97
collected and the skin would break open and fluid came out. I do
not know whether the DMSO was responsible for that half im-
provement.
I used it in some patients with rheumatoid arthritis. It relieved
the pain. I tried it in some patients with osteoarthritis. Some of
them had pain relief. The pain relief was too short for them to
want to keep applying it steadily.
MS. OAKAR. You do not feel the fact that you were using it prior
to being on this ad hoc committee prejudiced you in any way?
Dr. BAUM. No, because I was still using it when I was asked to
join the committee.
Ms. OAKAR. Do you think it would be helpful to have doctors who
have used it be on a committee that would contribute-
Dr. BAUM. No. I think I agree with Dr. Crout there, that a
committee must be objective as far as possible. To be objective, you
take the evidence that is presented and whether I have used the
drug or not I still have to evaluate the evidence that is presented
to me. So I think that the people who would be asked to do it
probably would have an open mind, looking at the evidence. There
are too many of them. If one person was prejudiced the others
could very easily call him down and say "You can't say that
because look at the evidence here." So I think with enough people
looking at the evidence――
Ms. OAKAR. You have used it, you found it relieved pain and
after you studied all this, you came to the same conclusion, right?
Dr. BAUM. Yes.
Ms. OAKAR. Dr. Scherbel has used it, he thinks it is effective, and
comes to the same conclusion. I respect your conclusions, they are
impeccable obviously.
You mentioned as to arthritis, one of the biggest problems is the
pain. Doesn't that in and of itself legitimize the fact that this
should be put on the market if it does not cause adverse effects,
just the fact that it relieves pain for some people.
Dr. BAUM. Well, I would like to see a good study done on the
most common cause of pain and the most common cause of pain in
the form of arthritis in the elderly, because I work in a chronic
disease hospital and I deal with elderly patients. Osteoarthritis is a
disease more of pain than anything else. There is probably some
degree of inflammation but I think it is a minimal amount.
I would like to get something that helps these people. They are
unhappy, this is an unfortunate thing. I load them up with these
analgesic anti-inflammatory drugs and they can get side effects as
Dr. Scherbel referred to. The side effects he talked about with
aspirin you can get around by giving enteric-coated aspirin, once it
gets into the intestine it gets dissolved and you do not get the
inflammation in the stomach. The study he quoted made that
statement that the coated aspirin did well, but still you do get side
effects. It is a tradeoff.
If I use DMSO-one of the groups that tried it said they got a lot
of headache and sedation. Well, that might be a tradeoff. My
patients might object to that, because some of the drugs I use give
them headaches.
