Founder, Designs for Health
ANH-USA, Treasurer
www.designsforhealth.com
Jonathan Lizotte launched his nutrition industry career in 1989 when he founded Designs for Health with his wife, Linda. With a team of nutritionists managing 22 Northeastern offices, the newly formed company focused on providing nutrition counseling services for the treatment of a variety of health conditions.
The success of their counseling efforts grew, as did the demand for nutritional products to satisfy the specific treatment needs of the company’s team of clinical nutritionists. Realizing that a need existed for a line of nutritional supplements designed by healthcare professionals, for healthcare professionals, Jonathan led the company’s efforts in this direction. The formation of a Designs for Health branded supplement line led to mass requests from clinicians for further education and guidance, to which Jonathan responded in 1996 by directing the company’s focus toward the establishment of three primary divisions: Professional Products, Research and Education, and Practice Development. Designs for Health, Inc., is now one of the fastest growing manufacturers and distributors of nutritional supplements, selling exclusively to the health professionals market.
Jonathan has always been committed to facilitating patient care by maintaining Designs for Health as a professionals-only nutritional products brand. As a true professionals-only line, the practitioner-patient relationship is paramount. Jonathan firmly believes that the many problems plaguing our modern healthcare system can and will be solved by the joint efforts of the professional products supplement industry and the health professionals who use those products.
[Next page…]
Jonathan Lizotte
www.designsforhealth.com
Jonathan Lizotte launched his nutrition industry career in 1989 when he founded Designs for Health with his wife, Linda. With a team of nutritionists managing 22 Northeastern offices, the newly formed company focused on providing nutrition counseling services for the treatment of a variety of health conditions.
The success of their counseling efforts grew, as did the demand for nutritional products to satisfy the specific treatment eeds of the company’s team of clinical nutritionists. Realizing that a need existed for a line of nutritional supplements designed by healthcare professionals, for healthcare professionals, Jonathan led the company’s efforts in this direction. The formation of a Designs for Health branded supplement line led to mass requests from clinicians for further education and guidance, to which Jonathan responded in 1996 by directing the company’s focus toward the establishment of three primary divisions: Professional Products, Research and Education, and Practice Development. Designs for Health, Inc., is now one of the fastest growing manufacturers and distributors of nutritional supplements, selling exclusively to the health professionals market.
Jonathan has always been committed to facilitating patient care by maintaining Designs for Health as a professionals-only nutritional products brand. As a true professionals-only line, the practitioner-patient relationship is paramount. Jonathan firmly believes that the many problems plaguing our modern healthcare system can and will be solved by the joint efforts of the professional products supplement industry and the health professionals who use those products.
[Next page…]
LtCol, USAFR (Ret) Robert A. Beiswenger, Consumer Advocate
Robert A. (Bob) Beiswenger has a total of more than 32 years of military service with the Air Force, flying C-141s during most of his career. Bob became interested in alternative treatments because his wife came from a cancer-prone family. Unfortunately, when his wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, he discovered that he had to take his wife out of the “land of freedom” to a third world country for treatment. Read his story and you will understand why he has joined the fight for health freedom in this country.[Adapted from article, Texas Public Health Alert]
Do you believe there is a need for an “Access to Medical Treatment Act (AMTA)”?
My guess is that the majority of Americans do not believe so or at best are neutral. However, if you or a loved one has been faced with a serious illness, then you will be one of those who already understand the need for an Access to Medical Treatment Act (S. 2618/HR 2792).
A few years ago, a few months after our country was violently attacked on 9/11, I discovered that free access to medical treatment, a basic human right, did not fully exist in a land founded on principles of freedom. Living outside of Philadelphia, near Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, not far from the Statue of Liberty and so close to our nation’s Capitol, this was a particularly hard pill for me to swallow.
I am a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, and I began my military service in 1972 when I entered pilot training. After graduating from pilot training a year later, I was involved with the final years of the conflict in Vietnam, flying KC-135 (air refuelers) that brought back our fighters as the war came to a close. After that I served during the Cold War years, followed by operations into Grenada and Panama. I was then activated for a year to fly in Desert Storm and have been a full-time reservist up to the present day and the War on Terror.
These conflicts all involved the protection of freedom in some form – either for Americans or for others in the global community.
