"THERE are now a total of 10 GPs countrywide who are using a revolutionary alternative treatment for arthritis developed by a family of Dublin GPs over the past 45 years. The discovery that when applied to a small patch of skin, diluted procaine hydrochloride solution, a local anaesthetic, could ease arthritis symptoms was made in 1950 by Dr Patrick A. Collins, who passed the secrets on to his three sons - Maurice, Patrick and Richard - all GPs.
Today only Dr Maurice Collins (60) survives and his greatest fear is that unless something is done to develop procaine along standard medical channels, the method could die with him - leading to further needless suffering for people with arthritis. He believes that the only way to get the treatment to the vast number of arthritis sufferers internationally is to convince a pharmaceutical company to test it and manufacture it.
"Procaine is the biggest thing to hit medicine in many, many years, and I don't say that lightly," says Dr Collins.
His problem has been convincing the medical establishment to take it seriously. For many years he has fought to have procaine tested in clinical trials, the acid test by which any experimental treatment stands or falls. The medical establishment in this State has refused to co operate with the exception of one hospital consultant who wanted to do clinical trials, but was barred from doing so by his hospital.
Eventually Dr Collins convinced Addenbrooks Hospital in Cambridge, England, to conduct a pilot trial of 12 patients. The results did not come down either way, but the trial was far too small, Dr Collins argues, for it to have had any statistical value.
What impressed him about the double blind trial, was that when it was over, he was able to look at the charts of all of the patients (bar one who had surgery) and say precisely from the responses recorded which ones were on procaine and which were on the placebo.
In the 1940s, undiluted procaine was used in the US and the UK to treat arthritis via intramuscular and intravenous injection, but soon fell out of favour. However, Dr Patrick Collins, Snr, stuck with the idea and soon realised that the more procaine was diluted, the better it worked.
Not only that, but when it was applied to the skin instead of being injected, it worked even better and many thousands of Irish patients have since been treated.
Today Dr Maurice Collins dilutes the procaine to such a degree in saline solution that no chemist in the world would recognise that there was procaine in it at all, he says.
He prefers to use the term "expansion" to dilution, theorising that the effect of the expansion exerts a pull that may be breaking bonds within the parent molecule. The further you dilute, the further you break down fragments of the original molecule, creating an unstable and thus highly active ingredient. The "dilution" thus actually has an effect on the solution, giving the procaine totally different properties.
WHEN a tiny amount of this water like liquid is placed on a patch of skin measuring between one eighth and one quarter of an inch, the substance activates the immune system against both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
This theory is so outside the bounds of current scientific knowledge that many orthodox doctors have been sceptical, but Dr Collins believes that instead of dismissing the theory we need to analyse and understand it.
Doing so would not only ease the suffering of millions, but it would revolutionise our entire medical understanding, possibly leading to other treatments of other serious conditions.
"This thing is enormous," he says. "I have no doubt at all that it will be proven. I stake my life on that. But that can't happen unless the trials are forthcoming."