4

Ozone in Medicine

Toward the beginning of the twentieth century, interest began to focus on the uses of ozone in medical therapy. In September 1896, Nikola Tesla, the electronics genius and inventor of the radio, patented his first ozone generator, and in 1910 he formed the Tesla Ozone Company with a capital of $400,000. He hoped to apply his invention to a number of commercial uses, including refrigeration. It is said that Tesla sold his machines to doctors for medical use, and he is believed to have been the first person to manufacture ozonated olive oil to be sold to naturopathic physicians.

A recent discovery at the historical collection of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Philadelphia shows that ozone was first used therapeutically by surgeon Samuel R. Beckwith, M.D., a member of the American Institute of Homeopathy and the Medical Society of Ohio. His book, A New Therapeutics for the Cure of Disease by Sending Ozone, Oxygen and Medicine into Diseased Tissues, was published in New York City in 1899.¹

In Germany, physician Albert Wolff first utilized ozone to treat skin diseases in 1915, and the German army used ozone extensively during World War I to treat a wide variety of battle wounds and other anaerobic infections.

However, it was not until 1932 that ozone was seriously studied by the scientific community, when ozonated water was used as a disinfectant by Dr. E. A. Fisch, a German dentist. One of his patients was surgeon Erwin Payr, who immediately saw the therapeutic possibilities of ozone in medical therapy. Dr. Payr, along with French physician P. Aubourg, was the first medical doctor to apply ozone gas through rectal insufflation to treat mucous colitis and fistulas. In 1945, Payr pioneered the method of injecting ozone intravenously for the treatment of circulatory disturbances.

Other German pioneers in medical ozone include physician Hans Wolff (1924–1980), who wrote Medical Ozone (Das medizinische Ozon) and collaborated with physicist Joaquim Hansler (1908–1981) to establish the Medical Ozone Society (now the Medical Society for Ozone Application in Prevention and Therapy) in 1972.² Hansler designed and built the first medical ozone generator (the “OZONOSAN”) that could make accurate dosages of oxygen and ozone. The company he founded still bears his name and is one of the largest and most trusted manufacturers of medical ozone generators in the world. A picture of a modern medical ozone generator is reproduced in figure 5.1.

World War II brought about major setbacks for German research into medical ozone, because many clinics and laboratories were destroyed in Allied air raids. It was not until the 1950s that clinics reopened and research was begun once more.

The first physician to treat cancer with ozone was Dr. W. Zable in the late 1950s, followed by Drs. P. G. Seeger, A. Varro, and H. Werkmeister. During the next twenty years, hundreds of German physicians began using ozone in their practice to treat a wide variety of diseases (both alone and as a complement to traditional medical therapy) through a number of applications. Horst Kief is believed to have been the first physician to use ozone therapy to successfully treat patients infected with HIV. He also pioneered the development of autohomologous immunotherapy (AHIT) using ozone and other elements, which can be used to treat a wide variety of diseases that are resistant to traditional medical therapy.

Today some eight thousand licensed health practitioners (including medical doctors, homeopathic physicians, and naturopaths) in Germany use ozone in their practices, while some fifteen thousand practitioners use ozone on the European continent, either alone or as a complement to other therapies. It is estimated that over twelve million ozone treatments have been given to over one million patients in Germany alone over the last fifty years. Although medical uses of ozone are still considered experimental by North American scientists, they are well known and well established outside the United States.

PSEUDOSCIENCE?

Some critics of ozone therapy have condemned it as a “pseudoscience” that has no solid medical foundation. Although prejudice can be a factor, this view may in part be a reaction to proclamations from overenthusiastic supporters of oxidative therapies who have claimed that ozone and hydrogen peroxide are “miracle drugs” that can cure any disease known to humankind. In addition, many reports on cures have never been documented by objective medical and scientific sources. While personal case histories have value, a major challenge among oxidative practitioners is the careful documentation of their clinical findings and collaboration with others to expand their research.

It’s important to remember that while the clinical findings related to ozone and hydrogen peroxide are often impressive, oxidative therapies only assist the body to heal itself. Not every disease will respond to oxidative therapy, and many patients will find that these therapies will not relieve their health complaints. This is why we must focus not only on claims of miracle cures but also on documented clinical and laboratory findings that show why and how these therapies can work.