I am not, nor have I ever been, of an “activist” mentality, preferring to believe that things are well and, if not, there are people such as members of Congress and lobbyists working to improve matters. Fighting for “medical rights” is probably the LAST thing I ever thought I would be doing — but here I am.
Why? What events in my life led me to believe that there was a need for AMTA?
A few months after planes struck the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, more personal planes struck my life. One struck the tower of health: My wife was diagnosed with an advanced, Stage III, ovarian cancer. Five-year survival rates were a meager 20 to 40 percent. This disease, cancer, was the first plane that slammed into my life, working to destroy my wife’s health and separate us forever.
Knowing the poor outcome offered by standard medical treatment that involved chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, we began looking elsewhere, seeking our options and alternatives to standard care. We learned about hyperthermia being used with good success in Germany; about a camphor derivative, 714-X, used in Canada; about herbal formulas and Laetrile in Mexico and numerous devices employing magnetic and electric fields used in Sweden, England and other countries in Europe.
None of these was heralded as a cure for cancer, because there often is no cure — which is why 1,500 Americans die each and every day from this disease. But these formulas and devices had helped others in their fight against cancer, and their success stories gave us hope.
It turned out, however, that hope was a second tower about to be destroyed by a second plane called bureaucracy, one built out of red tape and outdated laws.
After diligently pursuing and uncovering numerous options for treatments through reading books, talking with others, and scouring the Internet, my wife of 30 years would not have access to these treatment — at least not in this country.
We quickly found that due to well-intentioned regulatory requirements of the FDA, FTC, medical boards, and other agencies, the walls originally designed and built to protect and serve us were barriers that denied us access to treatments that offered us at least hope, if not more time together.
We believed that this was a decision to be made by us — ultimately my wife — and not by agencies bound by antiquated laws and red tape.
I believe that the time for the Access to Medical Treatment Act has come. The old laws we have need to reflect today’s world — a world in which cancer, AIDS, and other diseases are running rampant. A world in which deadly biological agents may be unleashed on our cities, challenging, if not overwhelming our medical community. A world in which the Internet has created a society that is better informed, much more than ever before, one where people will demand the best health care that the world has to offer. They will want to access all the treatment options that are available and should have the right to do that.
However, only new, updated legislation will allow this to happen. This is why I am proud to support The American Association for Health Freedom (www.anh-usa.org) and their efforts in creating and supporting bills such as AMTA. AAHF has a section on their website devoted to AMTA and an easy online action center where you can contact your representatives.
The time for the Access to Medical Treatment Act has come. I ask you, not only on my behalf, but on behalf of you, your families, and friends, and on behalf of all Americans to stand up and be counted as one of those who helped make it happen.
[Ed. Note: Bob’s wife passed away in the beginning of 2005.]
[Next page…]
Paul Harch, MD
Dr. Harch is a hyperbaric medicine, diving, and emergency medicine physician who is a Diplomate of the American Board of Hyperbaric Medicine and the Board of Certification in Emergency Medicine of the American Board of Physician Specialties. Dr. Harch’s clinical experience through 2007 spans 23 years in hospital-based emergency medicine and 21 years of hyperbaric medicine. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1980 and was awarded Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa status on graduation from college. He has trained in general surgery, radiology, diving, and hyperbaric medicine.
In recognition of his accomplishments in clinical practice, teaching, and research he was awarded fellowship status in the American College of Hyperbaric Medicine in 1997. He also received the Edgar End Award from the American College of Hyperbaric Medicine in 1994 and the Richard A. Neubauer Award for Excellence in Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in Pediatric Neurology in 2003.
Dr. Harch is the national coordinator and co-principal investigator of HOTFAST (The Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Acute Stroke Trial). In 2001 he completed a study on SPECT brain imaging in toxic brain injury. In the past three years he has made presentations on the application of HBOT to autism and chronic neurological conditions to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education and to Representative Dan Burton’s Subcommittee on Wellness and Human Rights of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
Dr. Harch is the first President of the International Hyperbaric Medical Association (established in 2001) and President of the International Hyperbaric Medical Association Foundation. He has lectured and presented his work at numerous scientific meetings throughout the U.S. and overseas. In April, 2004 Dr. Harch was nominated and became a semi-finalist for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Pioneer Award.
