06:26 PM CDT on Saturday, April 30, 2005
By BRYAN WOOLLEY / The Dallas Morning News
Dr. William T. Harvey says he once was a victim of the debilitating disease for which he has been treating Charlie Smith. Or something like it. It was in 1987 in California, he says, just before his 50th birthday, that his life "kind of fell through the roof."
"It was all pain, all brain fog," he says. "I couldn't think anymore. I had to quit my job. I went back to my house in San Antonio and figured that I had a fatal disease and nobody could figure out what it was."
He says he recovered after giving himself massive doses of antibiotics. Another doctor who, like Charlie, had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, says Dr. Harvey successfully treated him with the same method.
But Dr. Harvey's methods are outside the medical mainstream, and many experts are skeptical of his theories.
"One of the things that makes modern medicine such a powerful thing is that there is general consensus on issues and evidence," says Dr. Justin D. Radolf, a professor of medicine at the University of Connecticut and an authority on the bacterium Dr. Harvey is treating. "Dr. Harvey appears to be far beyond anything that's evidence-based. He's just basically making up his own rules."
Dr. Harvey blames a bacterium, Borellia burgdorferia, for the symptoms he experienced. He says patients like him may be diagnosed with a range of illnesses – chronic Lyme disease, Gulf War syndrome, fibromyalgia or Agent Orange syndrome. Some, he says, are diagnosed with ALS or multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's. Some are told that their problem isn't physical, that their pain is only in their minds.
Heal thyself
Dr. Harvey believed he had chronic fatigue syndrome, a vaguely defined malady that many doctors didn't believe was real. In 1999, he attended a medical conference on Lyme disease, which causes similar symptoms, although he says he was almost certain Lyme wasn't his problem.
At the conference, he learned of the use of oral antibiotics in treating Lyme disease and decided to treat himself with "high, high doses" of them to see whether they might help his condition, too.
"Little by little, I came out of the disease. Almost," he says. He began taking antibiotics in even larger doses through a catheter and says he achieved complete recovery.
His wife, Pat, had experienced similar symptoms and had been "sick as a dog," in bed for 12 years. She remains on antibiotics. "She's mostly well and highly functional," Dr. Harvey says.
In 2000, Dr. Pat Salvato, head of Diversified Medical Practices in Houston, invited Dr. Harvey to join her clinic, a chronic fatigue syndrome practice. Eventually, he says, he identified Borellia and another bacterium, Babesia, as agents of the illness.
Of the 900 patients that Dr. Harvey has treated over the past four years, he says, about 300 have finished therapy, and their symptoms haven't returned.
His star patient is another physician, David Martz, an oncologist-hematologist from Colorado Springs, Colo. Dr. Martz, now 64, was diagnosed with ALS in May 2003 and had to retire from his practice.
"I had been in the Colorado Springs medical community for 30 years," he says in a phone interview. "I was pretty well-known and respected in that community. Every expert in the community was involved in my care, trying to figure out what was going on. I was hospitalized for two weeks. At the end of that two weeks, they weren't sure what I had, but they thought I probably had early ALS."
A friend of Dr. Martz's son saw a newspaper article in Maryland about Dr. Harvey and his work. One of Dr. Martz's colleagues knew Dr. Harvey and put them in touch. In January, Dr. Martz was put on high-dosage intravenous antibiotic treatment.
His symptoms are remarkably similar to Charlie Smith's. But for reasons Dr. Harvey says he doesn't know, Dr. Martz's recovery has been quicker. After six months of intensive treatment, Dr. Martz says he was back to 75 percent to 80 percent of the person he once was.
Now, Dr. Harvey says, a year after Dr. Martz began the antibiotic therapy, a neurologist who specializes in the disease has declared him "symptom free" of ALS.
Skepticism
Dr. Radolf says he's skeptical of Dr. Harvey's theories linking the Lyme disease bacterium with other ailments. Dr. Radolf has done extensive research in Lyme disease and diseases caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and other bacteria.
"Lyme disease does have neurological syndromes," he says. "But regarding neurological diseases such as ALS and MS, I think very few people in the neurological community would accept that these are due to Lyme disease," or Borellia burgdorferi. I don't believe there is any evidence that real, properly diagnosed ALS is caused by Borellia or that it is treatable with antibiotics."
Dr. Harvey says his work has not been a scientific study. "I'm just treating patients," he says. "And I treat only one kind of disease – this bacterium, Borellia."
Sharing his knowledge
Dr. Harvey has moved to his Del Rio, Texas, vacation home, where he spends most of his time writing about Borellia burgdorferi and Babesia and organizing a database to be shared with other physicians. He closed his Houston office in September, and except for Charlie and a few others who were diagnosed with ALS, his patients were referred to other physicians. But the afflicted call, and the doctor is seeing new patients again. (He can be reached through his assistant, Glenda Castillo, at 830-774-4094.)
"I'm starting to understand it, finally," Dr. Harvey says. "So are a lot of other docs. I think this thing is just about to pop to the surface."