Nanobacteria Link to Heart Disease & Cancer: Nexus Magazine Article

The Nanobacteria Link
to Heart Disease and Cancer
Nanoparticles are implicated in the harmful calcification that's common
to many illnesses.
A simple treatment is now reversing the symptoms, especially in heart
disease,
so why aren't the health authorities telling patients and doctors about
it?

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Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 12, Number 5 (August - September
2005)
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. editor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
>>From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com

by Douglas Mulhall © May-July 2005
Email: info@xxxxxxxxxxx
Website: http://www.calcify.com
Based on the book The Calcium Bomb
by Douglas Mulhall and Katja Hansen
(The Writers' Collective, 2005)


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Millions of seriously ill patients are unaware that heart disease is
being measurably reversed with an approach pioneered by researchers at
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and in
Finland, aided by Mayo Clinic and Washington Hospital Center findings.
This approach is now prescribed by hundreds of doctors for thousands of
patients. A similar approach has been developed with prostate disease
at the renowned Cleveland Clinic in Florida. According to doctors, both
approaches are practical options for those whose other medicines and
surgery have failed. So why aren't other desperately ill patients whose
treatments don't work being told about it?
In July 2004, the medical journal Pathophysiology published a
peer-reviewed research paper with the innocuous title "Calcification in
coronary artery disease can be reversed by EDTA-tetracycline
long-term chemotherapy".1 In plain terms, it meant that hardening of
the arteries was being reversed. Not only were rock-hard calcium
deposits being reduced, but chest pains were being resolved in most
patients and bad cholesterol levels were being cut beyond what other
medicines had achieved. The findings were important for patients whose
other drugs and surgery weren't working, i.e., the "cardiac cripples",
whose numbers are in the millions and whose doctors have told them
there is nothing more to be done. They were the ones who responded most
favourably to the new approach.
Then, in February 2005, a paper published in the prestigious Journal of
Urology by researchers from the Cleveland Clinic, one of the leading
urology hospitals in America, reported "significant improvement" in
chronic prostatitis-a growing problem for millions of men-again,
where other approaches had failed.2
The studies, although otherwise separate, had a compelling link. They
used a cocktail of well-known, inexpensive medicines that have been
around for half a century but were never before used in this
combination. Both reports urged more studies to confirm their
conclusions, and emphasised that not every patient experienced a
reversal; only a majority did. Nonetheless, the results were
encouraging. Chronic diseases that had befuddled modern medicine were
being reversed.
To put a human face on this, take the case reported by Dr Manjit Bajwa
of McLean, Virginia, who did not participate in the clinical studies
but whose experience with one patient paralleled study results. Dr
Bajwa reported in a testimonial of 5 May 2005:
"Two years ago I had a patient with severe coronary artery disease with
a 75-85% blockage in left coronary and two other arteries. Open heart
surgery was recommended as stents could not be put in. The patient was
told he would probably die within two weeks if surgery was not
performed.
"He declined surgery and instead chose chelation. [Author's note:
chelation in this case is an intravenous form of heavy metal removal.]
After twenty-five treatments of chelation, his angina worsened
[author's emphasis]. With [his] heart calcium score of 2600, I started
the nanobacteria protocol. Within two to three weeks his angina abated.
He was able to return to all his normal activities and exercises in two
months.
"Nanobacteria protocol helped this patient measurably, when other
treatments had failed. I am quite impressed with his results. With
heart calcium scores of 750 or more, nothing else seems to work."
Bajwa and her patient are far from alone. In Santa Monica, California,
general practitioner Dr Douglas Hopper said he recorded impressive
results with a diabetic patient when he used the treatment to help her
recover from congestive heart failure. Hopper then put his patient on
the same treatment used in the clinical study: a regimen of
tetracycline, EDTA and nutraceuticals,3 administered by the patient at
home. Note that this was not intravenous chelation, which has been
broadly analysed and critiqued, but, instead, a mix of oral and
suppository treatments.
In Toledo, Ohio, cardiologist Dr James C. Roberts, who pioneered early
patient treatment with this approach, has on his website case histories
from dozens of patients who have shown remarkable improvement. In
Tampa, Florida, cardiologist Dr Benedict Maniscalco, who supervised the
clinical study [Pathophysiology study, referenced previous page],
reports that patients who stayed on the treatment after the study was
completed showed dramatic reductions in their heart disease symptoms.
There are many more examples.
Normally results such as these, when reinforced by clinical studies,
however preliminary, would be cause for loud celebration. If the
findings had been reported by a major pharmaceuticals company, they
could have easily made the front pages of medical news services
because, until then, no one had reported reversing the symptoms of such
diseases to such an extent. More encouraging still, because the
medicines have been around for many years and their side effects are
minimal and well known, the new approach is already available across
the USA and used with thousands of patients. That leaves thousands more
doctors with millions more patients who might benefit right now. On top
of that, a blood test based on the new approach has been used to
identify heart disease early in patients who show no outward symptoms.
Why, then, has the response from government authorities, medical
associations and health experts been cavernous silence?
To understand this requires looking at a scourge that has been with us
for millennia, and which science has been at a loss to explain until
now. It is known as calcification.