Dr. Harch currently divides his time between his practice in the New Orleans area and his satellite Chicago facility where he continues to explore the effect of HBOT on neurological disorders, animal and human research, teaching and medical society projects. (The New Orleans facility is a contract site for Charity Hospital of New Orleans, the primary teaching institution of Louisiana State University (LSU) and Tulane University Schools of Medicine, and the VA Hospital of New Orleans). Dr. Harch is also a Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of the LSU School of Medicine’s Hyperbaric Medicine Fellowship Program and Director of the soon to be opened Hyperbaric Medicine Unit at Medical Center of Louisiana in New Orleans.
Dr. Paul Harch is a board certified hyperbaric and emergency medicine physician who has become one of the foremost authorities in the United States on the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and SPECT brain blood flow imaging in neurology. Dr. Harch is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California, Irvine in 1976 and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1980 who has trained in general surgery and radiology. His hyperbaric career began in 1985. He received initial diving accident management training through the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and then prolonged instruction and experience under the direction of and in association with one of the world’s most noted diving medicine experts, Dr. Keith Van Meter. With the aid of a steady supply of injured divers from the Gulf of Mexico Dr. Harch began an in-depth study of brain decompression illness (DCI) in the late 1980’s. As he evaluated divers with brain DCI presenting for primary treatment weeks to months after their accident or with residual brain injury following neurological plateau on the standard U.S. Navy recompression protocol, it became obvious he was treating ischemic (low blood flow) brain injury and not residual gas. This was unequivocally confirmed in 1990 and 1991 with two diving cases, a 43 year old demented commercial diver 7 months after injury and 5 months after U.S. Navy treatment plateau, and a 33 year old demented junior high school math teacher, misdiagnosed and committed to a psychiatric hospital after a diving accident and then aborted suicide attempt. Following a call to Dr. Neubauer in April, 1990, Dr. Harch began treating the first diver and eventually achieved clinical, psychometric, and SPECT brain blood flow improvement. The second diver experienced normalization of his EEG, complete recovery of neurological function and a 22 point recoup of his pre-accident IQ before the end of his treatment protocol. He returned to work and obtained a masters’ degree in educational psychology. Today, he is actively employed by the State of New Mexico, testing educationally handicapped children. Dr. Harch reported these cases and subsequent others at scientific meetings.
Simultaneously, Drs. Van Meter and Sheldon Gottlieb, a colleague of Dr. Neubauer and director of research at the Baromedical Research Institute of New Orleans, were conducting a trial of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in brain injured boxers with a small grant from the Hirsch Foundation. Encouraging preliminary results from this study and results from the divers and the small series of chronic traumatic brain injured and stroke patients spawned the Perfusion/Metabolism Encephalopathy Study of Drs. Harch, Gottlieb, Van Meter, and Staab under the auspices of the JoEllen Smith Medical Center Institutional Review Board. This study commenced in 1993, terminated in 1999, and allowed the evaluation and treatment with hyperbaric oxygen therapy and SPECT brain imaging of a large number of patients with a variety of chronic neurological diseases, including decompression sickness, stroke, traumatic brain injury, carbon monoxide poisoning, cerebral palsy, near-drowning, toxic brain injury, cardiac arrest, static encephalopathy of childhood, autism, and others. The patients were evaluated with SPECT imaging before and after one and then a series of low-pressure hyperbaric oxygen treatments. In this group was the first reported North American case of cerebral palsy successfully treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The case was reported in 1994 (3) and then the videos of this case and a second child treated in 1993-4 were combined with a 3rd case of Dr. Neubauer and presented at the International Conference on HBOT in Buenos Aires, Argentina in April, 1996. To date Dr. Harch has treated a very large number of children with cerebral palsy or static encephalopathy of various causes. Some of these videos and the accompanying SPECT brain scans were shown at the First International Symposium on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and the Brain Injured Child in Boca Raton, Florida, July 23-4, 1999.
Dr. Harch has imaging and treatment data on a large number of patients, the publication of which awaits funding, hopefully through the solicitations of this website. As a result of Dr. Neubauer’s 22 year and Dr. Harch’s 10 year experience in HBOT with acute and chronic stroke, a national pilot trial of HBOT for Acute Stroke (HOTFAST) is under development with Drs. James F. Toole and Paul Harch as the co-principal investigators and Dr. Neubauer as senior honorary consultant In this trial, the three physicians will evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of HBOT in the first 6 hours of stroke. The physicians will attempt to duplicate the published results of Dr. Neubauer and others using a rigorous experimental design. More details will follow below.
