Dmso

An easy-to-understand, up-to-date guide on the highly publicized drug, DMSO
 
DMSO—dimethyl sulfoxide—is a simple by-product of wood and has been called a “miracle” drug, capable of relieving pain, diminishing swelling, reducing inflammation, encouraging healing, and restoring normal function. In this groundbreaking work, award-winning health science writer Dr. Morton Walker examines the powerful and compelling case for the use of DMSO in the treatment of many debilitating disease and health-related problems. In DMSO: Nature’s Healer, Dr. Walker cites documented cases of its astounding use in healing and prevention of a host of health disorders, including arthritis, stroke, cancer, mental retardation, and sports and auto injuries. He also recounts the dramatic story of the long struggle to gain FDA approval of DMSO.Dr. Morton Walker is an award-winning professional medical writer. He has written more than seventy books, including the bestsellers Sexual Nutrition and The Yeast Syndrome, as well as thousands of magazine articles.

Acknowledgments

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.

Preface

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 wife’s 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 wife’s intense pain. He had obtained the liquid solvent from a veterinarian and found that it relieved his wife’s 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 can’t 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 you’ve read very far into this book, you’ll probably be asking questions similar to Dr. Bowen’s. It won’t 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. DMSO’s 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 doesn’t 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 century’s newest healing principle with a very wide range of usefulness. It represents an entirely different means of treating diseases—not 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 célèbre. 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 that—everyone involved is blind and stays that way until, many years and thousands of patients later, it is discovered that the particular drug doesn’t 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 inhibitors—like 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, it’s likely you’ll 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 won’t 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?

You will find lots of answers in these pages. DMSO needs even more public pressure than has been leveled at the regulatory process already. We want doctors to be able to prescribe DMSO without fear of censure from the medical world or the hospitals that employ them. If this doesn’t happen, it appears that little will be done to ensure that a pure, medical grade of DMSO will be made available for patients.

In writing this book, I have found a distinct reticence by doctors to have their names mentioned in connection with DMSO. Often they provided me with glowing case reports of successes with the drug treatment, but their fear of colleague criticism prevented my revealing their identities. I had to discard such reports, and there were hundreds of them.

DMSO has the largest potential number of uses ever documented for a single chemical. My wish is that this book will bring more of them into the public domain than has been allowed to this point. It should be well understood by everyone at the outset that I don’t say the substance is some kind of miracle cure. More properly, DMSO is a very effective and versatile compound that has been successfully adapted for a number of health problems. I want to get it into the hands of more people so that they may be relieved of discomforts and diseases for which DMSO is appropriate. I hope you will agree that mine is a worthy goal.

Morton Walker, D.P.M.

Stamford, Connecticut

CHAPTER 1

The Painkiller With a Problem

In the late spring of 1980, Eva Lee Snead, M.D., then a family practice specialist in San Antonio, Texas, learned that her friend, thirty-two-year-old psychologist Marjorie Saloman, was supposed to undergo a hysterectomy, the removal of her uterus. Mrs. Saloman’s genital system problem arose from a stenosis of the cervical os. This condition is a narrowing or stricture at the mouth of the neck-like opening to the uterus where it extends into the vagina.

The psychologist described to Dr. Snead how several unsuccessful attempts at cervical dilatation had been attempted by her gynecologist. He tried to relax the cervix by injecting local anesthesia at its lower quadrant. Such an anesthetic technique usually is simple and effective, but this particular block had been no help to the woman even after many tries. Mrs. Saloman’s gynecologist admitted that for her the attempted cervical dilatation was a complete failure.

The pain had been so great for this patient that when the dilatation instrument was inserted she had fainted. Her gynecologist quickly removed the instrument because the anesthetic was not allaying the pain. None of his attempts to relieve the problem worked; surgical removal of the uterus was the next procedure of choice.

Dr. Snead asked her friend to wait a week before having the hysterectomy, if delay was agreeable to the gynecologist. Complying with this request, Marjorie Saloman had her physician telephone Dr. Snead to learn the medical reasoning behind it.

Having some prior experiences with DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) treatment, Dr. Snead persuaded him to combine the substance with vitamin E and apply it topically to the patient’s cervical area. Dr. Snead wanted to try to reduce the woman’s scar tissue and adhesions, which DMSO is able to do.