CALCIFICATION
Calcification is a rock-hard mix of the most plentiful minerals in the
body: calcium and phosphorus. Normally this calcium phosphate mix is
essential for building bones and teeth. But as we age, and sometimes
when we are still young, some of it goes haywire, stiffening arteries,
roughing up skin, destroying teeth, blocking kidneys and salting
cancers.
The arithmetic is frighteningly easy. Calcification doubles in the body
about every three or four years. We can have it as teenagers and not
notice, although it mysteriously accelerates in some athletes. Then as
we age and also live longer, it becomes so endemic that most people
over seventy have it.
For decades, calcification has been growing imperceptibly in tens of
millions of baby boomers. Politicians and pundits are among the
high-profile victims of this slow-motion explosion that is ripping
apart healthcare with skyrocketing treatment costs. In December 2004,
doctors diagnosed US President George W. Bush with one of the more
commonly known forms: coronary artery calcification. Former President
Clinton required emergency surgery because doctors missed much of his
calcification when they used older tests to track it. Vice President
*** Cheney and many of his Senate colleagues are calcified. At least
three sitting US women governors have had it in breast cancer as well.
And they are not alone. Media types who cover politics or poke fun at
it haven't escaped. Larry King and David Letterman are both calcified,
as are many ageing news anchors. A much younger CBS Early Show co-host,
Rene Syler, has it too.
As we learn more about it, calcification is competing to be the leading
medical disorder. Although it is nowhere on the "Leading Causes of
Death" list, it contributes to most diseases that kill us, including
heart disease, diabetes and cancer. The numbers are staggering. For the
60 million Americans who have heart disease, most have calcification.
Of the millions of women who develop breast or ovarian cancer or who
have breast implants, calcification is a warning. Men with prostate
disease often have it, as do kidney-stone sufferers. Athletes with
stress injuries like bone spurs and tendonitis get it frequently.
Most of us don't know the pervasiveness of calcification because it has
a different name in many diseases, and here are just a few: dental pulp
stones, hardening of the arteries, kidney stones, pitcher's elbow, bone
spurs, microcalcification in breast cancer and "brain sand".
Unsuspecting patients aren't the only ones in the dark. Many doctors
are unaware of new studies that show calcification is toxic, causing
acute inflammation, rapid cell division and joint destruction. Oddly,
these nasty effects are well known to specialists who study
calcification in arthritis, but awareness of them hasn't translated
very well to the cardiovascular community, with the result that
calcification is still misperceived by many as an innocent bystander
instead of an inflammatory devil.
The double-think about calcification is illustrated by how it is
treated in breast cancer. When microcalcification is detected in the
breast with routine scans, it is a warning sign for cancer and the
deposits are biopsied for malignancies. This was the case, for example,
with Connecticut Governor Jody Rell in early 2005. Doctors found cancer
in the calcium deposits in her breast before scans detected a tumour.
This let them surgically remove it before it spread to her lymph nodes.