Dr. Harch is currently clinical assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Section of Emergency Medicine at Louisiana State University School of Medicine, New Orleans, Co-Medical Director of the Hyperbaric Medicine Department at St. Charles General Hospital, New Orleans, Clinical and Research Director of the LSU Hyperbaric Medicine Fellowship, and former Director of the JoEllen Smith Hyperbaric Medicine Unit of New Orleans. He is the principal investigator on 2 other LSU IRB-approved studies that are nearing completion, the Rat Open Head Bonk Trial of HBOT in the Treatment of Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury and the Nitrogen Tetroxide/SPECT brain imaging study of heavily exposed individuals in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He stays active in emergency medicine while maintaining a large full-time clinical hyperbaric medicine practice that has become one of the largest past and present experiences of neurological applications of HBOT.
Dr. Harry Preuss, M.D., M.A.C.N., C.N.S.
Harry G. Preuss, MD FACN CNS, is a graduate of Cornell Medical School in New York City, trained for three years in internal medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, spent two years as a fellow in renal physiology at Cornell University Medical Center, and two more years in clinical and research training in nephrology at Georgetown University Medical Center. He then worked as an Assistant and Associate (tenured) Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for five years. He returned to Georgetown and became a Professor of Medicine and Pathology (tenured).
His bibliography includes over 150 peer-reviewed research papers, 110 miscellaneous items such as requested articles, book chapters, etc. and over 170 abstracts. Dr. Preuss has edited or co-edited four books and two symposia published in well-established journals. He is the co-author of The Prostate Cure.
He was a special research fellow of the NIH in 1966 and an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association between 1967-1972. In 1976, Dr. Preuss was elected to membership in the American Society of Clinical Investigations, a prestigious research group. He has had numerous grants from the NIH and completed a recent one for the US Department of Agriculture. He is currently an advisory editor for six journals. His previous appointments included four years on the Advisory Council for the National Institute on Aging and was their representative to the Advisory Council of the then director of the NIH (Wyngaarden). He was appointed by the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and became a member of the Advisory Council for the Office of Alternative Medicine of the NIH. He was appointed by the National Research Council for Health of Meridian, Idaho, to be their director. He has been a member of many other peer research review committees for the NIH and American Heart Association and was recently appointed to the advisory council of the National Cholesterol Education Program at the NHLBI.
Dr. Preuss has been invited as a featured speaker at many meetings and has participated in discussions concerning nutrition on audio and video tapes, as well as live television. Dr. Preuss is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN), former chairman of the Hypertension Council of the ACN, and is now Past President of the FACN after a brief stint on their board of directors, three years as secretary/treasurer and three years as Vice President, President-Elect and President. Dr. Preuss is a member of the board of directors for the American Association for Health Freedom and is on the medical advisory board of Advocare, Inc., of Dallas, Texas, and the Alzheimer’s Prevention Foundation. He is a consultant for Novartis Pharmaceuticals (Summit, New Jersey), Alternet Health Technologies (Los Angeles, California), and InterHealth Neutraceuticals (Concord, California). Dr. Preuss wrote the nutrition section for the Encyclopedia Americana and was recently certified as a Certified Nutrition Specialist. He is now Co-Chairman of the Internal Review Board, which reviews all clinical protocols at Georgetown University Medical Center.
[Next page…]
Sherri Tenpenny, D.O.
Website: www.osteomed.com
Sherri J. Tenpenny, D.O. is the Director and Founder of OsteoMed II, a clinic established in Strongsville, Ohio in 1996 to provide alternative, traditional and preventive medicine. She is also the president of New Medical Awareness Seminars, LLC.
Dr. Tenpenny is an internationally renowned expert in alternative medicine. She has lectured abroad on health issues at numerous conferences, conventions, and universities, including both Cleveland State University and Case Western Reserve Medical School. Dr. Tenpenny is a regular guest on radio talk shows and has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers and Internet sites.
Dr. Tenpenny is an alternative medicine researcher and highly sought after for her ability to present scientific information regarding vaccination hazards. OsteoMed II offers hope through unique treatment methods for those who have been vaccine-injured.
