Neuro Electric Therapy evidence

Mealy mouthed medics are saying there's not enough evidence, but read what happend 30 years ago!
Neuro-electric therapy (N.E.T.) in drug addiction: interim report Sections
Abstract Discussion
Details
Author: Margaret A. PATTERSON,1 M.B.E., F.R.C.S.E., M.B.Ch.B. London, England

Abstract
An interim report is presented of an in-depth study of the effects of neuro-electric therapy in the treatment of drug addiction. It prevents withdrawal symptoms and appears to remove the craving for the drug of addiction. The long-term results are significantly better in those who receive even a short period of in-patient therapy, than in those who receive out-patient therapy only.

The treatment of drug addiction be electro-acupuncture was described by Dr. Wen,1in Hong Kong in 1973, following on a visit to China in 1972 to study the techniques used there. He had started investigating electro-acupuncture in order to use it a sanalgesia in his operations, when some of the patients on whom he was experimenting volunteered the fact that after 40 minutes of electro-acupuncture, they lost their desire for heroin. (Hong Kong has a massive drug problem and it is estimated that an average of 15 per cent of the hospital's surgical patients were opiate addicts.)

The author had been involved with drug addicts on a personal level for several years, because her husband was investigating, filming and writing about the drug problem in the Far East on a political and sociological level. The author was therefore able to help Dr. Wen find addicts who were willing to be treated for their drug dependency, and it was established that:
A 40-minute treatment with electro-acupuncture consistently stopped all withdrawal symptoms for a period of time;

repeated treatments over a 10-day period, according to the addicts, completely removed the desire of the addicts to take their drug of addiction.

Dr. Wen reported on the first 40 cases in the Asian Journal of Medicine[1] ; a single case was also described in detail by Dr. Sainsbury in the Medical Journal of Australia[2] and his results were witnessed by independent psychiatrists.

It is significant that over 100 cases treated in Hong Kong before the author left there to return to the United Kingdom in July 1973, received no counselling whatsoever, no social support, no psychotherapy. In fact, their presence in the surgical wards (no other hospital beds being available) was deeply resented by the overworked surgical nurses; also the doctors treating them, all surgeons, were frequently unavailable. In spite of this, there was complete success in taking them off their drugs without any medication.

When some patients developed acute withdrawal symptoms while no doctor was available, the symptoms ceased within 15 to 20 minutes of the commencement of a treatment. No follow-up of these patients has been published so far, nor of patients who are being treated by the same method in other centres in Australia, the United States of America and the Far East [3] .

1The author was Head of Surgery in the 850-bed Chinese Hospital in Hong Kong, of which Dr. Wen was neuro-surgical consultant.