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A hero has emerged from McDonnell trial

Posted: Sunday, August 17, 2014 10:30 pm
by Stuart P. Adler, M.D.

http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/your-opinion/letters-to-the-editor/letters-to-the-editor/article_34d25709-399a-59de-a54b-04f673628980.html

Based on recantations provided by The Times-Dispatch of the McDonnell trial, there emerges from this tawdry affair one apparent hero, Dr. Paul Ladenson, Director of Endocrinology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, a professor at its School of Medicine and an expert in thyroid disease.


A curiosity is that smokers and those exposed to second-hand smoke have a reduced frequency of a common autoimmune inflammation of the thyroid gland (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis). Anatabine, the drug sold by Starr Scientific Inc., is an ingredient of tobacco leaf and other plants. In 2012, Ladenson and co-workers in an independently funded and comprehensive study observed in mice that anatabine effectively treated this disease and suggested that anatabine may work in humans as well. Appropriately, Ladenson was a consultant to Starr Scientific Inc. and worked with the badly flawed Jonnie Williams to facilitate human testing of anatabine. In the U.S. nothing new happens in medicine unless there is the co-operation of academia, government and industry to bring laboratory observations to human use. Each entity differs in motivation and mission and it is the proper but always daunting task of academic research-physicians to orchestrate the cooperation of these three entities to produce useful disease treatments. For his efforts, kudos to Ladenson.


(While I have never met Ladenson, I am a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and it residency and fellowship programs.)