adequately explains why patients generally show enhanced blood flow, while often demonstrating little, if any, significant plaque reversal.  Obviously increasing blood flow does not require any reversal of plaque.  Nothing could document this problem better than my brother’s autopsy, and many others that show extensive atherosclerosis, in his case in spite of over 200 IV chelation treatments. Why is it that I have to be the one to bring this to ACAM’s attention?  Your members deserve to know this.

 

As chairman of Peer Review for the State of Arizona under the board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners I am requiring doctors to inform each patient about these specific shortcomings, in writing. One written note of caution to the patient states that although they may see significant symptomatic improvement (as simply increasing levels of nitric oxide alone could explain), they, nonetheless, may see increasing levels or actual worsening of their arteriosclerosis and/or atherosclerosis on later CAT scan or angiogram. Symptomatic improvement and increased blood flow does not mean reversal of atherosclerosis.  The time to make this information fully available to the public is now.

 

During the Chelation workshop ACAM chose to rely entirely on what I believe I can prove is the entirely indefensible position of Dr. Cranton, while publicly ridiculing my position, because of my “vested interest”.  Does not Dr. Cranton also have a vested interest when he now only benefits from the sale of IV EDTA therapy having sold his interest in Advanced Medical Nutrition Incorporated (AMNI) that while he was part owner was selling oral EDTA containing products, actively promoted by Dr. Cranton?  What about ACAM’s vested interest in lying?

 

I believe you can expect to learn in court that Dr. Cranton will prove to be a poor witness for you because we can prove he has flip-flopped from one position on oral EDTA to the other.  When he was a “believer” of oral EDTA, he was benefiting from the sale of it. Interestingly, while he was the chief editor of the Holistic Medical Association Journal, he had invited me to submit an article that would help support his standpoint in favor of oral EDTA.   During that time his company was benefiting from the sale of oral EDTA containing products.  Now that he has long since sold his interest in that company and only benefits from the sale of IV chelation, he is against the oral use.

 

For ACAM to seriously consider Dr. Cranton as more of an authority in this field than Dr. Halstead or myself, further dangerously reflects upon ACAM’s poor judgment.  It may seem to a jury that Dr. Cranton’s support of a therapy depends upon which one can make him the most money at that point in time.   ACAM’s reputation has become even more precarious by its continued support of Dr. Cranton’s beliefs about mineral depletion. Here, his opinion is the exact opposite of eminent nutritional authorities a small sample of whose citations I have provided you in the attached abstract and in my material published in you journal. I hope for your sake that this time you find someone brave enough to tell you the truth if you should actually bother this time to actually check my information to see how well it will play in a court of law.

 

Interestingly, I understand that apparently it was Dr. Cranton who helped launch an attack against Dr. Walter Blumer of Switzerland.  Dr. Cranton’s reasoning behind Dr. Blumer’s attempted removal from ACAM may have been for his continued courageous use of a conveniently administered calcium disodium EDTA over the last 20 plus years.  His success makes a mockery of Dr. Cranton’s writing about why EDTA works.

 

Dr. Blumer’s work strongly suggests that much of ACAM still teaches about EDTA is probably wishful thinking. Dr. Blumer possesses legitimate statistics to support the benefits his patients received from a therapy that everyone would agree PRIMARILY lowers lead levels!  Dr. Blumer’s data consists of life and death records, based primarily on death certificates in Switzerland, that no one ever has been able to refute.   Nobody else, certainly not ACAM, has such irrefutable data to prove that they are really helping their patients, long term with decreased morbidity and mortality. That happens to be the kind of data I live on, not hype or purported, yet, clearly unsupportable claims that I find you have begun to rely on.

 

Dr. Blumer is the only ACAM member who has real scientific data regarding the benefit to risk ratio seen with from simply lowering lead levels in any patient.  Unfortunately for you it is about another form of more convenient EDTA based chelation therapy that would save all patients untold hour of wasted time, but again really threatens your economic base.  His treatment is, again, another more convenient form of chelation therapy only this one is above reproach and it supports my position entirely that getting rid of lead could be the only long-term major benefit any of us are providing our Chelation patients.  I can prove the oral EDTA treatment you are so intent at discrediting clearly lowers lead levels effectively, and can be safely taken every day of your life, with the real potential, not just theoretical outcome, that you might, like rotifers, live longer.