“I was lucky enough to run into the gynecologist on the day that we were going to apply the DMSO,” Dr. Snead wrote me, “and he inserted the substance himself with the vitamin E. Before five minutes were over, his instrument slipped into the cervix without any sensation felt by the patient.”

A month later, the gynecologist rechecked the woman’s constricted cervix and found it was still overly narrow. He repeated the application of DMSO and vitamin E, and after a few minutes was able to insert the instrument to stretch the opening without any problem. This time it was a highly successful procedure, and the hospital appointment for surgery was cancelled.

The patient wore a device that was inserted to keep the cervical canal’s wall stretched. In the meantime, Dr. Snead placed her friend on megavitamin therapy using high doses of nutrient substances to restore health to surrounding tissues.

One month after the device had been inserted, the woman was again checked by her gynecologist who found the cervical os perfectly expanded. He was able to insert probes without first applying DMSO or anesthesia and without the patient feeling any discomfort. Marjorie Saloman had definitely been saved from having a hysterectomy.

Yet Dr. Eva Lee Snead had her medical license revoked for repeatedly employing DMSO and other forms of complementary medicine—what some have labelled “quackery” but that rightly may be considered alternative methods of healing. The state of Texas is not predisposed to allowing deviations from the medical mainstream. And, as you will see, use of dimethyl sulfoxide by forward-looking physicians is out of the medical mainstream.

*   *   *

Lorae Avery, Ph.D., director of The Health Center, Inc., an acupuncture and nutrition clinic in Auburndale, Florida, expressed her amazement to me at the effectiveness of DMSO in eliminating pain. She saw excellent results when physicians working for The Health Center applied the substance externally to patients. One of them was sixty-five-year-old Anna Goldeman, who had been suffering for years with bursitis of the right shoulder. She went to The Health Center for relief of the bursitis in November, 1980, and was gratified by the results of DMSO treatment.

More dramatic than the patient’s alleviation of her shoulder pain was the easing of a discomfort that had begun four years previously. Mrs. Goldeman had undergone amputation of the left hip high in the groin, which resulted in “phantom limb pain.” After amputation of a limb, or a portion of it, the amputee may experience strange sensations as though the part were still there. This feeling of phantom pain is generally considered to be a stump hallucination. It arises from various types of nerve stimuli, resulting in burning, tingling, pricking, tickling, or really severe pain. Such sensations are not uncommon for an amputee and are not readily treatable.

With application of DMSO to her right shoulder, phantom limb pain with its constant twitching went out of Mrs. Goldeman’s left groin. She no longer sensed that she still had an extremity. Now she could feel more at peace with her situation.

Dr. Avery said, “We did not attempt to treat the phantom limb pain; our physicians were concerned with the bursitis. Yet, the phantom pain disappeared coincidentally from application of DMSO to the woman’s shoulder. Thus, what happened is, DMSO applied to one part of the body caused phantom pain to go away in another part of the body. And it’s permanently stayed away.”

Checking back with Dr. Avery over ten years later, I learned that Mrs. Goldeman continues in comfort knowing that DMSO is available to cease her pain whenever needed.

*   *   *

Murray Franklin, M.D., of Chicago, is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, as well as the medical director of the Union Health Service, the largest prepaid medical plan in the state of Illinois. He received a supply of DMSO in the fall of 1980 and decided to try it for the benefit of some patients for whom nothing else had worked. One of the people receiving topical therapeutic applications was Lucas Sheinholtz, fifty-two, who had been troubled with rheumatoid-osteoarthritis of both knees for more than a decade. Mr. Sheinholtz, hobbling with the assistance of two canes, arrived at Dr. Franklin’s office complex to visit another physician. The patient had previously received many injections of cortisone, which his regular physician administered routinely. But no appreciable improvement in his arthritis had been observed by either the patient or his doctor.

“I suggested to the man’s physician that we might paint some DMSO on both of his painful knees,” Dr. Franklin said. “His right knee was swollen; the left knee was not. The right knee was warm to the touch. The patient’s doctor agreed to a therapeutic trial, and I applied DMSO in three applications. Since I was not fully acquainted with how to use the solution, I allowed an application to dry and then put it on again and again. Within fifteen to twenty minutes the patient said he felt no pain and was able to walk practically without the use of a cane.

