The Dialysis Walls Start to Crumble hosted by Dr David Moskowitz guest A Mullins

Tonight's podcast will be "Cracks in the Dialysis Industry?" My guest will be Arlene Mullin, founder of Dialysis Advocates.

Last Tuesday night, October 11th, Novo Nordisk issued a press release saying that they would stop their Ozempic trial for diabetic kidney disease a year early. The next day, dialysis stocks lost $5 billion in market capitalization. Despite exceptionally heavy trading, the 15-19% decline in market cap wasn't regained for the following week.

This may be only the beginning of the dialysis industry's financial woes. Drugs like Ozempic, Jardiance, and Farxiga slow down dialysis, but quinapril, a generic blood pressure drug, can prevent it altogether, as I published in 2002 (1). Once investors realize this, dialysis stocks will continue to be weak. Nobody invested in the iron lung after Salk's polio vaccine became common knowledge.

In addition to falling stock prices, the dialysis industry may soon be confronting investigations by the Department of Justice for civil rights abuses including illegal termination of patients. With us to discuss the dialysis industry's legal woes will be Arlene Mullin, founder of Dialysis Advocates a quarter of a century ago. Trained as a medical technologist and dialysis technician, Arlene has seen the dark underbelly of the dialysis industry. Patients come to her when they have no place else to turn, and she has involved the DOJ.

1. https://genomed.com/pdf/diabetes.technology.therapeutics.pdf