THE MEDICAL REVOLUTION

Most scientists agree that the reason why people get one disease rather than another is in their genes. Human beings, it turns out, aren't that complicated. There are only about 25,000 genes in the human body, only a few thousand more than in the fruitfly.

Although every GP is familiar with ACE inhibitors, GenoMed says there's a little more to the story. The tissue form of the ACE enzyme requires a higher than conventional dose of an ACE inhibitor to be fully blocked. Plus, not all ACE inhibitors work. Only the more fat-loving ACE inhibitors seem to protect the kidneys from diabetes and high blood pressure. Polar ACE inhibitors like lisinopril (Zestril) may not really work all that well.

A company in St. Louis, GenoMed, www.genomed.com says that it has found a major aging gene responsible for heart disease plus many other diseases. The gene, called ACE (for Angiotensin I-Converting Enzyme), has been known for 60 years. Extremely safe and inexpensive drugs (called "ACE inhibitors") have been available for the past 30 years. They're carried in every drugstore on Earth. The GenoMed Company is trying to prevent 90% of kidney failure globally by putting people with high blood pressure or diabetes on the right dose of the right ACE inhibitor. In the process, GenoMed hopes to delay the onset of serious heart disease by a decade.

ACE inhibitors may be useful for many additional diseases, including cancers, viral diseases, TB, autoimmune diseases, and even neuropsychiatric diseases. Patients with a normal blood pressure can take an ARB (angiotensin II receptor blocker) instead; these don't lower blood pressure much at all.

In researching GenoMed, they have also made a big dent in heart disease, and is now trying to solve cancer. The company uses genomic (or molecular) epidemiology to find cancer-causing genes, not classical genetics like other groups, such as deCODE and academic labs. Classical genetics hasn't solved a polygenic, adult disease despite 30 years' of effort, costing many billions of dollars.

A second key difference is that, while everybody else is studying the tumor, GenoMed focuses on the host. The NIH recently launched a $500 million project to sequence 1,000 tumor genomes looking for the mutations that cause cancer. GenoMed, using only $1 million, already found about 2,500 causative genes for each of six common cancers in Caucasians: breast, colon, lung, ovary, pancreas, and prostate. These genes will allow the company to make a cancer Healthchip® to predict 2/3 of cancers in whites (excluding skin cancers). The genes should also make ideal drug targets

Medicine is clearly undergoing a revolution, and GenoMed is helping to lead it. But no discussion of the medical revolution would be complete without mentioning how much resistance healthcare is putting up, actively or passively. Dr. David Moskowitz, GenoMed's CEO, first reversed kidney failure in a patient in March, 1994. His paper describing arrest or reversal of kidney failure in 1,000 black and white VA patients was published in 2002. Yet nobody knows that 90% of dialysis can be prevented.

Like all lucrative industries, healthcare, which is a $2.5 trillion industry, prefers the status quo. Although possible since 2002, no insurance company, public or private, has wanted to eliminate kidney failure, a $35 billion a year industry that claims 100,000 lives annually. More details are at http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/1333131

Finally, the country is trying to reform healthcare. President Obama has called for prevention and lower healthcare costs. Only GenoMed seems willing and able to deliver. For what this says about the healthcare reform debate, please also see http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4018013-an-allamerican-healthcare-solution

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