That typifies one perverse advantage of calcification: it helps doctors
pre-empt more serious disease. In some ways, it is a canary in the mine
of the body. And yet, if cancer is not found in calcium deposits, these
are often declared as "benign" and patients are told there is nothing
to worry about.
The same thing goes for heart disease. Coronary artery calcification is
seen as an excellent predictor of the illness. Tens of billions of
dollars are spent every year on scanning technology to identify the
telltale thin white lines that betray its presence. Yet most doctors
see calcification in the arteries as something that comes along later
once the disease takes hold, despite evidence that calcium phosphate
crystals generate the same type of inflammation that, according to
cardiologists, plays a big role in heart attacks.
Incredibly, with all the advanced detection techniques, there has been
no way to find calcium deposits where they get started in the billions
of capillaries in the human body-so, without being able to see the
starting point, doctors often conclude that what they don't see isn't
there. But make no mistake: calcification is there, and it is a medical
disorder. It was registered in 1990 as a disorder under the
International Classification of Diseases list of the World Health
Organization and was adopted by WHO member states as of 1994 (see
http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/).
When well established, calcification stares defiantly at radiologists
every day from X-rays as it multiplies incessantly. There has been no
proof of where it comes from, and there is no known way to prevent it
or sustainably get rid of it without removing it surgically. Due to its
gestation period of years before it triggers real trouble, it has just
begun sucking the life out of baby boomers and their healthcare
budgets.
Among its more exotic effects, it threatens space exploration when it
disables astronauts with unexpected kidney calcification and it is a
budget-breaker for pro-sport-team owners who lose athletes to its
ravages. At the more mundane level, it complicates root canals and it
disrupts the lives of otherwise healthy young people when it strikes as
kidney stones. Worst of all, it infiltrates plaque in heart disease and
stroke and it plugs bypasses and stents used to fix our internal
plumbing.
The US National Library of Medicine holds thousands of research
documents referencing calcification, and various medical journals cover
it in depth. GE Healthcare, Toshiba, Philips and Siemens sell thousands
of machines for detecting it.

TREATMENT A THREAT TO PHARMCO PROFITS
But with all this money being thrown at calcification, there has been
virtually no success at finding the cause. So when researchers such as
those at Mayo Clinic and NASA find something that seems to cause it,
and clinical studies show that a new approach seems to get rid of it,
you'd think that most of the medical establishment would be rapt with
attention, right? Wrong.
Only a few small studies have been co-financed by the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) to look into this, and neither has to do
with the treatment. The only thing the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) seems to have done is to make rumblings about whether the
treatment is legitimate, although the active ingredients-tetracycline
and EDTA-have been FDA approved for other uses for decades. So far,
no government agency has made public note of the peer-reviewed studies
that many physicians say are so promising.
According to doctors familiar with the approach, here are a few reasons
why the treatment has not been given the attention that it seems to
merit...
· The most perturbing for patients: the treatment is relatively
inexpensive and produces poor profits compared to other drugs. It is
exponentially cheaper than open heart surgery. Because it does not have
to be taken for life at full dose-as is the case with most other
heart drugs-it does not provide the steady cash flow that other
medicines do.
· Although the treatment is initially used alongside other medicines
as a precaution to make sure patients don't switch prematurely and
suffer problems, evidence suggests that the new approach might replace
more profitable blood thinners and anti-inflammatories that are staples
of the pharmaceuticals industry.
· And if the approach continues to reverse coronary artery disease,
it will cut down on expensive surgical procedures that are the
financial mainstay of hospitals.
That's not to say surgeons don't want to get rid of calcification. New
stents that go into arteries are specially coated with time-release
drugs that seem to ward off calcification. But that only happens where
the stent is located, not in the other 99.999 per cent of the arteries.

