Drop by Drop Page #4

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know what, we'll live with it.

We'll put up with it; it's

really the prevailing approach.

But it's not really what

is going to ultimately

make a difference

in somebody's lives.

We take small amounts of

what a person's allergic to

and introduce them

gradually into the body

Traditionally,

subcutaneous immunotherapy,

allergy shots have

been the mainstay,

and they still are

the most effective

overall for most patients.

I don't like shots,

I don't like needles.

I don't even take a

flu shot with a needle.

I have to do the inhalable.

The exciting thing

about what we do,

which is different

than allergy shots,

is we actually put the

extracts under the tongue.

I've had allergy shots, and

I think my mom said I did it

for one or two years and it

didn't make a difference,

and I'm not really sure why

the drops work sometimes

for people when it's under

their tongue and not in the arm,

because it's the exact

same allergy extract.

It's the same stuff.

It's just a different way

of going into your body.

How it works is you take

a drop under your tongue

three separate times a day.

You get a bottle for your

environmental allergies

and then you get a bottle

for your food allergies,

and inside each one

drop is all the antigens

that you're allergic

to, so with one drop,

you're fighting a bunch

of different allergies,

and the idea is that it

just builds up resistance

against those allergies

'cause it exposes it

little by little to your body

and then your body says,

alright, this isn't so bad.

I think I could

get used to this.

So everything

we're talking about,

like with sublingual

immunotherapy, the drops,

that's an off-label usage,

so the extract is available.

So the physician feels based

on the current medical evidence

and the literature

comfortable in doing that,

they're able to use it that way.

Because it's not FDA approved

doesn't mean we can't use it.

It just means that none of

the insurance companies,

Medicare, Medicaid, will

cover the sublingual drops,

so that's a challenge

for patients

and they have to

pay out of pocket.

In the 60's, when my

dad started doing this,

no one understood how

that could possibly work,

but we now realize that

that is a very privileged

immunologic site in the body.

Dr. David

Morris's health didn't

allow him to be

interviewed by us,

but he got started by treating

Wisconsin farmers for

their mold allergies.

He tried shots but

they just didn't work.

So he didn't come up

with the idea of drops

and he's not the only

doctor to use it.

The first known use of

these drops was used

to fight a dust

allergy back in 1900.

By 1936, Dr. French Hansel

became the first guy

to publish anything that showed

these things can help get

rid of dust allergies.

Like we said, Dr. David

Morris didn't even find out

about allergy drops

until the mid 1960's,

when he goes to an allergy

doctor's conference in Hawaii.

Then he gets to writing himself,

and publishes his own

paper on how he thinks

drops can even help

stop food allergies.

In 1970, he opens his clinic

in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

It takes a long time for the

process to be taken seriously,

but by 1998, the World

Health Organization

says sublingual

immunotherapy, or drops,

works just as well as shots.

He was presenting

at, I believe,

at our State Allergy

Society meeting

and one of the doctors

stood up and said,

okay, well, he

started talking right

in the middle of his

giving the lecture

and goes, well, how could

that work to his colleagues.

That's ridiculous, they don't.

It was very, very difficult.

I would say I felt shunned that

it was at least perceived by me,

that if I would sit down,

people would get up and leave,

or if I'd try to

talk to someone,

they would turn from

me and walk away.

Allergy Associates of

La Crosse was treated

like they didn't even exist.

When I had joined

Dr. Morris years ago,

it was pretty much

an ignored area.

So at medical

meetings, for example,

we were put the farthest

table away from everyone else.

We would talk about what we do

and people would

just roll their eyes.

You know, the

support, the enthusiasm

behind sublingual

hasn't really developed

with the college or the academy.

Our partners,

they all knew we

were goodhearted,

very solid basic physicians,

but they seemed to think

we had a little quirk.

I don't really

know specifically

what they do and

what they don't do

as far as the type of

treatment they use.

I think it's unfortunate

they felt that way

that they were being shunned.

I've never intentionally

shunned anyone

if they're, you know, at

a meeting or something.

Well, the response

is getting better.

I would call it the

movement glacial.

It's moving, and it's

gonna continue to move.

There was also a

period of time where

there were many meetings

that we went to,

the college and academy meetings

where there was just

outright discussion about

the impact of sublingual on

the income of the allergists.

When you're

delivering the shots,

you have this steady,

recurring, you know,

weekly, biweekly, monthly,

you know, for years on end

of patients coming in

and getting their shots,

which provided an

ongoing revenue stream,

so yeah, there's a lot of

discussion around revenue.

Well,

heck, it's great.

We'll just put it

in under the needle

and then we get paid every time

you come in for an office visit.

We get paid every

time you get a shot.

You know, over and over again,

and the bottom

line comes down to

it's a lot cheaper to do under

my tongue every day, myself,

than it is for me to

take off time from work

to go down, pay the doctor,

pay the office visit,

pay the shot, to

get the same result.

So your question is,

I'm gonna repeat it,

would an allergist

make a decision

solely on financial

reasons as far as choosing

subcutaneous or allergy

shots over other treatments.

The answer is I would hope not.

I think that, I can't speak

for every individual allergist.

There are around 5,000 board

certified allergists in the US,

and when we look at

treating the patient,

we look at multiple factors,

and certainly, it would

be very unfortunate

if an allergist chose a therapy

just because they thought there

was a financial incentive.

I think that'd be no

different from an oncologist

treating a cancer patient

because they administer

the chemotherapy in their

office, which a lot of them do.

And I think there is always

in any business or any field,

you can, including the

media, there may be people

that do things because

there's a financial incentive.

You can't ever eliminate

that human behavior,

but I would say that the vast

majority, 99% of physicians,

try to offer their

patients the best treatment

based on their current

medical scientific knowledge.

Allergists who's

in the community

takes a considerable

risk to stop

his or her practice with

injection immunotherapy

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