“He returned in one week and described his pain in the left knee as having disappeared completely,” said Dr. Franklin. “There just wasn’t any. The pain in the swollen right knee had returned just a little. I applied the DMSO again and the man got a similar result within a quarter of an hour. No more pain! I haven’t seen him since and presume he is feeling fine.”

THE NEW MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH FOR PAIN

The people have a new medical breakthrough for pain: dimethyl sulfoxide, called DMSO. By itself or in combination with other medical ingredients, dimethyl sulfoxide should be useful in treating almost every disease known to mankind. The substance, a byproduct of pulp and paper manufacturing, has been employed safely and successfully by millions of people around the world to control swelling; reduce discomfort; take away inflammation; slow the growth of, and in many instances kill, bacteria, viruses, and fungi. It heals burns and relieves sprains, strains, and arthritic joints. It has worked effectively against cataracts, sports injuries, scleroderma, myasthenia gravis, tuberculosis, and even lessened mental retardation in people with Down’s syndrome.

Cancer seems to respond well to DMSO. At Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, Charlotte Friend, M.D., has turned cancerous cells into harmless normal ones in the test tube by putting them in touch with the DMSO solutions. Thus, DMSO cancer research is in progress.

Reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, in November 1988, twenty cancer patients with extravasation of anthracycline (destructive secretions from tissues of the toxic chemotherapeutic agent anthracycline onto the recipient’s skin with the potential to form cancerous ulcers) were treated on a single-arm pilot study with topically-applied 99 percent dimethyl sulfoxide and observed for three months with regular examinations and photographs. DMSO was applied to approximately twice the area affected by the extravasation and allowed to air dry. This was repeated every six hours for fourteen days. The initial signs of extravasation included swelling, redness, and pain. The median area of damage on the skin of these patients was 8.25 square centimeters (cm2) and a median of twenty-five minutes elapsed between extravasation and application of DMSO.

In no patient did extravasation progress to ulceration or require surgical intervention, as is usual with this toxic chemotherapeutic agent for cancer. The authors of this report suggest with 95 percent confidence that ulceration was likely to have occurred in at least 17 percent of these patients. They go on to say that at three months there was no sign of residual damage in half the patients, while a pigmented indurated area remained in ten. The only side effects of DMSO included a burning feeling on applications, subsequently associated with itch, redness, and mild scaling. Slight blisters occurred in four patients, and six reported a characteristic breath odor associated with oysters. The oncologists stated that topical DMSO appears to be a safe and effective treatment for the cancer-related condition, anthracycline extravasation.1

DMSO tends to prevent the formation of scar tissue, or to dissolve it once present. The contracture (drawing together) of scar tissue ordinarily left after a burn doesn’t take place.

Chilean physicians have published their results of using the substance, which indicate that it reduces the incidence of heart attacks or angina pain. It has been credited with preventing damage to heart muscle when tested in animal experiments. As with its use in stroke, DMSO may be lifesaving if employed early in heart attacks. Investigation is continuing.

Studies in Chile also show DMSO to be a penetrant across the blood-brain barrier. It carries drugs effective against certain forms of mental illness directly into the brain.

Placed into the nostrils, DMSO can open blocked sinuses within a few minutes.

It transports antibiotics right into the middle ear to lessen infections. It does the same against viruses and reduces the symptoms of herpes zoster (shingles) and herpes simplex (fever blisters). The viruses are hit with antiviral drugs by the DMSO transport. Furthermore, the herpes II venereal disease is greatly relieved by application of DMSO directly to the genitalia.

Periodontists in Poland have cleared up gum disease and reduced tooth decay and their associated pain by painting DMSO on the involved areas. Some pioneering dentists are dropping it into empty tooth sockets after extractions, especially those for wisdom teeth. It stops post-extraction swelling.