Also, the EDTA-tetracycline-nutraceutical combo that has
demonstrated such promise is not the only treatment shown to work. A
group of drugs known as bisphosphonates, used for example to treat
osteoporosis, has been shown to be effective in the lab against some
calcification. But bisphosphonates can have nasty side effects,
especially with the type of regular application that seems to be
necessary to reverse heart disease in seriously ill patients. Due to
these risks, the only present approach that seems to be safe and
effective in reversing heart disease is the one that uses the
EDTA-tetracycline-nutraceutical mix.
Critics claim the reason why the treatment isn't adopted more broadly
has nothing to do with money but instead with science. They say
researchers can't show how the treatment works.

NANOBACTERIA DISCOVERED IN OUR BLOOD
It all comes down to a sub-microscopic blood particle known as a
nanobacterium, discovered in 1988 by Finnish researcher Dr Olavi
Kajander at Scripps Research Institute in California.
The particle has a special habit no other blood particle has been known
to possess: it forms a rock-hard calcium phosphate shell that is
chemically identical to the stuff found in hardening of the arteries,
prostate disease, kidney disease, periodontal disease and breast
cancer. The problem is, the particle is so small that it apparently
can't accommodate nucleic acid strings that, according to commonly
accepted wisdom, would let it replicate on its own and be alive. So
scientists are stumped over how it manages to self-replicate.
For 15 years, microbiologist Dr Neva Ciftcioglu (pronounced
"shift-show-lew") has been peering with an electron microscope at this
blood particle that critics say doesn't live. But according to NASA
colleagues and Mayo Clinic researchers, the question of whether it
lives is less important than what it does. Despite or perhaps due to
its tiny size and genetic elusiveness, this speck may be the Rosetta
stone for a calcified language found in most diseases on the Leading
Causes of Death list.
Like her science, Ciftcioglu's life is full of unusual turns. Being a
woman microbiologist from Turkey speaks volumes. Throw into that her
once-fluent Finnish, a position at NASA and professorships on both
sides of the Atlantic, and you've got a determined character struggling
with a stubborn scientific cryptogram.
Ciftcioglu's work with nanobacteria began when her PhD scholarship took
her to the University of Kuopio in Finland, where alongside her once
mentor, biochemist Olavi Kajander, she developed the antibodies
necessary to find the particle in the human body. A decade later, her
work caught the eye of NASA chief scientist Dr David McKay and she
ended up at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, gathering science
awards that testify to her success.
Now Ciftcioglu and long-time collaborator Kajander, who discovered the
nanoscopic artifact, stand at the eye of a growing storm. They and
their colleagues are garnering praise and scorn because they claim to
have evidence for why most of us are literally petrified by the time we
die. More profoundly, their work may influence how new life is found on
Earth and other planets.

