Short on Tamiflu?

This may seem distasteful (excuse the pun) but is recommended by an MD as a potential strategy to make a little Tamiflu go a long way. He is Dr. Grattan Woodson, MD FACP and his 34-page paper called Preparing for the Coming Influenza Pandemic is here:  http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/files/ComingPandemic.pdf

Essentially, he outlines a "Tamiflu Re-Administration Strategy" (okay, let's cut to the chase: it's essentially about drinking your own pee.) Apparently the Tamiful is not broken down when excreted and he claims you can use two pills to get an equivalent dose of ten by diluting, PH balancing, sweetening and drinking it.

He outlines the following method for physicians:

Tamiflu Re-Administration Strategy: Tamiflu is excreted unchanged almost entirely in the urine. If Tamiflu supplies are limited as they most certainly will be, consider giving the patient two Tamiflu tablets at the same time, collect the patient’s urine and re-administer it to the patient via naso-gastric (NG) tube or orally. If managed carefully, this approach means that you can completely treat a patient with only 2 Tamiflu tablets.

To replace fluids using this method, dilute the urine to a specific gravity (SG) of 1.010 with plain water to reduce the electrolyte concentration and raise the pH of the urine to 7.4 by addition crushed CaCo3 (Tums) tablets to the solution and add sugar for glucose calories. Cool and flavor with citrus to improve palatability and administer orally or by NG tube. Consider using homemade NG tubes by adapting any source of small gage plastic tubing. Urine should be administered as a cool beverage and as fresh as possible to reduce odor and taste from urea breakdown. Urine is non-toxic. Most of the toxic things are metabolized by the liver and excreted in the bile. Don’t worry about urea, it is readily reabsorbed by the body and excreted back into the urine over and over again. It is non-toxic and will all come out once the urine is no longer being re-administered to the patient."

NM:

So if Tamiful is, in fact, found to be effective against avian virus AND we end up short (I purchased mine before I read about ten day administration versus five) it's certainly something to keep in mind. I don't know anyone who would rather die than drink urine. As I understand, urine therapy is practiced extensively in Thailand in China, so who knows--maybe this could help contribute to stretching limited resources.

Just presenting it--not necessarily endorsing it.  

Hi, SZ and thanks for the update; very helpful. Like I said, I wasn't necessarily promoting it, but you just never know. Much of Dr Woodson's paper made sense, so I'm  trying to separate the wheat from the chaf. And this virus has changed the landscape in so many ways.

Would you mind letting me know--either here on the board or privately via message--where he stated his retraction and/or what he said? I'd really like to follow up.

Also, for the rest of us who are relatively new here, I'm posting the link where Probenicid was first discussed on this board:

http://www.avianflutalk.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1497&KW= probenicid

I'd never heard of this so find it very helpful. Have since googled and learned more.

Thanks very much.

NM