 

  Dr. Blumer provides his convenient therapy without any ACAM recognition or endorsement. In fact, his convenient two-minute therapy is unknown to 99% of ACAM members. It seems there is a great deal that ACAM has been failing to teach their members. I believe these sins of omission and commission are resulting in ongoing harm to their patients.

 

Dr. Blumer has fully proven the benefit of his convenient three-minute IV push of calcium EDTA, with only a small outlay of expense and inconvenience to his patients. Most experts will state that this treatment can only be working primarily by thoroughly lowering the levels of lead in the body, and yet it has produced a tremendous reduction in cardiovascular and cancer deaths that actually occurred over the next 18 – 20 years. These are facts that his published data has documented. This has all been presented to ACAM and the recordings are still available.  

 

Dr. Cranton, on the other hand, fails to cite any supporting references from current literature, nor does he provide indisputable documentation in his efforts to discredit anything that challenges the monopoly he hopes to develop regarding the IV only use of disodium EDTA. (Every other mode of administration is dangerous!)  Yet he is held in esteem by ACAM, who sell his books, and his website is used as a major reference on the subject.   I believe your continued reliance on his claims will only allow you to put off, for a little while longer, the eventual day of reckoning when all this finally becomes widely known.

 

I suspect that Dr. Cranton may have wanted Dr. Blumer removed because his “aberrant” chelation practice was not covered in the ACAM protocol.  Isn’t it curious that Dr. Blumer’s protocol totally eliminates the need for Dr. Cranton’s and ACAM’s two to four hours of IV therapy?   Had Dr. Cranton been successful in removing Dr. Blumer from ACAM’s membership, Dr. Cranton’s two to four hour treatments would continue to dominant the American market a bit longer, until the truth would eventually come out.  I believe you are promoting a totally out of date therapy, given at excessive cost and inconvenience to patients, who are never informed that there is any possibility of being helped at all with any alternative methods of administering EDTA.

 

The Arteriosclerosis Institute spent almost $10,000,000 in the development of a heart protection formula.  Dr. Lester Morrison and myself worked together to improve his exclusive formula and after adding my EDTA to his formula it became even more powerful and easier to take. For that knowledge I was paying a full 100% royalty to the Arteriosclerosis Institute. I introduced this formula under the name Cardioguard.

 

Dr. Cranton, Mr. Dan Black and Mr. Jed Meese then decided to introduce what they claimed was an exact copy of Cardioguard. I believe that they did not have the requisite specialized knowledge of what it took to make a product that really prevented blood clots in people. They, nonetheless, with Dr. Cranton’s help, claimed that they had developed the same formula and could sell it far cheaper than I could.  Obviously, since Dr. Cranton was not paying the institute any royalties he could cut the price significantly. However, I believe that he did not have the same formula and clearly he did not have the medical research that backed it.  I believe that with his partners’ help they were simply infringing on the Institutes’ patents.  This is the type of person that ACAM has decided to place its faith in, one that I believe we can successfully show the court has questionable integrity and moral judgment.

 

It is frightening to realize that ACAM has relied on Dr. Cranton’s knowledge over published, documentable material that I can supply from sources like the FDA.  Being in such apparent full support of Dr. Cranton makes me feel that possibly ACAM has matching principles as well.

 

I recently suggested to Dr. Cranton that he should agree to a debate between the two of us. He stated to me in writing that he is far too old to be involved in such a debate, although he is only one year older than I.  I, of course, have been on the oral EDTA containing products ever since I worked with Dr. Lester Morrison in 1983 and we together developed the unique EDTA containing Cardioguard formula that I believe has safely replaced both Coumadin and aspirin for my patients. This may help explain why my health is clearly up to that task and much more, including setting ACAM straight.

 

I am supported in this effort by a very pleasant feeling that I find that as my position against ACAM is becoming more widely known the more support I am receiving.  For example, Dr. Halstead has indicated a strong desire to be allowed to join in the fight. 

 

Ms. Alexandra Van Cleve, owner of Longevity Plus, has resolutely vowed her support as well, while she chooses to follow her own best interest in either settling now if this proposal is generally accepted quite rapidly, or going to court.

 

Ms. Van Cleve has suffered serious financial damages, which can be verified and documented.  Ms. Van Cleve states that directly after the May 2001 ACAM Chelation Workshop all ACAM member based sales seriously dropped.  Longevity Plus sales in Nashville and subsequent to that conference are proof of the damage Dr. Breitman’s and Dr. Schachter’s damming remarks made to her business. 

