FDA: Hands Off Doctor-Supervised Prescription Chelation for Heart Health!

The FDA has just banned a number of over-the-counter products, most of which contained calcium disodium EDTA, a substance used in heavy metal chelation (the process of removing toxic heavy metals such as lead and mercury from the body). It is still available, and FDA-approved, for use in doctors’ offices, though few doctors are interested in either heavy metal testing or chelation, much less knowledgeable and skilled at it.

Two years ago, the FDA set its sights on a different but closely related chelation salt called disodium EDTA (no “calcium”), which is specifically used for heart health—it removes calcium from the blood vessels, where calcium is very destructive. After a doctor confused the two forms of EDTA and a young patient died, the FDA announced that the Agency was considering a complete ban on the use of disodium EDTA even by doctors—simply because they were afraid the two formulations were similar enough in name that other doctors would be confused! If this were a real concern, they could of course suggest a name change.

The Agency has not moved forward with the ban on doctor-supervised prescription disodium EDTA for heart health—yet. Please write the FDA today and tell them that the decision whether to chelate for heart health should be left to the doctor, not banned for completely specious reasons.

Note: We recommend physicians do not participate in this alert.  In this case, we do not want to bring physicians' names to FDA attention.