RESEARCH IN MEDICAL OZONE

Since the end of World War II, literally hundreds of laboratory and clinical studies in the medical uses of ozone have been done, primarily in Europe, and their findings have been published in a variety of scientific and medical journals. Many have been published in German, with the exception of those findings first reported at international medical conferences sponsored by the International Ozone Association, which were presented in English. At the present time, the bulk of scientific research in the medical uses of ozone is being undertaken in Cuba, Russia, Germany, and Italy, where researchers receive cooperation and support (in varying degrees) from the government and major universities. Research is going on to a far lesser extent in the United States, France, Mexico, and Canada.

However, one recent American study by scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, received worldwide attention. Published in the respected journal Science and other publications, it showed that in addition to hydrogen peroxide, ozone may be naturally produced in the human body to help kill bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. These antibodies may not only kill pathogens directly but might also promote inflammatory and other immune responses.³ Unfortunately, the article’s authors emphasize the point that, particularly when ozone seems to be located in atherosclerotic plaques, ozone is always an unwelcome compound. Their report certainly does not explain how ozone works in the human body to both prevent and cure disease. Yet commenting on these surprising findings in another issue of Science, Dr. Carl Nathan, an immunologist at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, commented, “It will be hard to think of antibodies in the same way [as before].”⁴

More clear evidence that ozone works in this way is necessary. However, if true, this could be a significant discovery for several reasons. First, the fact that ozone is naturally produced by the human body removes from it the stigma of being classified as a “foreign element” that is harmful under all circumstances. It can also answer the critics of ozone therapy by helping explain how ozone works naturally in the human body to both prevent and cure disease.

Another important North American study receiving wide publicity was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal when fears of AIDS-related blood transfusions were at their height. It showed that ozone can kill HIV, the hepatitis and herpes viruses, and other agents in blood used for transfusion in vitro. The article’s author added: “The systemic use of ozone in the treatment of AIDS could not only reduce the virus load but also possibly revitalize the immune system.”⁵

Other research in ozone therapy is taking place in two unlikely countries: Russia and Cuba. In Russia, physicians, chemists, biologists, and other scientists have been working with the support of the Ministry of Public Health at major institutions like the Interregional Cardiosurgical Center and the Central Scientific Laboratory at the Medical Academy in Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky), the Sechenov Medical Academy and the Central Scientific and Research Institute of Dermatology and Venereology in Moscow, and the Institute of Photobiology in Minsk, Belarus. Ozone therapy is becoming part of the medical mainstream in Russia, and physicians from around the country come to Nizhny Novgorod for training.

Medical ozone research has been carried out since 1985 in Cuba under the auspices of the National Center for Scientific Research (in the former Ozone Research Center, which closed in 2011). In addition to investigations in medical ozone under the leadership of Dr. Silvia Menendez, director of research, the center was involved in the use of ozone for sanitation, wastewater treatment, and the design, construction, and installation of ozone generators. The National Center for Scientific Research also worked closely with physicians throughout the country as part of the National Program for Ozone Therapy and offered training for physicians from Cuba as well as from other countries. The National Center for Scientific Research sponsored the International Symposium on Ozone Applications every few years, which was attended by physicians, researchers, and others from all over the world. Since 1985, over one million patients have been treated with ozone at clinics and hospitals throughout the country, and many foreigners travel to Cuba for ozone therapy at the International Ozone Therapy Clinic and other institutions, mostly in Havana.

By 2007, the National Center for Scientific Research and a staff of more than fifty-five chemists and laboratory technicians were located at a modern campus on the outskirts of Havana. The facility includes two laboratories, two ozone clinics (one for Cubans and one for foreigners), and an administration building. A 180-bed four-star hotel for foreign patients and their families, complete with an ozonated swimming pool, is located across the street.

It is important to view ozone therapy in the context of the Cuban health care system. One of the primary goals of the Cuban revolution of the 1950s was to provide free and universal health care to all Cuban citizens. Although subjected to a crippling economic blockade by the U.S. government since 1961, Cuba has nonetheless been able to position itself in the vanguard of medical research characteristic of many developed nations, including genetic engineering (the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology is the first of its kind in Latin America), organ transplant technology, the development of an artificial heart, vaccines for hepatitis B and meningococcal meningitis B, neural brain implants to treat Parkinson’s disease, and the use of epidermal growth factor to aid burn victims.⁶

In contrast to his devastating eyewitness account of the disintegration of Castro’s Cuba in his book Castro’s Final Hour, Andres Oppenheimer had the following to say about the Cuban health care system:

In fact, the revolution’s greatest success had been in providing a first-class health care system for free. Whatever health needs Cubans had, whether a pregnancy test or a heart-bypass operation, they could have it for the asking. And because health care was the revolution’s greatest pride, the state’s magnanimity was unlimited: even cosmetic surgery and orthodontic treatments were performed without charge.⁷

Despite severe ongoing problems with transportation, agriculture, and economic development, Cuba has consistently maintained one of the highest levels of health care in all of Latin America. The results of much of the Cuban research will be presented here in this book.

