In this time of galloping healthcare costs one would think that the premier national institute will think twice before spending every tax dollar .But sadly NIH (National Institutes of Health/The FY 2016 Budget requests $31.3 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an increase of $1 billion, or 3.3 percent, over FY 2015.) just seems to keep on pouring our tax dollars down the drain.
What do you do when you've spent $30 million to study a highly controversial, possibly harmful treatment, only to learn that it doesn't work?
If you're NIH's alternative medicine center, you double down. More than double, actually: NIH's NCCIH* just announced they will spend another $37 million to study chelation as a treatment for heart disease. Or to be more specific, Mount Sinai of Florida and Duke University issued a press release this past week proudly announcing that they'd won a $37 million grant to launch TACT2, the second Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy. TACT2 will be a followup study from TACT, which ended in 2012 after largely failing, as I'll explain below.
Chelation is a harsh chemical treatment, using a chemical called disodium EDTA, that is sometimes used to treat lead poisoning, because it can help to remove heavy metals from the blood. Some people think that this can somehow remove plaques from arteries, a sort of Roto-Rooter for your circulation, which in turn might improve cardiovascular health. This turns out to be wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment