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AIDS: Words From The Front
Part / of 111-part series
The long search for a cause and cure for
AIDS has, for the most part, taken place in
predictable settings; the somber halls of the
National Institutes of Health in Washington,
D.C. and France's Pasteur Institute; in hospital
wards from San Francisco and New York to
Port-au-Prince and Kinshasha. But one set
ting, perhaps the most hopeful one, is wildly
improbable; the basement laboratory in a
house in Valley Stream, Long Island. There, a
retired medical technologist, 72-year-old Sal
vatore Catapano, appears to have found the
AIDS treatment the world has been waiting
for-using a substance that has been standard
item on pharmacists' shelves for decades.
Catapano proudly shows visitors a framed
certificate on his dining room wall, of the
patent he obtained last year-one of only three
American patents ever granted for AIDS treat
ments. The substance Catapano uses and
licenses other doctors to use to treat AIDS
patients is, simply, typhoid vaccine.
His patent, Number 4,711,876, contains the
statement; It has been found that a complete
immunization and remission of a person
afflicted with AIDS may be achieved by the
administration with typhoid vaccine with no
observed toxicity.
All day long Catapano receives phone calls
from patients and physicians around the coun
try who have heard reports about the typhoid
vaccine therapy. Catapano discusses his 15
years of research in which he discovered the
vaccine’s unique immune stimulating proper
ties as a result of conducting tumor reduction
experiments with laboratory hamsters. Cata
pano goes on to explain that he does not
accept that a biochemically inactive virus
could cause death, and that he believes that the
course of immune suppression in AIDS
patients is not viral but bacterial. The patients,
he asserts, are suffering from extraordinarily
entrenched late-staging syphilis, its symptoms
exaggerated by multiple exposures, the result
ing depression of the immune system and mis
application of antibodies and radiation. Once
the immune system is restored with typhoid
vaccine, he says, a course of penicillin should
bring the patient into remission.
The expertise he claims for his assertion is
straightforward enough: In 40 years as a med
ical technologist, and particularly in the navy,
he was involved in the testing and treatment of
literally thousands of syphilitics. Catapano
learned every trick the disease, known as
"medicine's great masquerader," could play in
assuming the form of other maladies. Nothing
about AIDS seems new to him; not the skin
lesions, the strange pneumonia, the heart prob
lems, the rashes, the bone pains, the dementia,
the tuberculosis. For centuries, these have
been well-documented symptoms of syphilis.
In the pre-antibiotic era, tuberculosis was the
most common opportunistic infection and
cause of death among syphilitics. Catapano
hypothesizes that HIV is simply a marker for
severe immune suppression, induced in this
case by syphilis.
A year ago, Catapano and a Long Island
physician he worked with, Dr. Miguel Cima,
were the
only
providers of
typhoid vac
cine for
AIDS
patients.
But word of
their suc
cess spread
through the
nationwide
grapevine in
the gay
community.
Just one
year later
doctors are
using the
Catapano
protocol in
Los Ange
les, San
Francisco,
Atlanta,
Dallas,
Cincinnati,
Washing
ton, D.C.,
Miami,
New York,
Chesa
peake, Vir
ginia and Indianapolis. (By law, a doctor
must obtain a license to use typhoid in treat
ing AIDS patients or they are guilty of
infringing on Catapano's patent)
Some 300 hundred AIDS patients are on
the protocol nationwide. Among the 200
patients Catapano and Cima have treated,
only one has died: a man who chose to stop
eating when he was admitted to hospital.
The reports of the first physicians using the
typhoid vaccine are full of cautious delight.
Dr. German Malsonet, an oncologist and
pediatric hematologist in Los Angeles, admits
that he was skeptical when he first heart of the
vaccine. "But when I saw a patient with 68
T-helper cells go up to 300 within two
months-and maintain that improvement-I
decided I had to investigate." Maisonet has
been treating 20 AIDS patients since July.
Obviously the patients were at different stages
of their illness when they started the protocol.
Four of the patients have doubled their T-
helper cell counts. "I was getting tired of hav
ing all my patients die," Maisonet says dryly.
"The patients I'm treating with typhoid are
getting better. This stuff works, that's what I
care about"
Equally
enthusias
tic is Dr.
Lewis
Mehl, a
physician
in San
Francisco,
who has
also been
treating 20
patients
since the
summer.
(All 20 of
the
patients
had previ
ously tak
en AZT
but had to
stop
because of
the drug's
extraordi
nary toxic
ity.) He
has seen
lesions
and chron
ic respira
tory symp
toms dis
appear in many patients; in a few patients he
has witnessed remarkable recoveries. One
48-year-old man came to Mehl desperately
sick, barely able to walk, unable to work.
After two and a half months on the typhoid
vaccine, his T-helper cell count rose from 200
to 1000. His symptoms cleared up one by
one; his strength was restored. "You would
never know the man had AIDS," Mehl says
flatly. A second patient, who had been
plagued by neurological disorders for a year
and a half showed dramatic improvement in
motor skills, walking and writing within two
months.
Five of his patients have chosen to discon
tinue the treatment, although one of these,
Mehl says, was actually getting better. "Like
everything, the vaccine may not work in
every patient," he cautions. "Still, I'm so
excited by what I'm seeing; I feel like some
one standing on the edge of a new frontier."
Dr. Terry Pulse, who practices family
medicine in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, was the
first physician to obtain a license, in January.
Of the fifteen patients Pulse has treated,
two are in remission and receiving mainte
nance shots. Although he wishes to wait a
full year before making any definitive assess
ment of the vaccine's usefulness, Pulse says,
"There has been dramatic visual improvement
and the patients who are on the typhoid vac
cine report feeling better than patients on any
other form of treatment." Pulse has been less
struck by dramatic rises in patients' T-helper
cell counts than in the normalization of many
patient's complete blood count (CBC).
In fact, Salvatore Catapano is less interest
ed in the patient's T-cell count, which he finds
an "unreliable" indicator of immune status,
than in the complete blood count, including
the red cell count, hemoglobin, platelet count,
etc. He focuses particularly on the so-called
"differential count," a tally of the various types
of leucocytes, or white blood cells, which as a
class constitute the body's defense mechanism.
Most important, according to Catapano, is
the ratio between two types of white blood
cells: the neotrophyls and the lymphocytes. A
significant decrease in lymphocytes and corre
sponding rise in neutrophyls is regarded as a
"shift to the left," in favor of infection. In each
of the patients Catapano has seen, following
treatment, the percentage of neutrophyls
dropped and lymphocytes rose. That increase
is vital, Catapano asserts, because lympho
cytes are the chief "killer" cells, cells that kill
off organisms that invade the immune system.
-Katie Leishman
This article originally appeared in the
November, 1988 issue of Spin magazine. The
article was accompanied by a condom with
explicit instructions on safer sex usage which
prompted a nationwide controversy (See Southern
Voice, Vol. 1, #20).
"AIDS-Words from the Front" is reprinted
courtesy of Spin Magazine.
Living with AIDS, which regularly appears
in this space, will resume after Part III of
"AIDS-Wordsfrom the Front."
Contributors to Living With AIDS are sought
from PWAs, PWARCs, HIV-positive persons,
their family and loved ones, health care profes
sionals, teachers, attorneys and anyone in the
community who has been touched by this epi
demic. Please mail submissions to Southern
Voice, do Living With AIDS, P.O. Box 54719,
Atlanta, GA 30308.
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