SELF-REPLICATING NANOPARTICLES
An intense dispute has raged for years that connects how we look for
infection in the body with how we look for bio-kingdoms on Earth and
throughout the universe. Researchers have long sought terrestrial
extremophiles that tell them what might survive on Mars, while others
doubt the wisdom of looking for life on Mars at all. The mystery
remains: what is the most effective way to find novel organisms?
Until recently, every life-form was found to have a particular RNA
sequence that can be amplified using a technique known as Polymerase
Chain Reaction (PCR). Nucleic acid sub-sequences named 16S rRNA have
been universally found in life-forms. By making primers against these
sub-sequences, scientists amplify the DNA that codes for the 16S rRNAs.
Resulting PCR products, when sequenced, can characterise a life-form.
One high-powered group persuaded NASA with a "Don't fix it if it ain't
broke" line and lobbied successfully to use the same method employed
for years: get a piece of RNA and amplify it. The group-led by
scientists such as Dr Gary Ruvkun at the Department of Genetics in
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and advised by luminaries such
as Dr Norman Pace at the University of Colorado-got money from NASA
to build a "PCR machine" that would automatically seek such clues in
harsh environments such as those found on Mars.
Other scientists known as astrobiologists say the PCR machine approach
is a waste of money because such amplification shows only part of the
picture-not what nature might have done on other planets or, for that
matter, in extreme Earthly environments.
However, their argument always suffered from lack of evidence-that
is, until 2003 when scientists associated with the San Diego-based
Diversa Corporation and advised by Professor Karl Stetter, of the
University of Regensburg, Germany, published the genome of an
extremophile known as Nanoarchaeum equitans, which Stetter's team had
discovered in Icelandic volcanic vents.
N. equitans was special because it had the smallest known genome found
so far, but it also had another intriguing trait. With Nanoarchaeae,
the particular 16S rRNA sequence found in other life-forms wasn't in
the place that it was expected to be and did not respond to
conventional PCR tests. The 16S rRNA sequence was different in areas
addressed by the PCR primers and did not amplify. Stetter noted that
the so-called universal probes that work with humans, animals, plants,
eukaryotes, bacteria and archaeae did not work in this organism.
How, then, was the discovery made if the organism couldn't be sequenced
in that way? Stetter had found that the organism's sequence where the
traditional "universal" primers are located was abnormal. This finding
let him use other means to sequence the gene. In reporting their
discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,4 the
Stetter team observed that the information-processing systems and
simplicity of Nanoarchaeum's metabolism suggests "an unanticipated
world of organisms to be discovered". In other words, it might be the
tip of a nano-lifeberg.
Stetter's finding gave ammunition to scientists such as Neva Ciftcioglu
who say they have found other extremophiles, including human
nanobacteria, that cannot have their nucleic acids detected with
standard PCR amplification.
One of the differences between Stetter's N. equitans and the
nanobacteria found by Ciftcioglu and Kajander's team is that
Nanoarchaeae need another organism to replicate, whereas at least some
nanobacteria seem to replicate by themselves. Another difference is
that Nanoarchaeae are slightly wider: 400 nanometres compared to
100-250 for nanobacteria. The greater size allows for what
conventional wisdom says is the smallest allowable space for
life-replicating ribosomes.
Which leads to the question: how do nanobacteria copy themselves?
Evidence for self-replicating nanoparticles has been around for years
in everything from oil wells to heart disease, but failure to sequence
them using regular PCR led some to dismiss them as contamination or
mistakes. However, researchers have found characteristics that make the
particles hard to explain away. They replicate on their own, so are not
viruses. They resist high-level radiation, which suggests they are not
bacteria. They respond well to light, where non-living crystals don't.
So if they aren't viruses, regular bacteria or crystals, what are they?

Some supporters of standardised 16S rRNA tests are quick to discount
nanobacteria. That's not surprising. If a novel nucleic sequence holds
true with other extremophiles as with N. equitans, then a machine that
searches for life using standard PCR tests might miss them and be
obsolete. Conscious of this, the PCR machine team has said that as part
of their work, they plan to "search for the boundaries" of the 16S
sequences, but what exactly that means and how they plan to overcome
the problem hasn't been set out yet.
Reputations, money and perhaps the foundations of life ride on the 16S
rRNA dispute. Resolving it may determine who gets money to find the
next great biological kingdom.

