Technology and Virtual Medicine
by Dr. Toby Watkinson, MD
Technology is moving at a very fast pace. Medicine is one area where we could all benefit from new and harmless technology; better and less invasive diagnostics, more natural and less toxic medicines and more advanced yet natural treatment modalities. We need all these advances to be more congruent with our body's design. We all know it takes forever for the benefits of research to make it from the lab to the market place. The process is also long because many of the chemical products are dangerous and need to be tested over and over. Also, everyone needs to be involved and they need to make it cheaply yet justify a high cost to the consumer.
There are technologies in use today which provide better avenues to examine patients, are less expensive and more effective and lead to less invasive and less dangerous treatment. Some of these devices can also take down the big barriers in care delivery like distance and time. As a complementary and alternative community, we need to be aware of these tools and look to their integration into our exams so we too can build an armament of effective devices for better health care delivery and, more importantly, disease prevention.
More Truth
I think of the studies in education which have shown lecture is the least effective method to deliver information. Even though we know this and are all in agreement there are more effective methods, nothing has really changed.
Medicine is not much different. Consider this example. When you are sick you go to the doctor and sit in a crowded waiting room full of other sick people. Then you get to wait again in a treatment room where all the other sick people sat too. A nurse gathers details of your illness and maybe takes your temperature and or blood pressure. The doctor comes in and you get to tell the doctor all over again. You then get to straighten out the details of what you just told the nurse. The doctor asks a few questions, looks at the chart notes and maybe does a test or two of his own. He may offer an explanation of what he thinks is wrong and might even suggest a lab study and otherwise will write a prescription and give you a printed instruction.
Too often, the worst part is no one really hears what you are saying if you have anything more complicated. You have no voice in the process and your degree of confidence about getting to the bottom of what is going on is on the line.
I recently talked to a patient who told me that after months of waiting to see her managed care doctor there was a sign on the wall that said, "Keep your symptoms to one per visit". She was told she needed to make another appointment for multi symptom complaints. What has it come to? I know this is a worst-case example but it may become more common with health care reforms in the making.
Chronic Disease, Money, Vaccine Sales and the Genome
Let's talk about what is happening in Medicine today, specifically about chronic illness. Think of the number of people who have Lyme and what the government is doing about it. Is Lyme disease all over the news? Are they saying it is a pandemic? Are schools looking at how to participate in prevention and offering safety tips? Have they developed a vaccine or even accepted a more specific test to diagnose Lyme? Has the evening news told everybody to get tested or stay home? How many people have Lyme? How many people have suffered with the many symptoms? How many have been crippled by Lyme? How many people are chronically ill and never get treatment because no one has ever run a test capable of diagnosing the disease? Now, for a moment, how many people have Swine Flu? I think we all know what pushes these fear-driven campaigns.
Those of us in the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) community were excited recently to hear there was $12 Billion earmarked for ASD research. We were not so excited to see it turned out to be Genome research money rerouted to ASD. In other words, how much of this money was really being spent to look at the real causes of Autism and its link even to Lyme disease? Or on the other hand, how much of it was Genome research money with an ASD hat on its head? The experts say genetics can only explain 5-10 percent of the ASD we are seeing today but they continue to pour money into genetics in place of looking at the real potential causes and cures.
It seems the push to complete the Genome is a bigger priority than actually figuring out the process and causes of chronic illness which are overtaking us. As for genetic modifications, we are only now beginning to see the results of Monsanto's work in this area and it is frightening. Modifying human genes will obviously be the next big step in the Genome parade and then we are at the brink of all looking like we belong in the cocktail lounge in the original Star Wars movie.
A More Practical Application of Technology
Let's imagine another picture for a moment. Think of a much more advanced yet inexpensive method to look at patients. No sitting in diseasefilled waiting rooms, no repeating your symptoms over and over and not having anyone get the picture. Think of an exam experience like the computer system used on the newer motor vehicles. The technician plugs the car's computer into such a device and there on the screen is a picture of everything that is out of the normal range for your vehicle. Imagine this for the human body. Image how such a machine could integrate the input from your body into an informational health matrix and it could all be done from your living room if need be.
The Chinese government has been working to establish a more westernized health care delivery system in recent years. The rural areas of China have been served for hundreds of years by a system of barefoot doctors who went from village to village administering herbs and doing acupuncture as they cared for the Chinese people. With the westernization of health care coming into vogue, this old system has broken down as young people want the modern methods. Many of the older rural populations have been left without the only system they had come to depend upon. For this reason, the government is looking at technologies to better serve their people who may not be close to the cities where the modern medical facilities are located.
