They don’t come much tougher than actor Chuck Norris.
If you’re a fan of his action films, you know that the bad guys can’t run from him… and he never misses his target!
But right now he’s given up his Hollywood career to save his wife Gena — and it’s the hardest fight of his life.
Four years ago, Gena was given several MRI scans — but right before them, she was injected with a contrast agent containing gadolinium, a heavy metal used to make it easier for radiologists to examine the results.
As a result, the couple has just filed a lawsuit against 11 drugmakers who are involved in the manufacture of these contrast agents. Plus that, their attorney says he is representing numerous other clients who have been harmed by gadolinium as well — many having been originally misdiagnosed with conditions such as Lyme disease and ALS.
Here in eAlert, we’ve been warning you about the dangers of gadolinium-based dyes for some time now. Unfortunately, though, many people still don’t realize that they could’ve walked into a scanning facility as a “normal” person… and come out feeling as if their “whole body was on fire.”
All of this is why you need to make doubly sure exactly what’s going on before you set foot into any MRI facility.
Truth be told
They say that hindsight is always 20/20. And for Chuck and Gena Norris, that’s certainly true.
The 54-year-old wife of the actor and martial arts expert said that after submitting to several scans, all which used a gadolinium contrast agent, her whole body started burning and tingling and became numb. She also experienced episodes of “violent shaking” and weakness. Her muscles began to waste away.
But it didn’t stop there.
Gena says that she went on to suffer from memory problems, confusion, and kidney damage.
She ended up being hospitalized, but it didn’t seem as if anything the doctors were doing was working. “She’s dying right in front of me,” is how Chuck put it.
Chuck and Gena did eventually find some treatments that helped (I’ll tell you more about that in a minute), but what the couple is going through right now — and has been for years — is far from a one-in-a-million fluke.
Untold numbers of people have been harmed after receiving one of these “enhanced” MRIs.
Of course, if you ask your doctor whether there’s any risk involved, chances are he’ll tell you that it’s perfectly safe and that you’ve got no reason to worry unless you already have serious kidney problems.
But he probably won’t tell you about the little matter of how highly toxic gadolinium is.
The only “excuse” for using it is that the drugmakers who manufacture GBCAs (or “gadolinium-based contrast agents”) said for years that your kidneys will completely excrete it from your body. That claim, however, turned out to be false.
Even the FDA admitted in a review earlier this year that gadolinium is being found in the “brain and other body tissues.”
And just a few months ago, researchers at Case Western Reserve University confirmed that these GBCAs stay inside your body and can accumulate in your brain. Plus that, gadolinium has turned up in brain-tumor biopsies, with some experts saying it can actually cause rapid growth of cancer cells.
GBCAs can also trigger a gruesome condition called “nephrogenic system fibrosis,” which turns skin thick and hard like wood, often causing paralysis.
Since the FDA appears to have no intention whatsoever of stepping in — as European regulators are doing in actually banning the use of three types of GBCAs — it’s up to us to protect ourselves and our loved ones from the same kind of poisoning that Gena Norris is now fighting.
So, before you agree to get an MRI, there are two vital questions you need to ask:
#1: Is this test really necessary? MRIs are highly overused and ordered for everything under the sun.
#2: Is the MRI going to be enhanced using a GBCA?
If the MRI will be enhanced, your best (and safest) bet is to follow the advice of HSI panel member Dr. Allan Spreen, who urges that they be “adamantly refused.”
Chuck said that he’s given up his film career to care for his wife and make sure she’s receiving the very best treatments. For now, that appears to be chelation therapy — an IV solution of EDTA that is used to treat heavy metal poisoning and heart disease.
If you’ve had an enhanced MRI in the past and are now suffering from any odd or mysterious symptoms, you should definitely ask your doctor about taking a blood or urine test to check for gadolinium. You can also learn more by going to a website called The Lighthouse Project at: gadoliniumtoxicity.com.
“Chuck Norris and wife’s lawsuit sparks debate over risks of MRI contrast agents” November 10, 2017, CBS News, cbsnews.com