NANOBACTERIAL INFECTION
How relevant is the outcome for human welfare? In 2004, researchers
reported finding nanobacteria in everything from heart disease to
cancer and kidney stones. Medical researchers reported to the American
Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2004 that a test for
nanobacteria is an accurate predictor of heart disease risk. But the
work that these researchers say may already have saved lives has been
ridiculed by critics who claim that such nanobes don't exist, which in
turn has made funding for basic research hard to get.
Who is right? One well-respected astrobiologist observer qualified the
struggle this way: "Unless we declare [the nano-organism scientists]
incompetent, then the info they have gathered is rather compelling that
something interesting is going on."
That's why a few intrepid investors have plopped US$7 million and
counting into a Tampa biotech start-up devoted exclusively to
Ciftcioglu and Kajander's discoveries about the calcifying particle.
For the big pharmaceuticals companies that's pocket change, but for
these entrepreneurs it's a pocketful of faith that's been keeping them
on edge for years. And it's starting to show some results, as published
research from NASA, Mayo and various universities indicates. Moreover,
despite its relative financial insignificance, this venture may end up
wagging the dog due to a long-overdue paradigm shift in, of all things,
the space program.
After decades of resistance, NASA-provoked by successful upstart
private projects such as the X Prize, which led to the first private
foray into space-is now collaborating with fledgling companies,
instead of just corporate behemoths, on intractable problems: in this
case, why perfectly healthy astronauts come down with kidney and other
calcifying disorders. The result: in March 2005, NASA's Johnson Space
Center put the finishing touches on a tightly secured lab aimed at
decoding nanobacteria found at the core of kidney stones. After some
serious growing pains, the lab is finally beginning to look into what
Ciftcioglu and Kajander began examining so many years ago: the genetic
content of nanobacteria. Meanwhile, Ciftcioglu and others have
published results showing that nanobacteria multiply five times faster
in weightlessness than in Earth gravity,5 which may explain why
calcification shows up so suddenly in space.
But while researchers argue over what this nanobacterium is and how it
multiplies, doctors are finding that, when they treat it with a medical
cocktail, their patients improve.
Nor is it unusual that doctors are succeeding before science figures
out why. Antibiotics were used successfully against bacteria long
before scientists deciphered DNA. Doctors stopped infecting patients by
washing their hands long before they were able to identify all the
viruses and bacteria that they inadvertently transported from patient
to patient.
Most recently, a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer has been put on
the market. It apparently works by targeting the human papilloma virus.
Problem is, researchers can't show exactly how the virus causes cancer;
they can only show that when it is stopped, the cancer doesn't occur.
But that hasn't prevented the drug from being patented and put on the
market. The history of medicine is full of such examples where patients
improve with treatments whose mechanisms aren't fully understood at the
start.
The idea that infection could be at the heart of chronic illness is
intriguing because it has been around for more than a century but only
now is regaining favour due to discoveries of, for example, a vaccine
that prevents cervical cancer (as mentioned above). The resulting
debates over infection in chronic disease have a novel twist because
they are driven by new diagnostic technologies that give researchers
the molecular accuracy required to confirm older theories about
infection. On one hand, clinical results suggest antibiotics alone do
not prevent the rate of heart attacks among coronary patients. On the
other, discoveries that infection is responsible for most stomach
ulcers and some cancers support the long-held idea that the same might
be true in heart disease, if only science could find the right
infection and get rid of it.
Some say that nanobacteria may be one such infection. Yet scientists'
inability to fully explain the genetics of nanobacteria is being used
by high-ranking medical authorities as an excuse to ignore the pathogen
and its treatment. This is especially perplexing because scientists
involved in the discoveries work at some of the highest level
institutions in America, including NASA, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic,
Washington Hospital Center and many others, and are not only respected
in their field but are also award winners. Other centres of excellence
internationally, such as University Hospital in Vienna, have also
isolated the pathogen and observed it in diseases such as ovarian
cancer.
For decades, scientists have shown that disease can be caused by
contaminants that are not "alive" and cannot replicate on their own.
Environmental toxins, many viruses and, most recently, particles known
as prions have all been shown as players in disease processes, although
they cannot self-replicate.
So it seems unusual that nanobacteria would be discounted just because
no one has yet shown how they multiply. Which takes us to the question
of where nanobacteria might come from.