Why are the Cubans and Russians so interested in ozone? Citizens of both countries have enjoyed socialized medicine for decades, so private drug manufacturers and private hospitals and clinics have traditionally played a small or nonexistent role in determining the direction of the health care system. As mentioned before, ozone cannot be patented, it is extremely cheap to produce, and it can be used effectively in a wide range of therapeutic applications. In countries like the United States, where large drug companies provide funding for medical schools, are directly or indirectly involved in all medical research, and lobby to influence governmental policy, there is simply no interest in researching the possibilities of ozone therapy. And even when private funding is offered for scientific or clinical research, hospitals have been known to refuse it. Yet in countries where the profit motive has traditionally been absent from health care, physicians, chemists, and other researchers enjoy government support and funding for their work.

The Bocci Breakthrough

One of the most tireless researchers in the therapeutic applications of ozone has been Velio Bocci, M.D., specialist in respiratory diseases and hematology and emeritus professor of physiology at the University of Siena in Italy. Since 1988, when Dr. Bocci first began to study ozone, he has collaborated with numerous researchers in Europe and has authored or coauthored more than fifty published articles on the subject. He is also the author of two respected scientific texts on ozone therapy: Oxygen-Ozone Therapy: A Critical Evaluation, followed by Ozone: A New Medical Drug. Both books were primarily written for the scientific and medical communities, but the newer book is more easily understood by the lay reader.

Although German researcher J. Washuttl and colleagues wrote about immunoactivation through ozone in the 1980s, Dr. Bocci was the first to scientifically explain how ozone actually works when added to blood removed from the body and then reinfused into the patient. As described in chapter 2, rather than merely kill bacteria and viruses directly through oxidation, ozone induces a cascade of complex immunological reactions within the body that promote health and healing. According to Renate Viebahn-Haensler in the fourth English edition of The Use of Ozone in Medicine, these findings, first published in a 1990 edition of the medical journal Haemalotogica,⁸ represent “a major milestone in ozone therapy.”⁹

ONE GAS, MANY APPLICATIONS

Because ozone works primarily to stimulate the body’s immune reactions through transient oxidative stress, and because blood is composed of a number of cells with different functions, the range of human health problems that can respond favorably to ozone therapy is quite broad. According to The Use of Ozone in Medicine (considered to be the basic reference book for physicians who work with ozone therapy), ozone has been used therapeutically in the areas of allergology, angiology (blood vessels), dermatology, gastroenterology, gerontology, gynecology, intensive care, neurology, odontology (dental medicine), oncology, orthopedics, proctology, radiology, rheumatology, surgery (including vascular surgery), and urology.¹⁰ As the Canadian report cited earlier indicated, ozone has also been proven to effectively purify human blood supplies.

The European Cooperation of Medical Ozone Societies (made up of national affiliates in Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland) and the National Center for Scientific Research in Cuba report that physicians are currently treating the following diseases listed below with different forms of ozone therapy.

abscesses

acne

AIDS

allergies (hypersensitivity)

anal fissures

arthritis

arthrosis

asthma

cancerous tumors

cerebral sclerosis

circulatory disturbances

cirrhosis of the liver

climacterium (menopause)

constipation

corneal ulcers

cystitis

decubitus (bedsores)

diarrhea

fistulas

fungal diseases

furunculosis

gangrene

gastroduodenal ulcers

gastrointestinal disorders

giardiasis

glaucoma

hepatitis

herpes (simplex and zoster)

hypercholesterolemia

mucous colitis

mycosis

nerve-related disorders

osteomyelitis

Parkinson’s disease

polyarthritis

Raynaud’s disease

retinitis pigmentosa

rheumatoid arthritis

scars (after radiation)

senile dementia

sepsis control

sinusitis

spondylitis

stomatitis

Sudeck’s disease

thrombophlebitis

ulcus cruris (open leg sores)

vulvovaginitis

wound healing disturbances¹¹