NIH Trial Gives Surprising Boost To Chelation Therapy … With a result that is likely to surprise and baffle much of the mainstream medical community, a large NIH-sponsored trial has turned up the first substantial evidence in support of chelation therapy for patients with coronary disease. Known as TACT (Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy), the highly controversial trial was presented today at the AHA by Gervasio Lamas. The trial was sponsored by two NIH institutes, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. – Forbes

Dominant Social Theme: The gullibility of people who waste their money on chelation is a terrible tragedy. Much better to let them die of heart attacks than to see hard-earned savings frittered away.

Free-Market Analysis: We've been aware of chelation and its usefulness for several decades. While our position regarding healthcare has gradually changed, we still believe that chelation is useful. Now, apparently, the FDA will have to do the same.

Here's what we believe: Strive to keep the body in balance, or return it to balance. A natural state is a healthy state. Avoid the poison of pharmaceuticals whenever possible. A long-term diet of Western medicine is not recommended. Within this context, chelation would not seem to be a very likely candidate for natural health. Here's something from Wikipedia:

Chelation therapy is the administration of chelating agents to remove heavy metals from the body. Chelation therapy has a long history of use in clinical toxicology. For the most common forms of heavy metal intoxication—those involving lead, arsenic or mercury—the standard of care a number of chelating agents are available.

DMSA dimercaptosuccinic acid has been recommended for the treatment of lead poisoning in children by Poison Centers around the world. Other chelating agents, such as 2,3-dimercapto-1-propanesulfonic acid (DMPS) and alpha lipoic acid (ALA), are used in conventional and alternative medicine.

No approved medical research has found any benefits to chelation therapy for any use other than removal of heavy metals from the body, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers over-the-counter (OTC) chelation products to be "unapproved drugs and devices and that it is a violation of federal law to make unproven claims about these products. There are no FDA-approved OTC chelation products." …

Alternative medicine uses chelation therapy as a non-standard treatment for some ailments, including heart disease and autism. In 2010 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned companies who sold over-the-counter (OTC) chelation products and stated that such "products are unapproved drugs and devices and that it is a violation of federal law to make unproven claims about these products. There are no FDA-approved OTC chelation products."

Okay. We can see from this excerpt that chelation was developed to help soldiers suffering from poison gas attacks and later began to be applied to those with heart disease. FDA officials in recent years have been almost pathological about denouncing chelation as a kind of modern-day snake oil, on a par, say, with raw milk – another FDA bête noir.

We know from speaking to people at treatment centers that chelation seems to work. People travel hundreds of miles, desperate for treatment of circulatory ills and heart disease. They often take several courses of treatment.

Chelation intravenously acts as a kind of plunger, scouring clean arteries and veins. Some people will undergo treatment even if they aren't sick, as a preventive regime. Clinics keep opening up to administer chelation and another treatment … intravenous vitamin C.

Not so long ago it was proven in clinical trials that intravenous vitamin C indeed has a variety of beneficial effects. We await studies regarding the preventive effects of raw milk. So far as the FDA is concerned, this would be a trifecta of doom.

The FDA continues to make questionable decisions. Drug therapies are routinely approved with terrible side effects, including causing birth defects. Meanwhile, the FDA spends an inordinate amount of time confiscating raw milk. How exactly the FDA knows raw milk is bad for you is unclear. Presumably they've done double-blind tests. Not that we believe in the published results of such tests anymore.

All drugs that come out onto the market have undergone some sort of double-blind test – and yet many still can do considerable harm. It is hard even to keep track of what's been withdrawn from the market.

The system is evidently and obviously configured to support a certain kind of medicine, one that doesn't recognize any of the body's natural healing powers but instead treats it like some sort of inert engine that has to be constantly tended to and "fixed."

Chelation and vitamin C therapy have been demonized for decades, to the point where the rhetoric created a recognizable subdominant theme. They were regularly trotted out as evidence of quackery. And yet, as more and more drugs are pulled off the market, often thanks to Internet exposure, comes word that both intravenous vitamin C and chelation do indeed have health benefits.

And so it goes in the era of the Internet Reformation. Change keeps occurring and elite memes continue to topple. Sometimes the change is imperceptible and sometimes radical – but it's happening all around us.