Who is
Majid Ali, M.D.
► Dr. Ali's CV

Majid Ali is a pioneer who is changing the face of medicine with his innovative and spirited approach.

His credentials are impeccable Complementary Medicine Journal

"I stand in awe of Ali's superb scientific knowledge, his insights into the nature of the the healing process and his ability to explain hard science."

Aubrey Worrell, MD
Past President, the American Academy of
Environmental Medicine

Majid Ali, M.D.
Editor, The Journal of Integrative Medicine

Formerly, Associate Professor of Pathology (adj.), College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, NY

Formerly, President of Staff and
Chief Pathologist, Holy Name Hospital, Teaneck, NJ

Fellow, Royal College of Surgeons of England - Diplomate,

American Board of Anatomic and Clinical Pathology

Diplomate, American Boards of Environmental Medicine

Past President Capital University of Integrative Medicine

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The Continuing Asthma Drug Controversy

Recently, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that monthly infusions of an expensive blocker drug did not result in any benefits when compared with placebo drips administered to a control group.¹

Not unexpectedly, it gave its usual spin to tout the drug. Just so readers do not consider this article a cheap shot at the Journal, below I include verbatum text from the abstract of the paper:

There were no significant differences between the groups with respect to symptoms, FEV1 after bronchodilator use, or airway hyperresponsiveness. The only serious adverse events reported were hospitalizations for acute severe asthma.

No significant differences! Interestingly, the authors did not consider hospitalizations for acute severe asthma a significant finding. Now consider the following sentence from the Conclusion section of the paper:

Mepolizumab [drug] therapy reduces exacerbations and improves AQLQ scores in patients with refractory eosinophilic asthma.

Translation: We improved our blessed "scores" but did not help patients with their symptoms and wheezing difficulties. Still we ask doctors to use the drugs no matter what may be recognized as the toxicity of the drug in years to come.

The Shame
Asthma is caused by mold allergy, adverse food reactions, and environmental pollutants. Stress increases the scale of suffering of the patient. The shame of this article is that no attempt was made to address these crucial issues. Specifically, the expensive drug of unknown long-term toxicity was not compared with safe and inexpensive non-drug measures that address environmental, nutritional, and stress-related factors.

In 2000, I presented the Dysox Model of Asthma in Current Opinion in Otolaryngology.² This is a unifying model that integrates all known clinical, biochemical, microscopic, experimental, and therapeutic observations concerning the cause and control of asthma. My main point: optimal clinical results in the treatment of asthma can be achieved only when all oxygen-related issues are effectively addressed.

In 2000, I also proposed that oxidative coagulopathy is a major causative mechanism of allergy, inflammation, and asthma in an article published in Environmental Management and Health.³ My essential point: objective microscopic evidence of increased free radical activity (and associated acidotic and dysoxic stresses) in uncontrolled asthma can be readily developed by phase-contrast microscopy. The changes of oxidative coagulopathy can be reversed with non-drug measures that control and prevent asthma attacks, lending strong scientific support to the Dysox Model of Asthma.

In 2006, my colleagues and I reported long-term results observed in the control of asthma in patients treated at the Institute of Integrative Medicine, New York and Denville, New Jersey in an article published in Townsend Letter-The examiner of Alternative Medicine.⁴ (font) In this article, I present the salient data from that study (Tables 1-3) to establish the enormous clinical benefits of safe, effective, and inexpensive non-drug therapies.

Ethical Responsibility
What is the ethical responsibility of The New England Journal of Medicine to its readers and the society? Is it to be the champion of people or of pharmaceutical companies? Is it to safeguard the health of people by authentic assessment of all treatment modalities or to merely promote the use of drugs, regardless of their cost and long-term toxicities? The Journal arguably is the most influential journal in the country, if not in the whole world. In addition to doctors, the Journal profoundly influences the Administration, Congress, academia, universities, and public health institutions. The Journal has never compared the value of asthma drugs with the clinical benefits of integrated non-drug therapies that effectively address issues of mold allergy, mold toxins, adverse food reactions, restoration of bowel and liver ecosystems, and spiritual work to dissipate chronic anger and stress. Why not?

Ethics is the study of the consequences of one's actions on others, as well as of one's inaction when action is required. How can the Journal persist in its blatant disregard of ethics and plain decency in its publications? I offer a simple solution: the Journal should change its name to The New England Journal of Drug Medicine. This simple step will save the Journal from all criticism of deep and persistent unethical behavior. Then the Journal will be free to tout any and all drugs without ever being burdened by any concerns of the environmental, nutritional, and stress-related causes of disease. Its lofty goals of high profitability will be never questioned.

Clinical Outcome With Integrative Therapies
(Text and Tables Reproduced from Reference 4)

All integrative management plans for subjects in this open clinical outcome study were designed according to the needs of the individual patients as determined by at least two physicians involved in the care on clinical grounds. As for bowel ecology, we prescribed Probiotics regularly and antifungals when overgrowth of oxyphobes was suspected on clinical grounds. We liberally prescribed phytofactor formulations comprising echinacea, astragalus, burdock root, goldenseal, pau D'arco, Turmeric, and cloves. It might be added that the cytokine activities of several of those phytofactors have been extensively documented.^38-40 Evidence for efficacy of various nutrients for asthma has been published in others studies.^40-42 The compositions of the intramuscular and intravenous protocols employed in this study and the guidelines for their use have been described in Integrative Nutritional Medicine, the fifth of The Principles and Practice of Integrative Medicine.²

We wish to point out that several patients in the study were unable to receive prescribed intravenous and intramuscular therapies for reasons of non-reimbursement from their insurance carriers. Notwithstanding, there was a dramatic reduction in the number of emergency department visits for control of asthma attacks during the period of treatment (4 visits during the year of treatment vs. 27 visits during the year before beginning the program, Table 1). There was an equally dramatic reduction in the need for antibiotics for various infections during the period of the study (38 vs 5). It is noteworthy that many episodes of infections were successfully managed without antibiotics (17 infections out of a total of 22).

The data concerning the reduction in the use of bronchodilator drugs and steroids with integrative plans are also noteworthy (Table 2.) We were able to discontinue steroid therapy in five of 11 patients who were receiving such therapy prior to their care at the Institute. The data in Table 3 validate the clinical observations of practitioners of integrative medicine concerning the general benefits of integrative therapies administered for putatively 'specific' disorders, such as bronchial asthma. This is a crucially important issue from the standpoint of the comparative benefits of pharmacologic agents that block specific mediators of inflammatory and healing responses — nearly always causing serious adverse effects — and restorative nutrients, phytofactors, oxystatic therapies, and self-regulatory methods that enhance physiologic healing responses.

References
1. Haldar P, Christopher E. Brightling, Ph.D., F.R.C.P., Beverley Hargadon, Mepolizumab and
Exacerbations of Refractory Eosinophilic Asthma. N Eng J Med. 2009;360:2576-2578.
2. Ali M. Recent advances in integrative allergy care. Current Opinion in Otolaryngology & Head and
Neck Surgery 2000;8:260-266.
3. Ali M. Oxidative coagulopathy in environmental illness. Environmental Management and
Health. 2000;11:175-191.
4. Ali M. Juco J, Fayemi, A, et al. The dysox model of asthma and clinical outcome with integrated management plan. Townsend Letter-The examiner of Alternative Medicine.
2006;274:58-61.