A 1987 paper coming out of Russia described the treatment of patients having generalized periodontitis with indomethacin in a suspension of dimethyl sulfoxide. Periodontitis is disease of the structures supporting the teeth such as the gums, periodontal membrane, and alveolar bone. The action of bacteria on food debris accumulated around the margins of the gums causes the formation of plaque, which eventually forms a hard deposit, tartar (or calculus). This accumulates in the gingival crevices (the spaces between the gums and the surface of the teeth), which become abnormally enlarged to form gingival pockets. It’s an early stage of periodontal disease.

In chronic gingivitis, the gums are marked by chronic inflammation, and they become swollen and bleed easily. Calculus accumulates in the gingival pockets, causing bleeding and ulceration. Untreated, the plaque spreads to the underlying periodontal membrane and alveolar bone, which are destroyed. In this stage of chronic periodontitis, the teeth become loosened and eventually fall out.

Periodontal disease is the major cause of tooth loss in middle-aged and elderly people. It is brought on by poor oral hygiene and also by ill-fitting dentures and badly made artificial crowns and fillings. The early stages of periodontitis are treated by scaling to remove the calculus and polishing to remove the plaque, combined with careful oral hygiene. In advanced disease the gingival pockets are surgically removed by gingivectomy (gum excision).

Now periodontal disease is being treated with indomethacin and DMSO, in combination. Indomethacin is a drug with anti-inflammatory, antifever, and pain-killing properties, but containing no corticosteroids. Its mode of action, like that of certain other anti-inflammatory drugs, is not known.2

Before this Russian publication, clinical results from the treatment of a hemorrhagic form of periodontosis were reported from Bulgaria. The clinicians used a complex herb extract and 15 percent DMSO to rid their patients of periodontal disease.3

American podiatrists have found DMSO effective for the treatment of painful corns, calluses, ingrown toenails, bunions, hammertoes, heel spurs, and even the inflammation of gouty big toes. DMSO appears to control gout pain after just seven days of application.

Inflammations such as pink eye from viral invasion go away after a few applications of DMSO.

All this happens in a way that medical scientists have yet to fully understand. They don’t know how DMSO actually works. For this reason primarily, DMSO is not approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for any other human medicinal use except as a treatment for interstitial cystitis, a condition that causes scarring and gradual shrinkage of the bladder.

Bruce H. Stewart, M.D., of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Sheridan Shirley, M.D., of the University of Alabama, administered DMSO to 213 patients and found it quickly healed the bladder condition despite the fact that the patients had not responded to traditional treatment. Before the success of DMSO, people suffering with interstitial cystitis faced either major surgery of the bladder, or even its complete removal. They suffered from the urge to urinate as frequently as every ten minutes.

Unlike criteria laid down for studying the use of DMSO for other conditions, the study on interstitial cystitis was done following an elementary protocol. The patients were ill, didn’t improve spontaneously, and all forms of treatment were ineffective. They then received DMSO and improved markedly. DMSO had eliminated the patients’ health problems and won approval by the FDA for use in bladder treatment—but only for interstitial cystitis.

THE FDA OBJECTION TO OTHER DMSO USES

“The fundamental problem from the point of view of the FDA is the quality of the scientific information that is available to support the various claims that are made for DMSO,” said J. Richard Crout, M.D., Director of the Bureau of Drugs with the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Crout made his statement at a hearing before the House Select Committee on Aging, 96th Congress, held March 24, 1980.

Dr. Crout continued, “I want to make it clear that the Food and Drug Administration has approved DMSO for the indication for which there is evidence that meets the statutory standard. We are prepared to approve it for any other indications when the evidence comes along that it does meet that statutory standard.”

In brief, the drug can be approved if clinical researchers show substantial evidence of its effectiveness by providing the FDA with well-controlled trials. The “possibility” that DMSO is effective, according to the present statute, is simply not enough. For this reason, the only thing holding up FDA approval of DMSO for any of the substance’s indications is the availability of well-controlled trials that meet statutory standards, said Dr. Crout. There is a basic conflict between the quality of the scientific evidence available and the statutory standard for approval.

