Open letter
to physicians...
"The physician's privilege and obligation is to
care for patients with compassion and skill." -- from the brochure
for the Albion Walter Hewlett Award at Stanford University.
Dear friends,
You are truly
in a privileged position, to be the people who, through art and skill and
knowledge and compassion, act as the link between the vast world of
biomedical science and technology, and the individual patients before
you. It is natural for you to want the best for your patients, and
it is your obligation to find and know what the best is.
There was a
time, before the invention of global pharmaceutical companies, teaching
hospitals, and peer-reviewed journals, when individual physicians were
more autonomous. They learned what they knew of diagnosis and
treatment from other physicians and from their own experiences with
patients, and they passed this knowledge and these skills on from
generation to generation.
Some of that
autonomy still remains, but much has been lost in this day of global drug
monopolies, hundred-million-dollar drug development budgets, biotech,
genomics, Medline, and the jNational Institutes of
Health.
Here, with
IPT, we have a simple medical procedure, discovered in 1926 by an
individual doctor. He could only theorize about how it works, but he
found it to be amazingly effective for treatment of many diseases.
He tried for years to tell other doctors about it. But institutional
medicine and pharmaceutical company hegemony were already well
established, the tumult of political and historical events drowned out his
voice, and he was not heard.
In time
honored fashion, bypassing the huge medical establishment, he passed on
his skills and knowledge of IPT to his son. And that son passed IPT
on to his own son, and two other doctors. And all of them tried to
tell other doctors to the best of their abilities, but were rarely
heard. This is how IPT has been preserved and developed, quietly and
almost invisibly, for 75 years.
After three
generations, it is finally time for IPT to leave obscurity and to step
forward for all to see: a simple procedure, a slight modification of
medical practice, a better way to use the drugs that we already have, that
could revolutionize medicine and bring dramatically better results to
patients. Your patients. Through you.
How is this
occurring? Perhaps it is just that IPT's time has come. Drs.
Donato Perez Garcia and SGA are starting to train more physicians,
and to take a more public role. They arranged a credible
presentation to the NIH in September, 2000, and have the green light to
begin a first clinical trial for cancer. And here on IPTQ.org, for
the first time, the whole archive of IPT writings and history is being
brought together as a catalyst for anyone in the world to read --
patients, doctors, researchers, philanthropists, healthcare providers, and
pharmaceutical companies.
Let your
curiosity and your compassion guide you through this website. Be
guarded and skeptical if you must. If IPT is just a placebo, it is a
very good one, and has deluded several doctors over their whole
careers. If, on the other hand, IPT is for real, then through
ignorance of it a great injustice has been done to patients everywhere,
and the doctors who care for them. This can only be righted by
allowing IPT to finally reach its potential, through research and clinical
application.
There are two
kinds of medical ignorance. One is from not being exposed to
something. The other is from ignoring it after being exposed.
IPT has languished due to both kinds of ignorance. But
three-quarters of a century is more than enough of this.
IPT is easy
to learn, in just a two or three day seminar, with ready access to other
IPT doctors for follow-up. IPT is legal for doctors to practice
right now, since it is merely a slightly different use of the drugs we
already have. IPT is very safe, as reported by doctors with an
aggregate of more than 130 years of experience. And IPT is very
effective, as they have also reported.
True, there
are no controlled clinical studies to cite and lean on. Just the
testimony of doctors like you. But in most of human history, before
the advent of the juggernaut of industrialized medicine, that was enough.
It is very
likely, in the next few years, that IPT basic research will bloom, and
that clinical trials will be undertaken for IPT treatment of a variety of
diseases. But you do not have to wait for them. In fact you
can help start them. There is nothing to stop autonomous physicians,
wherever they are, from beginning now to explore the potential benefits of
IPT for themselves and their patients. The risk is low, and the
possible rewards are immense.
You, too, can
find out why Jean-Claude Paquette MD called IPT "medicine of
hope" and why SGA calls it "medicine of joy".
So I hope you find this website
interesting and helpful. Please do not hesitate to contact me or any
of the IPT doctors for more information and resources.
Sincerely,
Chris Duffield Ph.D.
IPTQ.org
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