Dr. Tenpenny is a graduate of the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. She received her medical training at Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri. Dr. Tenpenny is Board Certified in Emergency Medicine and Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine. She has undertaken many advanced courses in alternative medicine, including acupuncture and complex homeopathy.
Prior to her career in alternative medicine, Dr. Tenpenny served as Director of the Emergency Department at Blanchard Valley Regional Hospital Center in Findlay, Ohio, from 1987 to 1995. In 1994, she and a partner opened OsteoMed, a medical practice in Findlay limited to the specialty of osteopathic manipulative medicine. In 1996, Dr. Tenpenny moved to Strongsville, Ohio, and opened OsteoMed II, expanding her practice to include traditional, complementary and preventive medicine.
Paul Harch, M.D.
Jonathan Lizotte
www.designsforhealth.com
Jonathan Lizotte launched his nutrition industry career in 1989 when he founded Designs for Health with his wife, Linda. With a team of nutritionists managing 22 Northeastern offices, the newly formed company focused on providing nutrition counseling services for the treatment of a variety of health conditions.
The success of their counseling efforts grew, as did the demand for nutritional products to satisfy the specific treatment eeds of the company’s team of clinical nutritionists. Realizing that a need existed for a line of nutritional supplements designed by healthcare professionals, for healthcare professionals, Jonathan led the company’s efforts in this direction. The formation of a Designs for Health branded supplement line led to mass requests from clinicians for further education and guidance, to which Jonathan responded in 1996 by directing the company’s focus toward the establishment of three primary divisions: Professional Products, Research and Education, and Practice Development. Designs for Health, Inc., is now one of the fastest growing manufacturers and distributors of nutritional supplements, selling exclusively to the health professionals market.
Jonathan has always been committed to facilitating patient care by maintaining Designs for Health as a professionals-only nutritional products brand. As a true professionals-only line, the practitioner-patient relationship is paramount. Jonathan firmly believes that the many problems plaguing our modern healthcare system can and will be solved by the joint efforts of the professional products supplement industry and the health professionals who use those products.
[Next page…]
LtCol, USAFR (Ret) Robert A. Beiswenger, Consumer Advocate
Robert A. (Bob) Beiswenger has a total of more than 32 years of military service with the Air Force, flying C-141s during most of his career. Bob became interested in alternative treatments because his wife came from a cancer-prone family. Unfortunately, when his wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, he discovered that he had to take his wife out of the “land of freedom” to a third world country for treatment. Read his story and you will understand why he has joined the fight for health freedom in this country.[Adapted from article, Texas Public Health Alert]
Do you believe there is a need for an “Access to Medical Treatment Act (AMTA)”?
My guess is that the majority of Americans do not believe so or at best are neutral. However, if you or a loved one has been faced with a serious illness, then you will be one of those who already understand the need for an Access to Medical Treatment Act (S. 2618/HR 2792).
A few years ago, a few months after our country was violently attacked on 9/11, I discovered that free access to medical treatment, a basic human right, did not fully exist in a land founded on principles of freedom. Living outside of Philadelphia, near Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, not far from the Statue of Liberty and so close to our nation’s Capitol, this was a particularly hard pill for me to swallow.
I am a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, and I began my military service in 1972 when I entered pilot training. After graduating from pilot training a year later, I was involved with the final years of the conflict in Vietnam, flying KC-135 (air refuelers) that brought back our fighters as the war came to a close. After that I served during the Cold War years, followed by operations into Grenada and Panama. I was then activated for a year to fly in Desert Storm and have been a full-time reservist up to the present day and the War on Terror.
These conflicts all involved the protection of freedom in some form – either for Americans or for others in the global community.
I am not, nor have I ever been, of an “activist” mentality, preferring to believe that things are well and, if not, there are people such as members of Congress and lobbyists working to improve matters. Fighting for “medical rights” is probably the LAST thing I ever thought I would be doing — but here I am.
Why? What events in my life led me to believe that there was a need for AMTA?
A few months after planes struck the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, more personal planes struck my life. One struck the tower of health: My wife was diagnosed with an advanced, Stage III, ovarian cancer. Five-year survival rates were a meager 20 to 40 percent. This disease, cancer, was the first plane that slammed into my life, working to destroy my wife’s health and separate us forever.
