25
cates, DMSO is a significant medical advance with minimal clinical toxicity, then
the public has been and continues to be harmed by the FDA approach.
The CHAIRMAN. Next will be Dr. Arthur Scherbel.
Doctor, will you give us a bit of your background?
STATEMENT OF DR. ARTHUR SCHERBEL, CHIEF OF RHEU-
MATOLOGY, CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION
Dr. SCHERBEL. Mr. Chairman, I apologize for not having a formal
presentation to give to you today.
The CHAIRMAN. That is all right. We are glad to have you give us
verbal testimony.
Dr. SCHERBEL. My background is as follows: I am the founder of
the Department of Rheumatic Disease at the Cleveland Clinic
Foundation. At the present time I am senior consultant in that
department. I am the immediate past president of the American
Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.
In my specialty I deal with patients who have very serious dis-
eases which indeed are challenging to any form of therapy. For the
past 25 years I have been very interested in therapy of the rheu-
matic connective tissue diseases. To be very frank with you, we do
not have good, highly effective therapeutic agents. We have no
drug today that is completely and totally effective and without
toxicity.
However, we accept all that. Those of us who treat these diseases
know how to use these drugs to best advantage and we do it the
best we can. We have no silver bullet.
During the past 25 years I have had the opportunity to evaluate
numerous drugs. Some have been approved by FDA and others
have not. Certain new drugs studied experimentally have been
found highly effective, but in clinical practice they are only mini-
mally effective. These drugs are not comparable to the effect of
antibiotics in infectious diseases.
I began to use DMSO approximately 15 years ago. Initially I was
also skeptical about the drug. It is a solvent that has been used
commercially and in laboratories. Dr. Jacob was the first to discov-
er that this drug was rapidly absorbed through the skin, relieved
pain, and in some instances it relieved swelling and inflammation.
He asked me if I would study the drug. There is no doubt in my
mind, the drug relieves certain types of pain. It is not a curative
agent and all the reports we have read about "miraculous and
outstanding" should be completely disregarded. There is nothing
miraculous about this compound at all, but it does relieve pain in a
temporary manner. It is not a cure. None of our antirheumative
drugs are curative. DMSO applied topically is indeed a safe, thera-
peutic agent to use.
There are, as you know, many people with many forms of so-
called rheumatism or arthritis who abuse aspirin, who abuse pro-
poxyphene, codine, oxycodone, and many other drugs that relieve
pain. Many do not tolerate aspirin. It may cause gastric irritation
when administered in frequent large doses. If one likes to drink
alcohol while taking large doses of aspirin he may end up in a
hospital emergency room with severe gastric hemorrhage.
I don't criticize aspirin; it is perhaps the most frequently used
drug in the world. Elderly people who use aspirin and have im-
