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glad to have you. Will you please make whatever statement you
wish to make? It will be admitted in the record in full.
STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN BAUM, DIRECTOR OF ARTHRITIS
AND CLINICAL IMMUNOLOGY, MONROE HOSPITAL, ROCH-
ESTER, N.Y.
Dr. BAUM. I would like to point out that I was a member of the
National Research Council National Academy of Science Commit-
tee that was formed to study DMSO.
I might correct a slight misstatement that was made by Dr.
Jacob. I myself, and many of the other members-in fact, I selected
the subcommittee members-of the subcommittee used DMSO on
patients, as I did myself.
I notice I left out scleroderma, because I also treated a patient
with that. So I and the other members of at least my Subcommit-
tee on Connective Tissue Diseases, including Arthritis, had used
DMSO. I think it is an interesting drug.
The statement that was read by Dr. Crout was the one that I
wrote as the member of the committee responsible for its use in
rheumatologic diseases. I made some statements in 1975 which I
have had no reason to change in the past 5 years, because as far as
I have been able to see from following the literature, I have not
seen anything that would make me change my mind.
For example, I do not believe that this drug has been proven to
be an anti-inflammatory drug in humans. I do believe as you read
out from my statement that it is an analgesic.
As Dr. Reedy did, I have used it on others-as well on myself-
for an acute inflammatory injury. But that was for pain-I mean
an acute injury. I have seen nothing yet which has convinced me
that it does have an effect on inflammation. The best study of this
type was done by the Japanese Rheumatism Association. They
studied over 200 patients with rheumatoid arthritis which is an
inflammatory type of arthritis.
They did find an influence on pain. There was a decrease in pain
reported by the patients. But by measurement of the joints there
did not seem to be any marked decrease in the size of the joint. If
the drug had been anti-inflammatory you would have expected to
see some decrease in size of the joint. We find this, for example,
when we use anti-inflammatory drugs. Osteoarthritis is interesting
because this is a disease where pain sometimes is the greatest
problem. Yet there has not been a good study on the use of this
drug for the relief of pain in patients with osteoarthritis. I find this
to be a definite lack.
The problem with scleroderma, this has gone on for a number of
years. I really think Dr. Scherbel and the FDA should get together
and look at all of his patients.
In 1965 Dr. Scherbel had already treated 44 patients with sclero-
derma. He probably has treated-with DMSO-more patients with
scleroderma than anybody in the world. So I think a review of all
the patients that he has treated might be in order. I have never
seen a publication by him in which he put all the cases he has
treated together. I think that would be worthwhile.
There are other life-threatening diseases that we deal with in
which this drug has not been used, and I think justly so. For
