19
Ms. OAKAR. Thank you very much.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Symms. We appreciate your
being here.
Now we will hear Dr. Stanley Jacob. Would you please come to
the table?
Dr. Stanley Jacob is associate professor of surgery, University of
Oregon Medical School. Dr. Jacob is a graduate of the Harvard
University Medical School and has been recipient of the Markle
Scholarship in Medical Sciences, the Kemper Foundation Research
Scholarship of the American College of Surgeons, and the First
Place Glycerine Research Award.
Dr. Jacob has published over 40 papers in scientific journals on
such research as overcoming surgical shock, prophylactic use of
antibiotics, and restoring blood production in leukemic children.
His research on the clinical use of DMSO dates back to 1961.
Dr. Jacob, we commend you for your initiative in trying to meet
the challenge of suffering and pain experienced by so many mil-
lions of your fellow citizens. We thank you very much for coming
here today to tell us about this drug that you have initiated and
which you have recommended.
STATEMENT OF DR. STANLEY JACOB, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
OF SURGERY, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON MEDICAL SCHOOL
Dr. JACOB. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen, I brought a bottle of
DMSO with me. This is in 70 percent concentration. It looks very
much like water. In the United States it is made from the cement
substance of trees, lignin. It can be made from any inorganic base
such as coal or petroleum very inexpensively produced. It is a very
simple chemical.
In my opinion, in our century we have had three truly signifi-
cant therapeutic principles. These are: Penicillin of 1927-28, corti-
sone of 1948, and DMSO of 1963.
Now the difference between a therapeutic principle and a drug is
that a drug is useful in treating a disease or a dozen diseases or
even 100 diseases. But a therapeutic principle is an entire new
means of treating illness.
The basic therapeutic principle of DMSO is that one can treat
disease by altering what normally goes into and comes out from
cells. Because we are not dealing with a drug in the conventional
sense, this is one of the reasons that DMSO is not available today.
The people at the FDA, unfortunately, do not understand this
concept. I fear that if the situation continues the way it is with
people in charge at the FDA and the current division in charge of
it, with this group not really understanding this compound, we will
not see DMSO available for a fraction of its potential within this
century.
Now we began working with DMSO in 1962. In 1965, three
American pharmaceutical firms, Merck, Syntex, and Gibb, submit-
ted new drug applications to the FDA stating that DMSO was
ready to be a prescriptive agent. These three were turned down.
In 1971, Gibb submitted another NDA stating that DMSO was
ready to be prescriptive in the United States. This was turned
down.
