Further to the superb piece in today's Otago Daily Times paper written by Otago Medical Schools Professor of Medical Ethics (and neurologist) Professor Grant Gillett, calling into question the ostrich attitudes of medical practitioners,
it needs to be said that Ascor L 500, which is what is used in intravenous vitamin C, cannot be considered "alternative". Ascor L 500 is licensed for general medical supply. Any hospital can order, and use it for whatever they see fit. See http://online.gazette.govt.nz/MSOS118/On-Line/NZGazette.nsf/e26bc0ba522ca16ecc256ce7000605b2/41eb4b9a683d47e3cc2576b4000130e6?OpenDocument
The Auckland District Health Board, which is at the centre of the current controversy, deserves a nomination for a Tui award for the non outworking of their purported organisational values on their website which are on the bottom of their home page:
Integrity: We are open, fair, honest and transparent in everything we do
Respect: We care about and will be responsive to the needs of our diverse people and communities
Innovation: We will provide an environment where people can challenge current processes and generate new ways of learning and working
Effectiveness: We will apply our learning and resources to achieve better outcomes
Yeah right. ADHB appears to have tipped them all down the sink.
Example: The Auckland District Health Board's official statement on high dosage vitamin C therapy (uploaded pdf) on their home page, has this URL:
http://adhbintranetdev/internet/ADHB/documents/high_dose_vitamin_c_therapy.pdf (In case they change it, see the URL at the bottom of this screen shot)
Click on it. You won't be able to open it. Why is that? Is it called efficiency, openness and transparency?
But if you have all the time in the day to waste, and you play around with the URL you can open it, using THIS URL: http://www.adhb.govt.nz/documents/high_dose_vitamin_c_therapy.pdf
The ADHB’s statement has absolutely no medical references, so you have no idea upon which cherries ADBH is picking! That is not openness, nor is it transparency.
Because I have most of the full text medical articles on vitamin C that exist I was keen to see their evidence, but true to form, they don’t want to say what they researched. For readers here, a relatively thorough review can be seen at Professor Hemilla's site in Finland medical school http://www.ltdk.helsinki.fi/users/hemila/ but full text medical articles may not be available there.
Did 60 minutes show the Auckland District Health Board to be a place where people can “challenge current process”, “generate new ways of learning”, and apply that and “achieve better outcomes???!!!!”
Nope.
H1N1 patients on ECMO continue to die in Auckland hospital… except Allan Smith, that is.
And Allan Smith wouldn’t be alive today, if his family hadn’t fought tooth and nail against the ADHB dinosaur - sorry - ostrich... , and brought in a lawyer to counter Waikato Hospital’s absolute refusal to use vitamin C as well.
Furthermore, Waikato Hospital is continuing to take their standpoint (along with Middlemore hospital) that not only will they NOT administer vitamin C, but they’ve added a new one to that list. No family member may now administer vitamin C or non-prescribed medicines to patients IN THEIR HOSPITAL. And neither may the patient themselves! How ludicrous it that?
But this ”head-firmly-bunkered-in-the-pavement" behaviour IS to be expected where doctors don’t want to have to admit that they could be wrong, or have families of flu patients who have previously died, realise that their family members might have survived if they were given vitamin C!
For the Auckland District Health Board to claim that vitamin C will could harm a person they are wanting to pull the plug on, and let die, is ridiculous. The argument is that vitamin C could cause calcium oxalates, and therefore renal failure. (And they’d rather let them die anyway)
What the ADHB neglects to say is that the New Zealand Medical Journal in June 2009, said
The annual incidence of newly diagnosed renal stones was 105 per 100,000 population. A total annual financial burden of kidney stone disease in this community was estimated to be NZ$1.804 million, or NZ$450,000 per 100,000 people. ...
If this were to be extrapolated to the whole New Zealand population, then it could be assumed that the financial burden of renal stone disease would be greater than 18 million dollars in 2002.
Most of these people who land up in hospital with kidney stones and renal issues as a result....
wouldn’t know a vitamin C supplement if it dropped on their heads.
If you read any nephrology textbook on google books, dealing with kidney issue you will see that calcium oxalates is an ever increasing problem throughout the world, with many causes including nutritional deficiencies such as vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) deficiency, magnesium deficiency, eating too much salt, acid urine …. along with a whole raft of other reasons. We don't get to hear about "self inflicted" preventable kidney stones do we?
But the underpinning of this is the sheer hypocrisy. If you get Guillaine Barre Syndrome (GBS) after any vaccine, you’re told it’s coincidental, because you can get GBS after any infection.
You can get kidney stones from lots of nutritional deficiencies and health problems, so why do hospital say that it’s “ONLY” the vitamin C that will cause those kidney stones in that person, on ECMO? Do people on ECMO never have those conditions which lead people who don't know about vitamin C to get kidney stones and kidney failure?
Mightn't that vitamin C be as just "coincidental" as the Guillaine Barre Syndrome is alleged to be... after vaccination? (using their logic...)
ECMO and the drugs used with it, can also cause serious risks such as…. kidney failure, organ dysfunction… and death by brain bleeds. So what’s the problem with adding vitamin C instead of just pulling the plug?
Pride and Prejudice.
That’s the issue here.
Not clinical science.
Australian Professor Brighthope’s denunciations of the Auckland District Health Board’s attitudes last night, on 60 minutes, were well deserved, and spot on.
Thanks to:
The various people with whom heated discussions and fact sharing, resulted in the contents of this blog.
