LOU GEHRIG’S DISEASE : A Stricken Ex-49er Suspects Team Link

Bob Waters, football coach at Western Carolina University, has discovered that he is not alone in his battle against Lou Gehrig’s disease, and he is taking his search for answers to the National Football League.

Two former professional teammates also were diagnosed, and one has died of the mysterious neurological disease for which there is no cure. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) attacks the body’s nervous system and renders muscles useless.

Waters hopes that the coincidence of three players from the same National Football League team developing the disease after 22 years might provide a clue to its origin.

Matt Hazeltine, an All-Pro linebacker and captain of the San Francisco 49ers while Waters was with the team in the early 1960s, has been diagnosed as a victim of the disease.

Another former teammate, running back Gary Lewis, died last Friday in Daly City, just south of San Francisco. He was diagnosed Nov. 19 as having ALS.

Waters learned in 1983 that the escalating loss of sensation in his right arm was the initial stage of the disease. He has gradually lost the use of both arms, although he is otherwise healthy.

Hazeltine, who lives in Los Altos, also in the Bay Area, has lost the use of both arms and legs and is confined to a motorized wheelchair.

“In the past 18 months, three former players from the same era--and one in the past two weeks--have been diagnosed as having ALS,” Waters said. “We need to look at that because it’s statistically impossible.”

According to the National Institute of Health, one person in 100,000 suffers from ALS. The Muscular Dystrophy Assn., which monitors all auto-immune diseases such as ALS, puts the frequency at five to seven people per 100,000.

“What we’re seeing with these former 49ers is way out of line for the nation as a whole,” Waters said.

But neurologists can cite similar instances of ALS frequency among teachers at a single school, for example.

“Certainly that is unusual, but we have heard of clusters before,” said Dr. Teepu Siddique, a Duke University Medical Center neurologist.

“The cause of this disease is unknown, whether it is hereditary or related to a toxic substance or a viral illness,” said Dr. Russell Mitchell of Asheville, N.C., who is familiar with Waters’ case. “We do know it is diffusedly spread throughout the population.

“It is endemic on the island of Guam, for no known reason.”

The frequency of ALS victims on Guam is 100 times greater than in the U.S. population, according to the MDA.

Waters, however, is convinced that the former 49ers’ situation is more than a statistical fluke.

“Whether it’s 3 out of 45 or 3 out of 150, it’s way out of line for Guam or anywhere else,” he said.

Waters said he has called the 49ers as many as 20 times for a list of former players he could contact to determine if others have ALS symptoms, but that the 49ers have been slow to react. “They’re dragging their heels and they’re stonewalling me,” he said.

Said Hazeltine: “The 49ers don’t want to talk about it.”

A spokeswoman for the NFL Players Assn. said she was compiling a list for Waters of 144 players who were with the 49ers from 1962 to 1972.

The NFLPA said it knows of no other cases related to ALS. “Nobody has attempted to correlate ALS with football,” Dee Ralch said.

John McVay, general manager of the 49ers, said that James Klint, the team physician, has been instructed to contact one of Waters’ doctors, Scott Stewart, at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, to help formulate a plan of action.

“We want to try to get the doctors involved,” McVay said. “I don’t really know enough about it. We want to arrange to have the doctors discuss it and get the information that we just don’t have at this time.”

Waters hopes doctors will examine the possibility that ALS is a latent offspring of drugs. He said he and other players on the 49ers were given cortisone, anabolic steroids and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) by team physicians and trainers.

Steroids and DMSO have since been ruled illegal by the Food and Drug Administration because of their unknown residual or side effects.

“We don’t know what effect the medication we took in San Francisco might have had on this,” Waters said. “Some experts believe ALS is a virus that lies latent in the body--maybe for years--before it matures. In this way, it may be related to drugs. What drug might have triggered it?

“There may be others. Who knows? But somebody needs to know about this and somebody needs to take some action.”

McVay said the 49ers were not aware of a possible connection between drugs in the early 1960s and the problems of Waters, Hazeltine and Lewis.

“Bob didn’t mention any of those things to me,” he said.

Waters remains confident. Except for the loss of the use of his arms, he says he is in good physical condition and that he believes experimental treatments in Houston have slowed the disease’s course.

Waters has been part of an experimental study at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where Dr. Stanley Appel is researching the mystery of ALS through a theory that it might be related to an altered immune process.

Waters flies to Houston for regular checkups and treatments with an immune system suppressant that is not considered a cure but apparently retards the spread of the disease.

“I think this thing can be beaten, and there may be a breakthrough at any time,” he said. “But I don’t have a lot of time to wait.

“There’s a sense of urgency that we have that the 49ers don’t have. We can’t wait weeks or months for them to conclude a study of the situation.”