AIDS POSSIBLY INVOLVING A PERMANENT OR PROLONGED LOSS OF T-HELPER CELLS

AIDS POSSIBLY INVOLVING A PERMANENT OR PROLONGED LOSS OF T-HELPER CELLS

One patient who managed to eliminate all signs of Kaposi's lesions while taking ascorbic acid had had his burn down to 15 grams a day for 6 months despite the helper/supressor T-cell ratio remaining at 0.2. There had been some slight increase in the absolute number of helper and suppressor cells. Previously detected shedding of CMV (cytomegalovirus) had apparently stopped. This patient had 3 Kaposi's lesions (diagnosed as Kaposi's sarcoma on biopsy) recur on the right foot following a cold, herpes simplex, and influenza, all within a 2 month period. The burn markedly increased, peaking at 185 grams per 24 hours. In 2 weeks time, the patient had managed to eliminate all signs of the lesions on the foot. The ascorbate burn slowly has lessened; now 2 months later, the burn is at 25 grams and decreasing.

This case, plus the previous two cases, strongly suggest that the basic AIDS infection, probably caused by a virus, is no longer active in these cases and that subsequent ascorbate burns and various later manifestations of the AID syndrome are caused by secondary and opportunistic infections. One is reminded of the permanent damage of certain viral infections in association with certain predisposing factors initiating an immune response to the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans and causing juvenile-onset diabetes (19).

ASCORBATE AND THE POSSIBLE PREVENTION OF AIDS
Morishige has demonstrated the effectiveness of ascorbate in preventing hepatitis B from blood transfusions (20). A similarity exists between AIDS and hepatitis B. It has been my experience that patients treated with large doses of ascorbate during the acute phase of hepatitis will not develop chronic hepatitis. My experience with herpes simplex has been the same. Although ascorbate is helpful to a degree with chronic viral infections, it is in the treatment of acute viral diseases that it is most effective.

It is on this basis that I recommend that all persons who fear exposure to AIDS and certainly anyone receiving blood trans- fusions or other blood products which could in the most remote way have been obtained from an AIDS carrier, be put on bowel tolerance doses of ascorbate.

CONTROLLED STUDIES OF OTHER SUBSTANCES [may be] CONTAMINATED WITH ASCORBATE As a result of publications in periodicals concerned about the AID syndrome, (21,22) a rapidly increasing number of AIDS patients in the San Francisco Bay Area are taking large doses of ascorbate. The same practice is starting in New York and elsewhere. I would suggest that physicians conducting controlled experiments on interferon, and shortly with interleukin 2, be sensitive to the fact that their patients are, and will be con- taminating the experiments with massive doses of ascorbate. Statistical analysis of the results of such trials will probably be valueless. Ascorbate has been contaminating cancer treatment studies for some time as a result of orthomolecular literature (23,24,25). I estimate that a significant increasing percentage of cancer patients in California and other parts of the world are taking massive doses of ascorbate. Most of these patients are hiding this fact from their oncologist.

BROADER PROBLEMS
The AID syndrome has not only become a major threat to the special groups ordinarily affected but threatens to spread at least to some extent into other groups. The increasingly large number of persons infected by the disease increases the possibility of mutations which could alter the routes of infection. Even without this possibility occurring, the large population of immune suppressed persons comprises a major health hazard because of the large pools of secondary infectious diseases generated. The large, growing pool of intestinal parasites, heretofore present in the western world in only small numbers, is one example of that problem.