Knowing the poor outcome offered by standard medical treatment that involved chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, we began looking elsewhere, seeking our options and alternatives to standard care. We learned about hyperthermia being used with good success in Germany; about a camphor derivative, 714-X, used in Canada; about herbal formulas and Laetrile in Mexico and numerous devices employing magnetic and electric fields used in Sweden, England and other countries in Europe.
None of these was heralded as a cure for cancer, because there often is no cure — which is why 1,500 Americans die each and every day from this disease. But these formulas and devices had helped others in their fight against cancer, and their success stories gave us hope.
It turned out, however, that hope was a second tower about to be destroyed by a second plane called bureaucracy, one built out of red tape and outdated laws.
After diligently pursuing and uncovering numerous options for treatments through reading books, talking with others, and scouring the Internet, my wife of 30 years would not have access to these treatment — at least not in this country.
We quickly found that due to well-intentioned regulatory requirements of the FDA, FTC, medical boards, and other agencies, the walls originally designed and built to protect and serve us were barriers that denied us access to treatments that offered us at least hope, if not more time together.
We believed that this was a decision to be made by us — ultimately my wife — and not by agencies bound by antiquated laws and red tape.
I believe that the time for the Access to Medical Treatment Act has come. The old laws we have need to reflect today’s world — a world in which cancer, AIDS, and other diseases are running rampant. A world in which deadly biological agents may be unleashed on our cities, challenging, if not overwhelming our medical community. A world in which the Internet has created a society that is better informed, much more than ever before, one where people will demand the best health care that the world has to offer. They will want to access all the treatment options that are available and should have the right to do that.
However, only new, updated legislation will allow this to happen. This is why I am proud to support The American Association for Health Freedom (www.anh-usa.org) and their efforts in creating and supporting bills such as AMTA. AAHF has a section on their website devoted to AMTA and an easy online action center where you can contact your representatives.
The time for the Access to Medical Treatment Act has come. I ask you, not only on my behalf, but on behalf of you, your families, and friends, and on behalf of all Americans to stand up and be counted as one of those who helped make it happen.
[Ed. Note: Bob’s wife passed away in the beginning of 2005.]
[Next page…]
Paul Harch, MD
Dr. Harch is a hyperbaric medicine, diving, and emergency medicine physician who is a Diplomate of the American Board of Hyperbaric Medicine and the Board of Certification in Emergency Medicine of the American Board of Physician Specialties. Dr. Harch’s clinical experience through 2007 spans 23 years in hospital-based emergency medicine and 21 years of hyperbaric medicine. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1980 and was awarded Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa status on graduation from college. He has trained in general surgery, radiology, diving, and hyperbaric medicine.
In recognition of his accomplishments in clinical practice, teaching, and research he was awarded fellowship status in the American College of Hyperbaric Medicine in 1997. He also received the Edgar End Award from the American College of Hyperbaric Medicine in 1994 and the Richard A. Neubauer Award for Excellence in Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in Pediatric Neurology in 2003.
Dr. Harch is the national coordinator and co-principal investigator of HOTFAST (The Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Acute Stroke Trial). In 2001 he completed a study on SPECT brain imaging in toxic brain injury. In the past three years he has made presentations on the application of HBOT to autism and chronic neurological conditions to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education and to Representative Dan Burton’s Subcommittee on Wellness and Human Rights of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
Dr. Harch is the first President of the International Hyperbaric Medical Association (established in 2001) and President of the International Hyperbaric Medical Association Foundation. He has lectured and presented his work at numerous scientific meetings throughout the U.S. and overseas. In April, 2004 Dr. Harch was nominated and became a semi-finalist for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Pioneer Award.
Dr. Harch currently divides his time between his practice in the New Orleans area and his satellite Chicago facility where he continues to explore the effect of HBOT on neurological disorders, animal and human research, teaching and medical society projects. (The New Orleans facility is a contract site for Charity Hospital of New Orleans, the primary teaching institution of Louisiana State University (LSU) and Tulane University Schools of Medicine, and the VA Hospital of New Orleans). Dr. Harch is also a Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of the LSU School of Medicine’s Hyperbaric Medicine Fellowship Program and Director of the soon to be opened Hyperbaric Medicine Unit at Medical Center of Louisiana in New Orleans.