 

Ms. Van Cleve is quite adamant about obtaining significant cash remuneration, and has in mind of suing ACAM for well over $1,000,000 for interference with her business and related causes. She can prove in court that none of your other exhibitors offer near the potency of total nutritional support seen in the Beyond Chelation Formula, for anywhere near the price, yet because my reputation as an expert in the study of EDTA was so profusely sullied, minimal sales to ACAM members are made.  I believe this failure to take advantage of a product that has permitted me to effectively treat far- advanced disease without the need of surgical intervention is not in the best interests of your members’ patients, who I believe are also thereby damaged by your attack against oral chelation and myself.

 

I have temporarily succeeded in persuading Ms. Van Cleve to wait for ACAM’s response before turning this matter over to her lawyers.  She is emphatic, though, on the fact that her company’s success rests upon my reputation as her medical consultant and your reaction must be expeditious and substantive.  Ms. Van Cleve is adamant that the public apology is of such a caliber as to restore my professional standing, rectifying my reputation, so that I can once again be an asset to her company.  On this she is unwavering.   She has stated that without an effective change in ACAM’s posture regarding the safety and potential benefits of oral EDTA, there is no reason to continue any pretense of diplomacy, leaving a court based settlement as the only other alternative. 

 

If it is at all possible to remove the blemishes from my reputation she may at this point in time, be inclined to settle out of court.  In addition to the public letter of apology and rectification of my good standing Ms. Van Cleve feels entitled to a free of charge, double-booth with her choice of location at all ACAM sponsored events for the next eight years, beginning with San Diego.  Ms. Van Cleve also insists that all conditions set forth in this correspondence be frankly and fully discussed and that both parties agree upon their outcome for her to even consider an out of court settlement.  She feels her market with ACAM members has permanently been damaged and this offer to settle for only free booth space is wholly insufficient.  Ms. Van Cleve’s reprieve is transitory and requires expeditious action or ACAM will need to settle with her separately, on her terms.

 

Ms. Van Cleve went to great expense and effort to design and staff her booth in Nashville, then to have ACAM directly impugn the reputation of her medical consultant and seriously damage her sales, is inexcusable. She has stated that if you take longer than 14 days to agree in substance to settle this, this settlement offer will be void, and instead she will demand only significant monetary compensation.  As Ms. Van Cleve’s paid consultant, I will leave the financial damages you are liable for to the discretion of Ms. Van Cleve.

 

Thank you for taking your time and reading this document. I have a major address to deliver to some 2000 leaders in Managed Care Medicine in October regarding cost-effective alternatives in cardiovascular disease. I need to know which group they may safely want to work with in the future, that might adopt and teach Molecular based Cardiology.  I will be reporting to them about this letter and your response. However, a positive response could not be adequately incorporated if received  any later than October 12, 2001.  Whatever your response, in the court of public opinion, you will have lost when the contents of this letter becomes widely known. The facts are simply too damming.

 

I personally like you and respect you as a fine physician. I just recognize that after the recent removal of the last President of ACAM, under clearly far less than ideal circumstances, that you are now in a very awkward position where ACAM’s needs and your sense of ethics may not coincide.

 

 I do not envy you your task but I cannot allow things like this to go on.  I have no choice but to deliver this problem to you as President of ACAM.  I know how much time and effort I put into developing any consensus just to adopt the now clearly out-dated protocol. That was almost a year of my life. I know everyone is far too busy today and you have no one to dump this task on. I will understand that you will do whatever you have to do and so will I.

 

Sincerely,

G.F.Gordon, M.D., D.O., M.D. (H.)

 

PROFESSOR SUBOTO:

I came from Japan and I’m properly convinced that the chelation therapy is safe and effective and we have relatively easy procedures.  So, I determined to start when I come back to Japan, so I went downstairs to buy from EDTA.  I have met Dr. Gordon and he said the oral EDTA is much easier for you to teach.  I didn’t know the status of the oral administration and he mentioned that four hundred milligram per day.  Although the absorption is only five to ten percent.  You can consider every day.  What is the status of Oral EDTA chelation?

 

LESTER BREITMAN:

You had the misfortune of running into the wrong guy!  Of all the people.  He’s a buddy of mine and what I suggest if you are at all thinking that oral chelation might work in the least, go to the website I mentioned this morning www.dr.cranton.com and he gives a big treatise on it.  Consider this, even Dr. Gary Gordon says there is about five percent absorption of his oral chelating agents from the intestine.  That means that ninety-five percent goes through and is evacuated.  It’s a chelating agent.  If ninety-five percent of it is going through, what is happening to it?  It’s chelating (theoretically) the very trace minerals that your body needs and then taking them out.  That’s what’s getting chelated.

