Lyme and ALS

Just got this from the mycoplasma site:

Doctor devised treatment plan for ALS to heal himself
BY BRYAN WOOLLEY, The Dallas Morning News
Fort Wayne News Sentinel, IN - May. 06, 2005
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/living/11580038.htm

DALLAS - (KRT) - 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, said Harvey successfully treated
him with the same method.

But 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 Harvey is
treating. "Dr. Harvey appears to be far beyond anything that's
evidence-based. He's just basically making up his own rules."

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.

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," Harvey says.

In 2000, Dr. Pat Salvato, head of Diversified Medical Practices in
Houston, invited 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 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, Dr. David Martz, an oncologist-
hematologist from Colorado Springs, Colo. 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 Martz's son saw a newspaper article in Maryland about
Harvey and his work. One of Martz's colleagues knew Harvey and put
them in touch. In January, Martz was put on high-dosage intravenous
Antibiotic treatment.

His symptoms are remarkably similar to Charlie Smith's. But for
reasons Harvey says he doesn't know, Martz's recovery has been
quicker. After six months of intensive treatment, Martz says he was
back to 75 percent to 80 percent of the person he once was.

Now, Harvey says, a year after Martz began the Antibiotic therapy, a
neurologist who specializes in the disease has declared him "symptom
free" of ALS.

Radolf says he's skeptical of Harvey's theories linking the Lyme
disease bacterium with other ailments. 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."

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."

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," Harvey says. "So are a lot
of other docs. I think this thing is just about to pop to the
surface."

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