Recently a researcher from Stanford and his team, along with the Chinese government, undertook a study to compare 200 patients receiving an extensive 48 hour traditional physical exam at the leading medical hospital in China to a 5 minute virtual exam performed on the patient from a remote location. The virtual
exam, called a biosurvey, was focused on autonomic responses to computer signal or signature for the biomarkers such as teeth, vertebrae and the Traditional Chinese Medicine meridian system. The medical exam did labs, x-rays, physical exams and even CAT scans and MRI. Once all the data were collected and analyzed there was an 87% correlation between the body systems found to be compromised in each method of exam.
For the last 30 some years I have been looking at all the tools and techniques to help sick people. Before that, I spent years in school and working in neuroscience, experimental psychology, learning behavior, acupuncture, chiropractic, lasers, thermography, clinical nutrition and several years in research on contract to the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory.
In my dreams I had always hoped to find a technology which could look beyond that which we could hear or see and bridge the gap between man and technology to test and measure the smallest discrepancies in the human design.
I can't believe it myself but this technology is already at work figuring out my patients and helping me make important clinical decisions. Let me tell you how it works and how it has great benefit in looking at chronically ill patients when all else has been chasing the wrong cause or, for that matter, the wrong diagnosis.
The Technology at Work
Through the years I have been asked by the family of Hospice cases to see their passing family member. I have also been asked to consult with patients who have terminal diagnoses. When I was first asked to see a Hospice case years ago by a minister, I had mixed emotions. The minister was counseling a mother of a 10 year old who had incurable brain cancer. The boy had no hair from countless chemo and radiation therapies. He had had multiple brain surgeries. He walked with a white cane with a red tip because he was blind. I could barely get my mind around not being the healer. My question to myself then was: how do I work with someone without trying my best to figure them out and make a change to better their life? I eventually was able to find my role and work to help him every way I knew how. The story ended both happily and unhappily.
The bad news was he did pass away but there was some not-so-bad news too. He passed without any pain. This was the main reason they had asked me to see him: to help him pass without pain. His eye sight returned after years of blindness and he hung up the cane. When he first came to me, his prognosis was poor and he was not given long to live. He ended up living well over a year beyond the original prognosis. He regrew his hair, his pain went into remission and the tumor stopped growing. He visited Alaska and, with the return of his sight, he achieved one of his greatest dreams of seeing an eagle in nature. Not only did he see an eagle, he drew a picture of the one he saw and gave it to me as a gift.
From this experience, I never turn away terminal cases. I never turn down the opportunity to learn or to beat the odds.
Case Studies
With this as my pledge to my patients, I recently received two referrals that were told they had grave and terminal disease. One case had already been referred to Hospice. The one patient was a four-year-old boy with a terminal form of Tay-Sachs disease. For those of you who are not familiar with the condition, it is a genetic disease. It occurs when a harmful amount of ganglioside accumulate in the brain and the nervous system. It has an increased prevalence in Ashkenazi Jews, French Canadians and occasionally in Louisianan Cajuns.
Once the young patient was diagnosed with the genetic markers, the parents were told to "go home and prepare". That was all the managed-care hospital would tell them and no attempt on the parent's part to discuss other factors was entertained. There were two specific factors that made the Tay-Sachs diagnosis suspect. One was that the boy and his family had an Asian-Pacific heritage. Another factor was the genetic work up showed it was an "unusual genetic variant" of Tay-Sachs. But no matter what the parents said, they were denied further consults or diagnostics to look for other conditions.
When I first saw the child, he was unable to walk without help, he had no speech, his fingers and toes were contracted like claws and he was very sick with a flu which was being treated by the hospital. Not being smart enough to agree with the diagnosis, I began to look under all the rocks, I called the genetics lab, I discussed the odd language of the report "genetic variant" and I began to comb the literature.
I also used my new technology and conducted biosurveys relating to every possible cause for this condition, its diagnosis and symptomatology. I developed a complete array library of all the known chemistry of Tay-Sachs. I concluded there were a few signs of the Tay-Sachs and apparently enough to sway the genetic testing, but I was still not satisfied that the prognosis and diagnosis were correct.
