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they will try literally anything to find relief, regardless of risk,
regardless of cost.
One thing that has not come out at this meeting today so far is
something I think is rather important in terms of perspective.
This group of people, along with a lot of other arthritis sufferers,
are really sitting ducks for any kind of unproven remedy.
I staff the Arthritis Foundation's Committee on Unproven Reme-
dies. Even now, sitting here all day I consider DMSO an unproven
remedy for arthritis. It happens that the arthritis victims I speak
of make up a hard core group in the United States who have been
going for the past 8 years or so to clinics in Mexico, one clinic in
particular, to get DMSO. They supposedly get intravenous DMSO
while they are there, and they bring back big supplies of dose-
yourself medication when they return.
It is interesting that when they come back, by and large their
testimony is that they have experienced wonderful relief, dramatic
relief. And so they become DMSO disciples. The switch is that
investigation so far seems to indicate they don't get DMSO at all;
they are getting other medication, most of it medication which is
available and conventionally used in this country, but would not
normally be prescribed and administered in the same way. When
arthritis patients bring medication back from Mexico, they usually
take it without proper supervision.
So here we have, on top of the kind of wonder drug thing that
has grown up around DMSO over the years, a large group of
arthritis sufferers who are convinced, totally convinced, that this is
a wonderful agent for their arthritis. Their experience makes them
doubly puzzled, to put it mildly, as to why the FDA, the authori-
ties, don't release it for use in this country. They are attracted to
Mexico in the first place because it is a banned drug in the United
States. And I think they become convinced that there is some kind
of a conspiracy in this country to withhold it.
We have been hearing intimations of that as we sit here today.
I think it is important for the committee to consider the distor-
tions in the reputation of DMSO-its public reputation-that re-
sults from this particular Mexican clinic operation.
The Arthritis Foundation's role in the DMSO controversy is the
same as it is with all proposed remedies. That is being "for" the
patient first and foremost, a patient advocacy role. Our job, as
these things come up, is to determine the facts as best we can and
provide guidance to help people make the wisest health decisions
for themselves.
In the past 8 years, my department has put out eight advisories
on DMSO, each of them generally triggered by some kind of public-
ity, something that has brought DMSO into the news.
So you see our concern here first and foremost is with consumer
protection. It is a health education problem for us.
I would like to think that the Arthritis Foundation is and has
been neutral about all this, that we don't take sides. We have
concurred with the position of the scientific community generally,
including the ad hoc committee we have heard about today.
We did at one time when the Florida Legislature was considering
legalizing DMSO in that State, make a statement opposing that
particular procedure in particular. The idea that a State should