NANOBACTERIA-CONTAMINATED VACCINES
When Dr Olavi Kajander discovered nanobacteria in 1988, he was not
looking for disease at all. He was looking for what was killing the
cells that are used to develop vaccines. Labs everywhere have a vexing
and expensive problem with these widely used cell cultures: they stop
reproducing or die after a few generations and have to be thrown out.
Kajander surmised that something invisible was killing them; and when
he incubated supposedly sterile samples for more than a month under
special conditions, he got a milky biofilm. That biofilm contained
particles that he later named nanobacteria, unaware at the time that
some of their characteristics made them quite distinct from bacteria.
The serum that Kajander used to grow the nanobacteria came from the
blood of cow foetuses. Serum from the UK especially was full of
nanobacteria, but a much later study also concluded they were present
in some cow herds in the eastern US. In other words, nanobacteria are
in cows, and cow blood is used to develop many vaccines. Kajander
emphasises that this should not stop people from using vaccines,
because the immediate risk from diseases that the vaccines are intended
to prevent is relatively higher than the calcification risk in the
short term. Nonetheless, the potentially explosive implications of
contaminated vaccines and cow by-products would be clear to everyone at
government agencies who has examined the issue.
In that context, a series of hotly disputed discussions went back and
forth between Kajander and Ciftcioglu and disease prevention agencies.
And it certainly wasn't a secret because the Medical Letter on the CDC
& FDA (10 June 2001) published an article entitled "Nanobacteria Are
Present In Vaccines; But Any Health Risks Remain Unknown", explaining
that nanobacteria had been discovered in some polio vaccines.
The minutes of a subsequent meeting of the FDA Center for Biologics
Evaluation and Research (CBER) advisory committee in November 2002
reveal an extraordinary decision by the committee members: they elected
not to investigate the potential contamination. According to the
minutes they based their decision on a lone experiment, suggesting that
what Kajander had found was a contaminant often found in lab
experiments and nothing new. In other words, they maintained that
Kajander had made a mistake.
But one of the glaring problems with the NIH-funded experiment
performed around late 1999 or early 2000, as shown in the published
paper about the results,6 is that it did not use a control sample that
could have been provided by Kajander. In other words, the experiment
never examined the particle that Kajander had discovered, but instead
relied on growing the particle independently without knowing if it was
the same one Kajander was referring to. Moreover, the experiment was
never repeated after the preliminary finding. On that very slim basis,
according to the CBER committee minutes, the whole issue of
nanobacteria was dismissed as a potential contamination issue for the
time being. Since then, papers have been published showing that
nanobacteria have been grown in labs around the world and that patients
began to improve when the pathogen was targeted in disease.
Nonetheless, neither the FDA nor NIH has indicated much readiness to
re-investigate the vaccine contamination issue or the nanobacteria
treatment.
What might be the price for this delay in researching nanobacteria?
Annually, millions of heart disease patients go through agony or die
because drugs and surgery prescribed for them haven't worked. For this
last-ditch group, the choices are simple: try something new or die.
The question that the NIH and FDA may one day face is: when such
promising early evidence was being reported and so many patients had
exhausted their other options, why were doctors not advised of this new
possibility so that they could at least tell patients and make some
informed decisions?
Researchers like Ciftcioglu and Kajander, along with cardiologists like
Benedict Maniscalco plus experienced general practitioners such as
Douglas Hopper, profess frustration that so many patients and their
doctors are not being given the information that could help them,
especially in last-ditch situations. Meanwhile, calcification continues
its relentless march in millions, and the human and financial costs are
mounting.

POSTSCRIPT
In May 2005, Dr Olavi Kajander delivered a sobering message to a joint
meeting of the US FDA and the European Medicines Agency on viral safety
when he presented new evidence to support something first published in
1997: that vaccines are contaminated with nanobacteria.
Since 1999, government agencies have done virtually nothing to
investigate the claim, due largely to that NIH experiment which failed
to use particles discovered by Kajander as control samples; so now that
the vaccine contamination has been officially reported to authorities,
the question is: what will be done?
Then on 24 June 2005, a "smoking gun" was announced about calcium
deposits in heart disease. British researchers published proof in the
leading medical journal Circulation Research7 that calcium phosphate
crystals cause inflammation in the arteries. Inflammation is a leading
cause of heart attacks, but until now most cardiologists have believed
calcification to be an innocent bystander in the inflammatory process.
Because of that, calcium deposits were never targeted with treatment.
If true, the British discovery would force a re-evaluation of the whole
medical approach, not only to inflammation but also to the foundations
of heart disease, looking at calcification as a prime culprit.