Dr. Paul Harch is a board certified hyperbaric and emergency medicine physician who has become one of the foremost authorities in the United States on the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and SPECT brain blood flow imaging in neurology. Dr. Harch is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California, Irvine in 1976 and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1980 who has trained in general surgery and radiology. His hyperbaric career began in 1985. He received initial diving accident management training through the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and then prolonged instruction and experience under the direction of and in association with one of the world’s most noted diving medicine experts, Dr. Keith Van Meter. With the aid of a steady supply of injured divers from the Gulf of Mexico Dr. Harch began an in-depth study of brain decompression illness (DCI) in the late 1980’s. As he evaluated divers with brain DCI presenting for primary treatment weeks to months after their accident or with residual brain injury following neurological plateau on the standard U.S. Navy recompression protocol, it became obvious he was treating ischemic (low blood flow) brain injury and not residual gas. This was unequivocally confirmed in 1990 and 1991 with two diving cases, a 43 year old demented commercial diver 7 months after injury and 5 months after U.S. Navy treatment plateau, and a 33 year old demented junior high school math teacher, misdiagnosed and committed to a psychiatric hospital after a diving accident and then aborted suicide attempt. Following a call to Dr. Neubauer in April, 1990, Dr. Harch began treating the first diver and eventually achieved clinical, psychometric, and SPECT brain blood flow improvement. The second diver experienced normalization of his EEG, complete recovery of neurological function and a 22 point recoup of his pre-accident IQ before the end of his treatment protocol. He returned to work and obtained a masters’ degree in educational psychology. Today, he is actively employed by the State of New Mexico, testing educationally handicapped children. Dr. Harch reported these cases and subsequent others at scientific meetings.
Simultaneously, Drs. Van Meter and Sheldon Gottlieb, a colleague of Dr. Neubauer and director of research at the Baromedical Research Institute of New Orleans, were conducting a trial of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in brain injured boxers with a small grant from the Hirsch Foundation. Encouraging preliminary results from this study and results from the divers and the small series of chronic traumatic brain injured and stroke patients spawned the Perfusion/Metabolism Encephalopathy Study of Drs. Harch, Gottlieb, Van Meter, and Staab under the auspices of the JoEllen Smith Medical Center Institutional Review Board. This study commenced in 1993, terminated in 1999, and allowed the evaluation and treatment with hyperbaric oxygen therapy and SPECT brain imaging of a large number of patients with a variety of chronic neurological diseases, including decompression sickness, stroke, traumatic brain injury, carbon monoxide poisoning, cerebral palsy, near-drowning, toxic brain injury, cardiac arrest, static encephalopathy of childhood, autism, and others. The patients were evaluated with SPECT imaging before and after one and then a series of low-pressure hyperbaric oxygen treatments. In this group was the first reported North American case of cerebral palsy successfully treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The case was reported in 1994 (3) and then the videos of this case and a second child treated in 1993-4 were combined with a 3rd case of Dr. Neubauer and presented at the International Conference on HBOT in Buenos Aires, Argentina in April, 1996. To date Dr. Harch has treated a very large number of children with cerebral palsy or static encephalopathy of various causes. Some of these videos and the accompanying SPECT brain scans were shown at the First International Symposium on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and the Brain Injured Child in Boca Raton, Florida, July 23-4, 1999.
Dr. Harch has imaging and treatment data on a large number of patients, the publication of which awaits funding, hopefully through the solicitations of this website. As a result of Dr. Neubauer’s 22 year and Dr. Harch’s 10 year experience in HBOT with acute and chronic stroke, a national pilot trial of HBOT for Acute Stroke (HOTFAST) is under development with Drs. James F. Toole and Paul Harch as the co-principal investigators and Dr. Neubauer as senior honorary consultant In this trial, the three physicians will evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of HBOT in the first 6 hours of stroke. The physicians will attempt to duplicate the published results of Dr. Neubauer and others using a rigorous experimental design. More details will follow below.
Dr. Harch is currently clinical assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Section of Emergency Medicine at Louisiana State University School of Medicine, New Orleans, Co-Medical Director of the Hyperbaric Medicine Department at St. Charles General Hospital, New Orleans, Clinical and Research Director of the LSU Hyperbaric Medicine Fellowship, and former Director of the JoEllen Smith Hyperbaric Medicine Unit of New Orleans. He is the principal investigator on 2 other LSU IRB-approved studies that are nearing completion, the Rat Open Head Bonk Trial of HBOT in the Treatment of Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury and the Nitrogen Tetroxide/SPECT brain imaging study of heavily exposed individuals in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He stays active in emergency medicine while maintaining a large full-time clinical hyperbaric medicine practice that has become one of the largest past and present experiences of neurological applications of HBOT.
