FDA: Tunnel vision eliminates choice
Summary and Analysis…
Dr. Gibbons, a US Senate candidate, in the heart of opioid addiction, Ohio, is reported to have strongly criticized mainstream “cures.” Gibbons is quoted as saying, “Do you know what their solution is? Take a drug addict and put them on another drug.”
He is connected with an alternative treatment using NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, a “molecule found in all cells that declines as people age”) instead of addictive opioids, but it has not gone through the traditional medical trials for efficacy.
Whether or not NAD is an effective method for addressing opioid addiction, the article cites an addiction research scientist and professor of psychiatry as saying that the FDA would never approve NAD based on current evidence.
The problem for drug-free or other alternative approaches is that the only treatments approved by the FDA revolve around powerful, addictive opioids — the FDA as currently constituted and funded is not organized to evaluate and approve drug-free approaches.
Excerpted from Cincinnati.com
COLUMBUS – An addiction treatment center backed by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Gibbons offers an alternative nutrient regimen that one specialist called an ineffective “fad.”
Luna Living, a Cleveland-area treatment facility that Gibbons co-founded in 2015, touts its methods as “the clean way to get clean” and “pioneering the bold redesign of addiction medicine.”
The treatment center offers a 10-day detox using a nutritional supplement of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD, a molecule found in all cells that declines as people age. Previously used as an injection, the facility now provides a drink mix that costs about $8,000 a month.