“However, as a medical professional...”
Would you care to explain your being a ‘medical professional’? What are your credentials? Do you work for the FDA? Some other government agency? Please, if you are so much an expert, give us reason to have confidence in what espouse.
I consider Dr Stanley Jacobs, MD a medical professional. Do you consider him so?
I know many MD’s I consider to be medical professionals. But not just because they have MD after their name.
DMSO has been studied more than any drug company drug, and has not been found wanting. Many drug company drugs kill people. DMSO does not. And there has never been any evidence that DMSO is a carcinogen.
I am a PhD trained medical researcher, with specialization in the field of toxicology. My expertise is in understanding the molecular basis of the function of cells, and in how cells and tissues interact with each other and their environment, as well as how they react to chemicals of all types. I tell people that if they are sick or injured and want to understand the full molecular characteristics of their pathology, to come to me. But if they want treatment for their illness, they need to go to an MD.
MDs are experts in diagnosis and treatment, and that's it. Most of them know next to nothing about research methodology--and that includes many who have long lists of publications in the medical literature. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that many MDs are encouraged or required to do some sort of research without any true understanding of what research is, we wouldn't have situations like that described in the article opening this thread, where a cardiologist is writing to the BMJ to say that just maybe, saturated fats are *not* the culprit in heart disease. Well, duh! Many medical doctors attempting to do research are experts at falling for the fallacy that correlation=causation, and almost never pick up on the fact that a correlation means that more research must be done to establish whether there is a mechanism that links the putative effect to the cause, or if there is another reason for the observed correlation. Enough on the soapbox (MDs being minimally trained in research methodology is a pet peeve of mine).
Now, as for the claim that DMSO has been "studied more than any company drug"--well, the only place I could find that claim is in an alternative medicine site's "information" paper on DMSO. That claim is simply not true. That same website only has a few links to references where DMSO has been investigated for medicinal use--belying the site's own claim of extensive studies. I should point out that the way Dr. Jacobs (MD) became interested in DMSO through his observation that it penetrates skin easily would have caused anyone with an in-depth understanding of biochemistry to immediately recognize that this substance needs to be handled with great care. Think about everything that may be on your skin--lotions, residues from laundry detergent and fabric softeners, plant sap, soap, etc., and ask yourself if you really want that mixture of unknown chemicals shot directly into your cells with DMSO. I also note that that "alternative" medicine website allows you to buy "ultra-pure" DMSO packaged in translucent plastic bottles. Ouch. Remember what I said before about how DMSO leaches plasticizers? I'll add that laboratory grade DMSO is sold in amber bottles to protect it from degradation by light, and we *always* take care to keep it in the dark.
You can check out for yourself exactly how much DMSO has been studied at www.pubmed.org, which is the database where medical research is cataloged; many of the references are linked to the original research article. If you type in the search term "DMSO", you will get over 24,000 articles--but the majority of them have DMSO as a keyword because of its use as a solvent, and not as an investigational drug.
Now, I will link for you an MSDS sheet for DMSO. Note that in section 3, it says, "Mutagenic for mammalian somatic cells." If you will recall, I described in my earlier post that it interacts with DNA and changes DNA structure. Mutagenesis is a direct consequence of this interaction, for the reasons I explained previously. Most chemicals that are shown to be mutagenic are not studied further for carcinogenicity, because mutagenicity is widely accepted as a proxy for carcinogenicity.
Last, I will link a review article about interstitial cystitis. Down in the section discussing treatment options, intravesical therapies, it states that, "Despite limited clinical trial data, dimethyl sulfoxide is the only FDA-approved intravesical agent to treat painful symptoms of interstitial cystitis/painful bladder syndrome." Limited data, and it's still approved--why???