Doctor Held in Sales of Phony Cure for AIDS

State investigators Thursday arrested an Orange County physician on felony charges of peddling a phony AIDS cure that they say was administered to hundreds of patients across California and possibly is linked to one death and two serious injuries.

The arrest of Dr. Stephen David Herman, 53, by investigators from the Medical Board of California (formerly known as the Board of Medical Quality Assurance) and state Department of Health Services marked what investigators termed the most serious enforcement action on a suspected AIDS “quackery” case in California. Only a handful of similar arrests have been made nationwide, according to the National Council on Health Fraud, a doctors watchdog group.

Herman was arrested after a male undercover agent sat in on a seminar Thursday afternoon at the physician’s home in Villa Park, said Kathleen L. Schmidt, a senior investigator for the medical board. Five men suffering from AIDS also attended the seminar, Schmidt said.

In the seminar, Schmidt said, Herman claimed that a drug called “Viroxan,” which he made in the kitchen of his home, stops the AIDS virus. Susan Henrichsen, deputy state attorney general in charge of a statewide task force on AIDS-related fraud, said any such claim of an AIDS cure is false, as there is no known cure for the disease.

Schmidt added that the doctor’s drug, a liquid that is given intravenously, is not approved by any agency. She said he sold a month’s supply of the drug, which patients injected themselves, for $300.

A team of 11 state investigators swept down on Herman’s home after the seminar and placed him under arrest on felony charges of manufacturing and selling “an unapproved, adulterated, dangerous drug” to AIDS patients, with the intent to “defraud or mislead.” Herman was detained in the Orange County Jail. Bond was not immediately set, and Herman could not be reached for comment.

Food and drug investigators from the state health department confiscated the drug that Herman was allegedly selling, as well as its ingredients and 3,500 empty vials, Schmidt said. Although an analysis is under way, Henrichsen said most phony AIDS remedies have included such ingredients as urine and algae.

Although he had a caseload of about 50 patients, Schmidt said Herman told investigators after his arrest that he has treated hundreds since he opened his makeshift AIDS clinic in May, 1988.

“He told us he has been doing this full time, 24 hours a day,” said Schmidt, whose Santa Ana field office headed up the investigation. “He said he was dedicating himself to mankind.”

State investigators said authorities in Los Angeles County were alerted to Herman’s treatments by friends of a patient who died Nov. 12. Mark Snider, 38, of Los Angeles died two weeks after he began injections of Herman’s drug, the friends told authorities. Blood poisoning was the cause of death listed in the preliminary autopsy findings, according to L.A. County authorities.

In another incident a few weeks ago, Dr. Thomas Prendergast, an Orange County epidemiologist, said he was notified by health officials in Riverside County that two men had required surgical removal of abscesses from their thighs which developed after they had injected Herman’s remedy into their thighs. Prendergast said he, too, notified state officials.