06.28.07

More Mad Medicine

Posted in Anything goes, Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, Uncategorized at 9:43 am by Administrator

After writing my post yesterday on the book When Medicine Went Mad, I remembered a website I stumbled upon months ago called Guinea Pig Zero. Actually, that’s also the name of a book edited by Robert Helms, the full title being Guinea Pig Zero: An Anthology of the Journal for Medical Research Subjects. Included in that book is the story of Jessie Gelsinger written by his father, Paul Gelsinger. The story caught my eye because I remember hearing briefly on the news years ago of some “genetic” experiment gone wrong. This was actually just before or shortly after my AA diagnosis. It appeared that Gelsinger was the boy of whom that story was about. Apparently, he had some problems which they felt could be corrected with gene therapy. All seemed in order, that is, Jessie was of legal age and gave his informed consent based on the information he was provided. However, what was later found was that the information he was given was not only misleading, but false. Below is an excerpt of what was told to Jessie prior to his submitting to the clinical trial.
“He then explained that the most recent patient had shown a 50% increase in her ability to excrete ammonia following gene therapy. My reaction was to say, “Wow Mark! This really works. . .”

Then after Jessie’s death, the following was discovered:

“. . . It wasn’t until that three-day meeting that I discovered that there was never any efficacy in humans. I had believed this was working based on my conversations with Mark Batshaw and that is why I defended Penn for so long. These men could not go in front of their peers at the RAC meeting in Bethesda and say this was working. After Penn and the FDA made their presentations on Dec. 9, I asked for a lunch meeting with the FDA, NIH and the Penn doctors.

The full article can be read here.

I’m not one of those who likes to use my self as a guinea pig, so it always amazes me when I read of people signing up for clinical trials.  Lots of people who do sign up have some sort of incurable disease, so they figure they might as well help in the struggle to find a cure.  Okay, I can “kinda” understand that, but I still didn’t think it was a good idea for a “sick” person to be testing out all these weird drugs and procedures.  Then I found that some of the early tests are actually done on “healthy” individuals, ack!  I wondered, “Why would a healthy person take any of these drugs?”  Turns out some people are paid to test out these drugs and willingly submit themselves to them.  That’s a really weird concept to me, but apparently lots of people do it.  And that reminds me of a Jim Carrey movie, Fun with Dick and Jane.  In that movie Jane needed some extra cash, so she goes to one of those facilities that use volunteers to test out some cosmetic implant substances.  She ends up with a reaction where her lip got swollen like it had been stung by an army of mosquitoes, ha ha!  It’s funny to watch in a movie, but must be horrifying in real life.  There was an article months back, maybe a year ago or more now where these healthy guys submitted themselves to some new drug.  Shortly after being injected these guys were screaming in pain.  I forget the details, but a couple of them ended up in critical condition.  I recall one patient’s head swelled up so big that he was screaming in pain, ack!  Unfortunately, I never did see a followup article on that.  What happened to those guys?  I wonder how many people submit themselves to new drug tests each day?  What are the results?  Weird stuff going on in this world. . .

Marlakins

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