The Cincinnati Beacon
Criticism of malariotherapy pre-dates Wulsin’s political career
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
 Photo courtesy of here.
A recent campaign mailer from Steve Black (who is running against Vic Wulsin for the Democratic nomination in Ohio’s 2nd congressional race) cites an active complaint with the Ohio State Medical Board against Dr. Wulsin’s license. Those supporting Wulsin are likely to call this a political maneuver, but her involvement with malariotherapy (the subject of the complaint) pre-dates her relatively recent political career, and these malariotherapy experiments have been characterized as “bizarre” and “charlatan.” So politics aside, Black’s campaign mailer raises important questions about not only Wulsin, but the larger medical issues surrounding malariotherapy.
Thanks to the WayBack machine, we can see this 2004 snapshot of The Heimlich Institute’s web page. In fact, according to an article uploaded to Heimlich’s former site and published in 2002, “Malariotherapy is the only treatment for HIV patients today with the potential to control the AIDS pandemic and at low cost. Malariotherapy’s scientific basis and safety is clearly established.”
There’s just one problem with Heimlich’s claim: medical experts had been crying foul about these medical experiments on human subjects in China for over a decade.
In 1994, the LA Times, published this article, which includes the following excerpts:
“Heimlich’s life-saving maneuver for people who aspirate food doesn’t qualify one as an HIV expert,” said leading AIDS researcher Dr. Anthony Fauci, who called malaria therapy “quite dangerous and scientifically unsound.”
(...)
“He is risking people’s lives and he is trading on the life-saving aura of his name to get people to help him,” said Dr. John Renner of the National Council Against Health Fraud, which has been tracking the Heimlich project.
“After this, he won’t go down in history for the Heimlich maneuver. He’ll go down in history as a bizarre, mad scientist.”
Even The Cincinnati Enquirer covered the story back in 2003, in this piece by Robert Anglen:
[Heimlich’s] experiments - which seek to destroy HIV, the AIDS-causing virus, by inducing high malarial fevers- have been criticized by the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration and condemned by other health professionals and human rights advocates as a medical “atrocity.’’
(...)
Peter Lurie, a former AIDS researcher and now a physician with Public Citizen’s Health Research Group in Washington, D.C., calls the malariotherapy studies dangerous and unnecessary.
(...)
“It is charlatanism of the highest order,” Dr. Lurie says of malariotherapy. “It is exploiting the lack of decent medical care in China.”
So with widely publicized criticism of and outrage towards Heimlich’s work spanning 1994-2003, one must wonder why Wulsin got on board with the Heimlich Institute in 2004, when she wrote this draft report outlining how to develop a “market niche” for malariotherapy (which she suggested renaming “immunotherapy” due to bad publicity). From the introduction of her report:
Three months ago I began a consultancy with the Heimlich Institute [HI] for two reasons. First, I was to evaluate the viability of Malariotherapy Therapy as a focus for HI and to recommend to HI’s Board of Directors the requisite next steps in developing it as a life-enhancing &/or life-prolonging intervention for persons living with HIV/AIDS. Second, I would identify the comparative advantage ("market niche") of the Heimlich Institute in developing Immunotherapy or any aspect of life-enhancing &/or life-prolonging interventions.
And here’s Wulsin’s marketing concept, with the italics added:
Programmatic Next Steps
1. Write a strategic plan for the Heimlich Institute.
2. Rename malariotherapy “Immunotherapy” ["IT"].
3. Verify and elaborate on East Africa Phase II trial.
4. Explore further collaborating with Michele Ashby, the Denver Gold Group, and/or the CEOs, medical directors, &/or others of appropriate mining companies.
5. Complete and publish review of Immunotherapy.
Interestingly, Wulsin said back in 2006 that the idea for malariotherapy has “no scientific validity,”—which is interesting given her “Programmatic Next Steps” outlined above. One might also wonder why Wulsin would include the following in her report, if she believed it had no validity: “Further field studies of Immunotherapy, including Phase III and IV clinical trials, require the verification of the encouraging results from East Africa, elaboration on discrepancies between them and the results from the Phase II trial in China, and professional dissemination and transparent discussion with scientists, physicians, and other stakeholders.”
It is unclear why something with no validity requires further study and renaming.
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