 

MICHAEL SCHACHTER:

I think it’s important that you need to know that this has been a long-standing controversy within the ACAM and there are people like Gary Gordon who feel very strongly one way.  I don’t how many others agree with him.  I don’t think too many.  There are others that feel like Dr. Cranton, who was just on totally opposite sides of the fence and both of them have been long standing chelating physicians.

 

Dr. Gordon of course does have somewhat of a vested interest because he has developed products related to oral chelation and I think that is important to know also when you consider these things.  And I think you have to go into the literature.  If you ask him, he will site two hundred references, but if you actually go back and read those references, I think there is really very little clinical data to show that this treatment really is of significant benefit in cardiovascular disease.

 

Now, it depends on your level of how much evidence you need to make determinations about these things, but there is a lot of clinical literature at least.  If you want anecdotal or clinical reports indicating that EDTA chelation therapy IV is effective.  I don’t think there is many if any oral studies on oral chelation showing any improvement in cardiovascular disease, so from my point of view, until those studies are done, I tend to stay with IV.

 

UNIDENTIFIED:

Professor Suboto, before you leave I have a question for you.  Dr. Fowler mentioned that Etai-Etai

THIS ABSTRACT IS MERELY TO GIVE YOU MORE REFERENCES SO YOU ARE FULLY INFORMED THAT THE WORLD AGREES THAT EDTA ENHANCES IRON AND ZINC ABSORPTION, LEAVING YOU WITH NO DEFENSE IN YOUR SUPPORT OF DR. CRANTON’S POSITION AGAINST ORAL EDTA 

 

ORAL AND INTRAVENOUS CHELATION THERAPY: Which one to use and when?

Over one million patients have received intravenous chelation therapy over the last 30+ years.[i]  The majority of these patients were given this therapy in relation to cardiovascular complaints of angina and impaired circulation.  Approximately 85 percent of those patients receiving intravenous chelation therapy have often shown significant symptomatic relief.  Yet, these patients at death are frequently found to still have extensive atherosclerosis, in spite of often good documentation showing improved circulation in the majority of those patients.

 

What are the potential benefits and risks from a substantial increase of our average daily intake of oral EDTA, now estimated at approximately 15mg?  Many incorrectly still believe that such a practice would lead to potentially fatal trace mineral depletion, although most acknowledge the potential substantial benefits from the markedly enhanced excretion of toxic metals such as lead widely documented with the oral use of EDTA.

 

Current research[ii] have documented that NA₂ EDTA enhances iron absorption and, in a cereal-based diet, has a positive effect on zinc nutrition.[iii]  Evidence clearly documents that lead levels on average today are at least 100 to 1000 times greater than were found from 100 to 400 years ago.[iv]^,[v] 

 

Extensive documentation exists today showing the adverse effects of low-level lead toxicity on everything from brain function to the immune system.  Extensive documentation exists proving markedly enhanced urinary excretion of lead and other toxic metals with oral EDTA.  This use was even approved as a package insert claim for Abbott Laboratories (see 1965 Physicians’ Desk Reference) as a treatment for asymptomatic children with increased levels of lead burden.  Note:  That diagnosis applies to most everyone today.  In fact, Los Alamos Laboratory documented a 5-10 fold increase in that excretion in spite of the widely-accepted 5-18 percent at best poor absorption of EDTA. 

 

Today, cardiovascular experts are convinced that up to 85 percent of deaths from heart attack and stroke are directly precipitated by fatal blood clot.  Now, hematology experts (Hemex.com) convincingly show that this increased development of blood clots can be tied to the low levels of infection from chlamydia, micro plasma, CMV, widely implicated by experts in today’s epidemic of cardiovascular disease.[vi]^,[vii] Aspirin has been documented to be too weak, and Coumadin too weak and too dangerous to prevent the majority of these clots.⁶ 

 

Oral EDTA has been shown[viii] to induce heparin-like activity from oral ingestion of heparin and/or other sulfated polysaccharides such as red algae or carrageen.  Thus, oral EDTA to enhance trace elements in uptake, while helping to eliminate toxic metals from the body and through its combined benefits of enhanced zinc nutriture and lead elimination, might appear to offer potential significant benefits at little risk since EDTA is on the GRAS list and is being widely researched today for food fortification programs to enhance iron and other trace metal uptake.

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