HONEST-MEDICINE_chptr4_Schopic2.pdf

An excerpt from

Chapter 4

Burt Berkson, MD, MS, PhD:

Pioneer

His Work with IV Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) and Oral

Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN); His Perceptions About

Our Medical System

I irst learned about Dr. Burt Berkson’s fascinating work with

intravenous alpha lipoic acid long before I began thinking

about writing this book. It was in 1999, nine years after Tim

was irst diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. Hungry for

nutritional solutions for Tim, I started attending meetings of

NOHA (Nutrition for Optimal Health Association: http://www.

nutrition4health.org) , an organization that presented lectures on

cutting-edge nutritional treatments.

Dr. Berkson spoke at one of these meetings. His lecture was a

paradigm-shifting event for me, because he talked about how, as

a resident, he had used a non-traditional treatment that unques-

tionably saved lives, only to be roundly chastised by his superi-

ors for using it. I found this shocking.

Years later, when my husband’s doctors expressed doubts that

Silverlon had actually healed Tim’s non-healing skin (Chapters

2 and 3), I was reminded of Dr. Berkson’s experiences. My hus-

band’s doctors reacted very much the way Dr. Berkson’s supe-

riors had. Both sets of doctors weren’t at all interested in any

treatment they themselves weren’t “up on.” hey all showed

the same lack of curiosity, and demonstrated an eerily similar

66 | Honest Medicine

hostility toward some really cutting-edge treatments that had

saved patients’ lives.

In this chapter, Dr. Berkson also tells us how the papers he

published on his successes with intravenous alpha lipoic acid

garnered interest from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

I want my readers to see that all the treatments I am featuring in

this book have a great deal of evidence to back them up, includ-

ing scholarly papers and studies. Most of these treatments, how-

ever, do not have the “gold standard”: the randomized double-

blind clinical trials that only pharmaceutical companies and the

government can aford. (he Ketogenic Diet is the exception. In

Section 3, you will learn about the successful Class 1 random-

ized double-blind trial performed in 2008 by Dr. Helen Cross

in the United Kingdom.)

Dr. Berkson includes observations about how the medical

system functions, how conventional doctors think, and why it is

so diicult for conventional doctors to accept non-standard-of-

care treatments like the ones I am proiling in this book. He also

points out that large medical institutions often squelch doctors

who are creative and curious.

Creativity and curiosity are the cornerstones of the profes-

sionals who have pioneered the treatments I am writing about.

Lastly, Dr. Berkson gives us a glimpse into Dr. Bernard

Bihari’s work with Low Dose Naltrexone. After reading this

chapter, I hope you will understand why I consider both Dr.

Berkson and Dr. Bihari to be two of my personal heroes.

In Dr. Berkson’s words …

•

I actually started out wanting to be a biology professor, not a

medical doctor. I got my MS degree in Biology from Eastern

Illinois University, and my PhD from the University of Illinois at

Urbana. I wrote my dissertation on the cell biology of microor-

ganisms. I then accepted a professorship at Rutgers, where I both

taught and conducted research. I loved it. While I was at Rutgers,

Dr. Burt Berkson | 67

I was on several university medical school committees and slowly

developed an interest in clinical medicine.

At this time, my wife Ann began having miscarriages, one after

another. She had ive of them in all. I had thought that if a person

was the head of a department at the University of Chicago or Har-

vard or Stanford, they really knew more than anybody else. So, we

went to doctors like this. And still she’d have these miscarriages in

the second trimester, in the fourth to sixth month. hese doctors

would always say, “hese babies are normal. Just get her pregnant

again. Maybe next time she’ll be able to carry the baby.”

In desperation, I went to the medical library, and read some

of the journals in obstetrics. his was in the late 1960s. I saw that

there was a Dr. Shirodkar in India who said that when people had

normal babies with second-trimester miscarriages, it was usual that

when they had a D & C on one of the irst miscarriages, the cervix

was injured or lacerated, so when the baby got to a certain size, the

cervix couldn’t hold that baby. his 1973 paper in the Canadian

Medical Association Journal describes Dr. Shirodkar’s technique:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1941378 .

After completing this research, I went back to Ann’s doctor

at this prestigious university, and told him about Dr. Shirodkar’s

procedure. He looked at me and said, “You’re a microbiologist.

I don’t tell you how to practice your ield. Don’t tell me how to

practice gynecology.”

“Here’s the article. Why don’t you read it?” I handed it to him.

“I’m the head of the department. I know what I’m doing. Just

get her pregnant again,” he said.

So I looked all around the United States for a medical doctor

who had studied with Dr. Shirodkar, and found Martin Clyman

in New York. Ann became pregnant again, and I took her to Dr.

Clyman’s oice.

68 | Honest Medicine

He said, “I’ll put a little stitch in there—a little ligature, a

simple little circular stitch.”

Dr. Clyman performed the procedure, and Ann had a normal

baby. And then she had another one, ive years later.

It was these experiences with Ann’s doctors that made me start

losing faith in many people in the medical profession. I didn’t really

want to be a medical doctor, but I thought it might be a good idea

for me to have an MD in addition to my PhD. It would help me

at the university—it would give me more power there. And I also

could be an ombudsman for family members, if they had to deal

with medical doctors. hat’s why I picked up the MD. But I never

thought that I would ever stop being a professor.

So I went to medical school. While I was a resident in inter-

nal medicine in a teaching hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, I had a

very upsetting experience that made me decide to stay in medicine,

rather than go back to teaching.

I thought I had been doing well as a resident. But one day the

chief of medicine came by and said, “I am very upset with you.”

“Why?” I asked. I thought he was kidding.

“You have no deaths on your service. Most people have seen

several deaths by now and you haven’t seen any,” he replied.

I told him that I really try to keep people alive.

“It’s very unusual. I’m going to give you two people who will

surely die,” he said. “hey have acute and fulminant liver disease.

hey ate poisonous mushrooms, and the expert on liver disease said

we cannot get a transplant for them, and nothing can save them.

So I want you to go upstairs, watch them die, take notes and pres-

ent this to grand medical rounds.” In addition, he told me that the

patients were my responsibility.

I went upstairs. I looked at these two very sick people. And as a

medical doctor, especially in internal medicine, you’re supposed to

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