This comes from a recent post to a "mold illness" blog.
Hi I have a biotoxic illness and have been told by a mold specialist that I shoudl use Procrit shots every 4 days, and that this new treatment will help protect me from reexposure to mold, and help me get better now by decreasing the number and severerity of my symptoms.
Has anyone else heard of this or is anyone else using this.
I used it for a 3 week trial with my mold specialist (Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker) at his office in Maryland and it really helped me, but I can't get a Doctor where I live (Southern California) to prescribe it to me since it is usually used for Anemia.
Any info would be great!
Ritchie Shoemaker, as many of you know is an unconventional physician who purports to be the world’s expert in illnesses associated with damp indoor spaces. Most of the tests he performs are unnecessary and a waste of money. Additionally, his interpretations of the test results alarm his “patients” as additional posts on that blog site indicate.
His customary “treatment” with cholestyramine, while useless, is not harmful. However, in recent years he has expanded his therapeutic modalities to include Procrit, as the blog above, posted this year, indicates. I have seen a number of his patient's charts in which he used this drug. Not only does Procrit have no value for the treatment of the “disorder” which he diagnoses, but Procrit is potentially quite dangerous.
Procrit is a drug which stimulates red blood cell production. It is used typically in patients with abnormalities of red blood cell formation due, for example, to cancer chemotherapy, or to aplastic anemias due to other factors. Its use is specifically described and circumscribed to increase red cell count, to a precisely delimited level, but never further. It is never properly used in non-anemic individuals. In fact, it is dangerous to do so because Procrit can increase the numbers of red blood cells to levels which impair the normal circulation of blood and can lead to adverse blood clotting events including stroke.
While I have not seen a patient, yet, of Dr. Shoemaker's, who has developed such a complication, I have seen medical records of at least one of his patients whose hematocrit (measure of red blood cell volume) was alarmingly elevated following Procrit injections. His use of this drug is not simply an “off label” use. The term “off label” refers to a common practice of using drugs for disorders which have not been approved specifically by the FDA, (for example, certain antidepressants for insomnia) but which enter the realm of common practice because they work and are safe for a non-FDA approved use.
However, Dr. Shoemaker’s use of Procrit is not merely "off-label." Rather, he violates major precautions and warnings which accompany the drug and are present, not merely to protect the manufacturer, but to prevent harm to patients. Specifically, in cases I have reviewed, he has prescribed the drug Procrit in non-anemic patients and continues to prescribe it long after their hematocrit and hemoglobin levels move into danger zones. He neither monitors the patient at required intervals, nor modifies the drug use in accordance with measured parameters.
Its one thing to practice unconventional medicine: it’s quite another when those practices put patients at serious risk.
