Talk:Eric Drew

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I have moved these from the article's main page, for historical purposes, and as they more properly belong here:

Eric Drew Comments:

URGENT – AMERICANS BEING MURDERED BY THE THOUSANDS?

Please forward this to as many people as possible. We need urgent assistance getting this word out there. Thousands of people are dying unnecessarily.

Would knowingly sending a patient home to die by denying them a proven life saving procedure be considered murder? In my book it is. If so, tens of thousands of Americans are being murdered by medical insurance companies that deny life saving procedures to curable patients.

My name is Eric Drew and I am one of the first people in the US to survive a “double umbilical cord blood stem cell transplant”. Three years ago I was dying of a terminal leukemia (ALL) when through my own research I was lucky enough to stumble upon this miracle treatment using NON-CONTROVERSIAL stem cells collected AFTER a baby is born. Up until a few years ago when I received my transplant, umbilical cord stem cells (UCSCs) were only being used to treat children. However, doctors in Europe then discovered that using two or more samples of cord blood allowed this procedure to work on adults with amazing success. This treatment is no longer experimental. This treatment has become standard of care all over the world for treating and curing almost 50 different cancer and blood disorders in both children and adults. Anyone who needs a bone marrow transplant but cannot find a match can be treated with UCSCs. Some countries such as Japan have embraced this technology as superior to bone marrow transplants.

But not in the US. Thousands of patients are dying every year waiting for bone marrow matches, and most are never offered cord blood stem cell transplants unless they happen to be seen at one of the few hospitals that does this procedure on adults. The staggering number of people dying with treatable diseases (being murdered for profit) in this country makes the numbers of soldiers dying in Iraq seem inconsequential. But nobody is marching in the streets demanding justice for them. Three years ago when they sent me home to die without offering me a double UCSC treatment, it was a new treatment and still in trial. To send someone home to die now without offering them this procedure is outright criminal.

What’s even worse than patients not being told about this option is that many of the patients that find out that they need this treatment are still being sent home to die because their insurance companies are refusing to cover the treatments. Through the Eric Drew Foundation, a non-profit all volunteer patient advocacy foundation, we are helping hundreds of patients around the country get the treatments they need. (www.drewfoundation.org)  Unfortunately, even after patients have appealed the decisions, many of them are being denied by their insurance companies that negligently and wrongfully deem this treatment that has saved thousands of people “experimental and not medically necessary”.

Regarding embryonic stem cells, has anyone bothered to ask why we are all arguing over embryonic stem cell research which shows potential but has not been proven for treatments, when we have a source of non-controversial stem cells in cord blood that could be saving tens of thousands of people right now? Why fund research for controversial new stem cell treatments when we aren’t even using the non-controversial treatments that we have available now. Wake up America!!!

Is this what we have come to in this country? Sending our loved ones (many of them children) home to die in favor of higher corporate profit for insurance companies. The people denying these treatments are nothing less then murderers, and they need to be stopped.

Was it not obvious to our money influenced lawmakers that allowing the medical insurance industry (who decides what treatments patients are allowed to have) to be profit driven was going to present a conflict of interest? This is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. “OK Mr insurance man, here is a billion dollars and you can decide how and if you want to spend it. Oh and BTW, whatever you don’t spend you get to keep”.

I am not a socialist by any means, and I don’t think nationalizing our medical system is the answer. What we need to do is to pass legislation that forces medical insurance companies, HMOs, and medical care facilities to be non-profit and let the IRS manage them. This would take the greed factor out of giving our lives to corporate lawyers and accountants and letting them decide who gets to live and die.

Eric Drew, Los Gatos California, www.drewfoundation.org

-Ebyabe 13:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)