About the Author:
Douglas Mulhall is a leading nanotechnology journalist who appears
often on nationally syndicated talk shows in the US. As managing
director of the Hamburg Environmental Institute, he co-developed
methods now used by government agencies to measure environmental
impacts. His book Our Molecular Future (Prometheus Books, 2002)
describes how to use nanotechnology as a defence against tsunamis and
other natural disaster risks. His disease prevention experience comes
from pioneering water purification technologies in China and South
America.
Mr Mulhall's communications background began with a Bachelor of
Journalism (Hons.), progressed to (award-winning) documentary film
making, then diversified into management when he co-founded the first
commercial TV network in the Republic of Ukraine. He has written
articles for US media such as News Day, The Futurist and The National
Post as well as for publications in Germany and Brazil. He contributed
to the first Financial Times (UK) book on green business opportunities
and has also written and edited a range of technology training books.
Douglas Mulhall sits on the advisory boards of the Center for
Responsible Nanotechnology and the Acceleration Studies Foundation. He
has given invited lectures to organisations such as the National
Research Council, the US EPA and the Institute of Medicine.

Editor's Note:
This article is based on material in the book The Calcium Bomb: The
Nanobacteria Link to Heart Disease & Cancer, by Douglas Mulhall and
Katja Hansen (The Writers' Collective, 2005; see review this issue),
which was selected as a Finalist for the 2004 Book of the Year Award
for Health by Foreword Magazine. For more information, visit
http://www.calcify.com.

Endnotes:
1. Maniscalco et al., "Calcification in Coronary Artery Disease can be
Reversed by EDTA-Tetracycline Long-term Chemotherapy",
Pathophysiology, July 28, 2004.
2. Shoskes, Daniel A., Kim D. Thomas and Eyda Gomez,
"Anti-nanobacterial therapy for men with chronic prostatitis/chronic
pelvic pain syndrome and prostatic stones: Preliminary Experience", J.
Urology, February 2005.
3. The ingredients are described in The Calcium Bomb, p. 94; they are:
(1) nutraceutical powder (vitamins C and B6, niacin, folic acid,
selenium, EDTA, L-arginine, L-lysine, L-ornithine, bromelain, trypsin,
CoQ10, grapeseed extract, hawthorn berry, papain), 5 cm3 taken orally
every evening; (2) tetracycline HCl, 500 mg taken orally every evening;
(3) EDTA, 1500 mg taken in a rectal suppository base every evening.
According to the representatives of the company that sells the
nutraceutical/EDTA combo, the treatment works this way: the
nutraceuticals boost the immune system, accelerate EDTA action and
reduce inflammation; the EDTA strips off the calcium phosphate shell;
and the tetracycline eradicates the nanobacteria. The tetracycline is
also a chelator on its own and helps remove the calcium phosphate.
4. Waters, Elizabeth et al., "The Genome of Nanoarchaeum equitans:
Insights into early archaeal evolution and derived parasitism", PNAS
100(22):12984-12988, October 28, 2003.
5. Ciftcioglu et al., "A potential cause for kidney stone formation
during space flights: Enhanced growth of nanobacteria in microgravity",
Kidney International 67:1-9, 2005.
6. Cisar, John O. et al., "An alternative interpretation of
nanobacteria-induced biomineralization", PNAS 97(21):11511-11515,
October 10, 2000.
7. Nadra, Imad et al., "Proinflammatory Activation of Macrophages by
Basic Calcium Phosphate Crystals via Protein Kinase C and MAP Kinase
Pathways - A Vicious Cycle of Inflammation and Arterial
Calcification?", Circulation Research 96(12):1248-1256, June 24, 2005.

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