Dr. Harry Preuss, M.D., M.A.C.N., C.N.S.
Harry G. Preuss, MD FACN CNS, is a graduate of Cornell Medical School in New York City, trained for three years in internal medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, spent two years as a fellow in renal physiology at Cornell University Medical Center, and two more years in clinical and research training in nephrology at Georgetown University Medical Center. He then worked as an Assistant and Associate (tenured) Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for five years. He returned to Georgetown and became a Professor of Medicine and Pathology (tenured).
His bibliography includes over 150 peer-reviewed research papers, 110 miscellaneous items such as requested articles, book chapters, etc. and over 170 abstracts. Dr. Preuss has edited or co-edited four books and two symposia published in well-established journals. He is the co-author of The Prostate Cure.
He was a special research fellow of the NIH in 1966 and an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association between 1967-1972. In 1976, Dr. Preuss was elected to membership in the American Society of Clinical Investigations, a prestigious research group. He has had numerous grants from the NIH and completed a recent one for the US Department of Agriculture. He is currently an advisory editor for six journals. His previous appointments included four years on the Advisory Council for the National Institute on Aging and was their representative to the Advisory Council of the then director of the NIH (Wyngaarden). He was appointed by the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and became a member of the Advisory Council for the Office of Alternative Medicine of the NIH. He was appointed by the National Research Council for Health of Meridian, Idaho, to be their director. He has been a member of many other peer research review committees for the NIH and American Heart Association and was recently appointed to the advisory council of the National Cholesterol Education Program at the NHLBI.
Dr. Preuss has been invited as a featured speaker at many meetings and has participated in discussions concerning nutrition on audio and video tapes, as well as live television. Dr. Preuss is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN), former chairman of the Hypertension Council of the ACN, and is now Past President of the FACN after a brief stint on their board of directors, three years as secretary/treasurer and three years as Vice President, President-Elect and President. Dr. Preuss is a member of the board of directors for the American Association for Health Freedom and is on the medical advisory board of Advocare, Inc., of Dallas, Texas, and the Alzheimer’s Prevention Foundation. He is a consultant for Novartis Pharmaceuticals (Summit, New Jersey), Alternet Health Technologies (Los Angeles, California), and InterHealth Neutraceuticals (Concord, California). Dr. Preuss wrote the nutrition section for the Encyclopedia Americana and was recently certified as a Certified Nutrition Specialist. He is now Co-Chairman of the Internal Review Board, which reviews all clinical protocols at Georgetown University Medical Center.
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Sherri Tenpenny, D.O.
Website: www.osteomed.com
Sherri J. Tenpenny, D.O. is the Director and Founder of OsteoMed II, a clinic established in Strongsville, Ohio in 1996 to provide alternative, traditional and preventive medicine. She is also the president of New Medical Awareness Seminars, LLC.
Dr. Tenpenny is an internationally renowned expert in alternative medicine. She has lectured abroad on health issues at numerous conferences, conventions, and universities, including both Cleveland State University and Case Western Reserve Medical School. Dr. Tenpenny is a regular guest on radio talk shows and has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers and Internet sites.
Dr. Tenpenny is an alternative medicine researcher and highly sought after for her ability to present scientific information regarding vaccination hazards. OsteoMed II offers hope through unique treatment methods for those who have been vaccine-injured.
Dr. Tenpenny is a graduate of the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. She received her medical training at Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri. Dr. Tenpenny is Board Certified in Emergency Medicine and Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine. She has undertaken many advanced courses in alternative medicine, including acupuncture and complex homeopathy.
Prior to her career in alternative medicine, Dr. Tenpenny served as Director of the Emergency Department at Blanchard Valley Regional Hospital Center in Findlay, Ohio, from 1987 to 1995. In 1994, she and a partner opened OsteoMed, a medical practice in Findlay limited to the specialty of osteopathic manipulative medicine. In 1996, Dr. Tenpenny moved to Strongsville, Ohio, and opened OsteoMed II, expanding her practice to include traditional, complementary and preventive medicine.
Paul Harch, M.D.