I performed multiple biosurveys, looking for clues that would point me to possible causes for these symptoms. I finally ran a Lyme array and sure enough, there it was: a Borrelia Lysate IgM. I then scanned the parents and, sure enough, it showed on both of them as well.
As you review the biosurveys’ results below, you will see there are markers, for the Tay- Sachs which do show significant responses to chromosome abnormalities and the GM2 markers but there are other markers that are non-responsive and considered in-range.
When you review the results of the biosurvey below, you will see that indeed he has a more significant response to the Lyme marker than he does a Tay-Sachs marker. The biosurvey is not a diagnosis; it's more like a bio health history filled out by the body. Its value is to guide the practitioners in making better decisions and using the computerized arrays to look at large libraries of data. Once I saw these results, I ordered the IGeneX Lyme Panel, which came back positive. My subsequent diagnosis was genetic Lyme disease and, yes, there were Tay-Sachs findings, but there are many carriers of Tay-Sachs who do not die.
Once treatment was begun, the child returned in two weeks and was able to grip my fingers because the clawing hands and fingers had normalized, although his feet were not normal yet.
My next such case was a middle-aged golf instructor who had been given a tentative diagnosis of Shy-Drager Syndrome, a degenerative neurological condition also referred to as Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). I immediately began to look for the chemicals a golf instructor could be exposed to every day. Next, I looked at the neuro-degenerative evidence. These were both dead ends. I then turned to him and asked, "Have you ever been bitten by a tick?' He said, "Why yes, I had been and all the tests for Lyme were negative". I did a Lyme biosurvey anyway and he was correct that there were no Lyme responses of significance.
Earlier this year, I had 4 cases of African tick fever (Rickettsia) which were baffling a Florida ER until I scanned the patients and consulted with an expert in South Africa where the patients had visited. With this experience, I felt there are so many other
diseases carried by ticks that I decided to run an insect and tick disease array. I hit pay dirt!!!
The biosurvey for the golf instructor showed a significant response to the bio signature for Rickettsial disease. Again this input prompted me to order specific lab work from I GeneX and my suspicions were confirmed. There are other indicators as well which need follow up as the laboratory testing continues because disease is not always from one cause.
The above biosurvey did not show results which one might expect from a significant deterioration of brain tissue and, as a result, I moved on to explore Lyme disease as an option.
Nothing on the Lyme biosurvey above was significant although retesting was still a consideration if a more exacting cause was not indicated and confirmed.
My experiences earlier with African tick fever (Rickettsia) prompted me to scan the biosurvey below and sure enough I found a significant marker to warrant the running of the Rickettsial IGeneX test which confirmed my suspicion. I had hit pay dirt!!!
The scan for the golf instructor clearly showed a Rickettsial disease which was confirmed with further testing at the IGeneX.
Conclusion and Comments
Today's doctors are over loaded with complex and chronic diseases to consider in their workup of a sick patient. Most physicians are very familiar with the patient who presents with a symptom or two, but today's complex cases may present with dozens of symptoms. Diagnosis of chronic disease is an incredible burden financially, physically and emotionally. Imagine the potential of technology to give one a view into the body to help figure out which tests to run and what diseases to follow up with further studies.
I have spent years developing test kits containing thousands of testers for conditions, metabolic pathways, laboratory tests, remedies and etc. My knowledge in this area has now resulted in the many disease arrays which, through this automated array panning technology, have allowed me to consider thousands of potential causes. I am now more specific and exacting in my selection of lab tests. Lab tests are often costly and time consuming so it is best to be correct in ones you select.
Remember this is not a diagnostic device but a tool where the body is asked a question via an electrical impulse and the resultant reaction is then recorded in a digital manner for review. The tests provide a guidance system for the doctor, giving him another set of eyes and ears. This information is to be combined with other clinical data and other tests and tools to unwind the complexity of the case. This in turn leads to a confirmed objective diagnosis and a successful treatment plan.
These specialized devices are not to be used for diagnosis or even disease naming, yet with the more advanced arrays can be used to guide decision making by those physicians interested in getting to the bottom of the causal chain of illness.
At present, I see patients both in my San Diego Office and my Orange County office and remotely when necessary. I also consult throughout the world with doctors, often scanning their difficult cases looking for potential pathways to follow to resolve illness.
Interested parties can contact Dr. Watkinson at his Scripps Medical Offices in San Diego, California at 1-858-793-0211.
