Stephen Barrett, MD, board chair of Quackwatch Inc., applauded the FTCs action. The government agency, which oversees the advertising of nonprescription drags, has taken an aggressive stance on the claims made by health products in the last two years. He said the agency has filed more false advertising claims in the last two years than during the 1980s. The FTC issued 1,200 warnings after an international health claim Internet surf day Nov. 10, 1998 when numerous agencies surfed the Internet and assessed Web sites. Email the FTC at health-claims@ftc.gov to send complaints or comments about health claims on the Internet. Comment: Heres one effective way for the government to stop some of these rascals from getting the word out. Although its impossible for the FTC to crack down on everyone advertising products with misleading or false claims, such actions may encourage other companies and practitioners to think twice before they push their products. Its also heartening to see the efforts in policing the Internet, which has become a haven for quacks promoting everything.
The government is beginning a $30 million study to determine once and for all whether chelation therapy offers any benefit for sufferers of heart disease. Chelation therapy is the main treatment for lead poisoning. A manmade amino acid called EDTA is seeped into patients blood, through a vein, to sop up the toxic metal so it can be excreted in urine. Some doctors have argued for decades that chelation therapy also could clear blocked heart arteries, perhaps by sopping up inflammation-causing molecules or calcium in buildups that clog blood vessels. Federal regulators have cracked down on proponents for falsely promoting chelation as a proven heart remedy — several years ago the Federal Trade Commission forced a doctors group to quit such advertising — and warned that the therapy can cause kidney damage or other side effects, especially if not administered by a properly trained professional.
Chelators added to pectinase-rich enzyme mixtures increase the efficiency of enzyme retting of flax. The multitude of available chelators requires research to optimize enzyme retting for cost and fiber quality. Of several chelators tested, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) is the most effective in sequestering calcium from solution, with substantial activity even at pH 4 or 5. Phosphate is also effective, but only at high pH. EDTA and Mayoquest 200, a commercial product with -37% EDTA, in combination with Viscozyme L or Lyvelin, commercial enzymes with polygalacturonase activities, yield high Fried test scores, indicating efficient separation of fibers from core tissues. Neither chelator nor enzyme at the levels tested alone effectively rets flax at a pH of around 5. In contrast, EDTA at 20 mmol/L levels and alkaline pH yields high Fried test scores. The addition of BioPrep, a commercial pectate lyase, does not influence retting measured by the Fried test with EDTA at alkaline pH, but the enzyme does improve retting with the weaker chelator sodium tripolyphosphate. The quality of fibers, as determined by the yield of fine fibers obtained by passing retted flax through the Shirley analyzer, is substantially greater with EDTA plus Viscozyme at pH 5 than alkaline chemical retting with EDTA, sodium tripolyphosphate, or sodium oxalate without enzyme. EDTA is the most effective chelator at acidic pH levels for stimulating flax retting by various commercial pectinase-rich enzyme mixtures. However, other less expensive candidates require additional study for more cost-effective formulations and applicable fiber properties. Retting is the process by which fibers in flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) stems and other bast plants are separated from the nonfiber tissues. This process, which is usually microbial, is the major limitation in producing linen fibers [25]. For commercial flax fiber operations, flax stems are pulled from the ground and dew retted, in which indigenous fungi colonize and degrade the nonfiher tissues to liberate fibers. After dew retting, the stems are mechanically cleaned to remove shive and other contaminants from fibers for use in linen yarns and fabrics. While currently the method of choice, dew retting is restricted to geographical regions with appropriate climates, and the resulting fibers are often inconsistent in quality with significant amounts of dirt and contaminants [21, 25]. Therefore, considerable research has focused on alternative chemical and enzymatic methods to improve the consistency of fiber quality [1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 21, 22, 25]. Increasing U.S. interest in flax fibers for use as cottonized fibers in textiles [4] and for bio-composites [19] globally provides a strong impetus to improve flax retting. The importance of pectin as a binder between cells and the necessity to remove it during retting has been acknowledged for several decades [25]. Therefore, pectinases, and in particular endopolygalacturonases, are effective in retting flax [2, 4, 11, 12, 17, 25, 26]. However, pectin is a complicated polysaccharide that varies in structure [16]. In nonmethylated pectins, often Ca2+ binds carboxyl groups of adjacent molecules, thus stabilizing pectins and thereby plant structure [20]. In flax, recent research has indicated that acidic pectins and Ca2+ are located preferentially in the epidermal regions of flax [18], likely contributing to the structural integrity of the stem and bast fibers. Therefore, complex formers, e.g., chelators, such as ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) to remove Ca2+ have proven useful in retting flax and in facilitating enzyme retting [4, 7, 9, 11, 21].
Chelation
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