This fundamental confrontation is best illustrated by a new drug application (NDA) submitted in 1978 by Research Industries Corporation of Salt Lake City, Utah, the major producer of a human medicinal grade of DMSO in 50 percent concentration called Rimso-50. Research Industries Corporation wanted to extend the use of its product and market it for the symptomatic relief of pain and ulceration in the fingers of patients with scleroderma. Scleroderma is a rare collagen disorder that results in thickening of the skin from the swelling of fibrous tissue. It most often involves the hands, especially causing ulcers on the fingers, and less frequently on other tissues in the body. After detailed review by the FDA’s Bureau of Drugs staff and its Arthritis Advisory Committee, the NDA was refused on the grounds that the available clinical trials did not yet demonstrate that DMSO was effective for scleroderma. Medical science’s current investigative techniques using double- or single-blind studies seemed inadequate for evaluating the effectiveness of DMSO in this instance.

Research Industries Corporation relied principally on one particular study to demonstrate DMSO’s effectiveness against scleroderma. This study had each patient dip only one hand into a solution of DMSO. The untreated hand was observed as a control. Both hands had ulcerations of the skin of the fingers, and investigators thought that DMSO’s effectiveness in healing sclerodermatous ulcers would clearly be shown by what happened to the two hands.

Dr. Crout described what happened. “There was a general improvement trend in the healing of ulcers of the fingers in many patients, and in a few this was quite striking. Interestingly, however, this improvement occurred in both hands in these patients with scleroderma; that is, both the treated and untreated hands tended to heal.”

Now, DMSO is different from any other known medical substance in that it is easily absorbed into the body. Paint an amount the size of a silver dollar anywhere on your upper body and in thirty seconds you’ll taste it on the tip of your tongue. It penetrates the skin and travels through the blood stream that fast.

The officials of the Research Industries Corporation argued that both hands of the affected patients healed because DMSO worked equally well on the hand in touch with the liquid and on the control hand. Simply, DMSO healed the control hand by traveling through the blood stream to the ulcer site. Absorption of the substance into the body from the treated hand was inevitable because of its unique power of penetrability. Current techniques utilizing the scientific method as it is understood today cannot be applied to the study of DMSO.

Dr. Crout said, “Our staff and advisory committee felt, to the contrary, that improvement of the untreated hand raised the strong possibility that the general improvement trend in the whole trial was attributable to a nonspecific effect of DMSO. Everyone agreed that the trial showed that DMSO may be effective, but few felt that the trial proved the point.

“Because the statutory standard for approval of a drug is substantial evidence of effectiveness as shown by well-controlled trials, not simply the possibility of effectiveness,” continued the FDA chief, “we are unable to approve DMSO for this indication at this time.”

In order for a new drug to be recognized by the FDA it must conform to section 505 of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which holds that the standard for effectiveness is “substantial evidence” of effectiveness. This means evidence must come from controlled clinical investigations conducted by experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs.

Dr. Crout declared that applications for an investigational new drug (IND) submitted for DMSO during the previous eighteen years were faulty. They had not been assembled into scientifically designed studies. They had not followed that certain discipline required by research. All INDs must go through a standard FDA procedure to win approval. The prior investigational new drug applications submitted by three pharmaceutical companies of national repute were poorly prepared, said Dr. Crout, and the companies did not know how to present an IND application to the FDA to show proper evidence of value in the use of DMSO. He made this statement despite the fact that these same pharmaceutical firms had previously won approval for other drugs.

FLAWS IN FDA PROCEDURE

Of course, the pharmaceutical companies disagreed. The co-discoverer of the therapeutic properties of DMSO, Stanley W. Jacob, M.D., Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Oregon Medical School, certainly disagreed. He believed the advisory committee that made recommendations against FDA approval of DMSO was biased against DMSO. Dr. Jacob told the House Committee on Aging: “I am not at all satisfied that the FDA is giving DMSO a fair shake.”

The DMSO researchers who worked with patients on a case-by-case basis pointed out that the FDA advisory committee was negatively disposed. The committee members had never themselves used DMSO as a therapeutic tool. And this was admitted by Dr. Crout.

The Honorable Claude Pepper, former Chairman of the House Select Committee on Aging, was inclined to agree with the analysis made by Dr. Jacob. Congressman Pepper told Dr. Crout, “If there is a drug for which there was an enormous amount of prospect of good that was being pressed upon you by three drug companies who apparently thought the drug had enormous potential, in a case like that, I would think that you would be eager to see