O.C. Physician Charged With AIDS Quackery

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, a radiologist, by investigators from the Medical Board of California 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 a spokesman for 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 in a guest building behind the physician’s home in Villa Park, said medical board senior investigator Kathleen L. Schmidt. Five men afflicted with acquired immune deficiency syndrome 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 which is injected intravenously and into the muscles, 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,” according to the warrant. Herman was detained in Orange County Jail, but was expected to be released om his own recognizance late Thursday. He could not be reached for comment.

Food and drug investigators from the state health department confiscated the substance Herman was selling, as well as its ingredients and 3,500 empty vials, said Ozzie Schmidt, supervising investigator for the state Department of Health Services’ office in Santa Ana. Ozzie Schmidt said his agency seized all the materials to “make it impossible” for Herman to continue manufacturing.

Although an analysis is under way to determine what is in the drug, Henrichsen said most phony AIDS remedies have included such ingredients as urine and algae.

“Nobody ever seems to come up with anything new,” Henrichsen said.

While investigators said the doctor had a caseload of about 50 patients at the time of his arrest, Kathleen 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 Kathleen 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 in a Hollywood hospital. Mark Snider, 38, a floral designer from Los Angeles, died two weeks after he began injections of Herman’s drug, the friends told authorities. Blood poisoning was the cause of death, according to preliminary autopsy findings.

Although Snider had been diagnosed as having the AIDS virus, a physician friend from San Francisco said he was in the early stages of the disease.

“He would not have died for another two to three years,” said the physician, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Dr. David Dassey, a deputy medical officer with the Los Angeles County AIDS program, said Snider’s blood poisoning was caused by an organism normally found on the skin that could have gotten into the body when he injected the drugs, or through an open wound. But Dassey added that there is no way of knowing for certain how the organism entered the body.

“It (injection) is clearly high on the list” of possible causes, Dassey said. “Persons who don’t have medical training may not have the best sterilization technique. Someone could very easily contaminate a vial by wiping off the top.”

Besides notifying state authorities three weeks ago, Dassey said he initiated a check of all recent deaths in Los Angeles County to see if there had been any similar blood poisoning cases. The search revealed none.

About two weeks ago, said Dr. Thomas Prendergast, Orange County epidemiologist, he received a call from health officials in Riverside County that two men had required surgical removal of painful abscesses from their thighs, which developed after they had injected Herman’s remedy into their thigh muscles.

Prendergast was told that the men, both AIDS virus carriers, were admitted to the emergency room at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage for removal of the abscesses. Concerned that other patients could be affected, Riverside County health officials issued an areawide alert for emergency room physicians to be on the lookout for additional cases. No others were reported.

Within “a couple of hours” of being notified about the Riverside County problem, Prendergast said, he was contacted by a physician in Los Angeles about the peculiar circumstances of Snider’s death. At that point, Prendergast also notified the state medical board.

“Whatever was happening, I was hoping it would be stopped,” Prendergast said.

Kathleen Schmidt said her ensuing investigation quickly determined that Herman was operating a bustling business out of his two-story home in a quiet, residential neighborhood of Villa Park. From a random check of license plates at the home earlier this week, Schmidt said she found patients streaming in from San Francisco to San Diego.

“We were real concerned about this, which is why we moved on it quickly,” she said. “This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of how many he could have been treating. I’m sure people would come from everywhere if they thought they had a chance. There’s a lot of AIDS patients who are desperate and willing to do anything.”

The investigation yielded little information on Herman’s background. Herman has had no previous run-ins with the medical board and is not listed as a member of any state or county medical organizations. He also has attracted little attention in Villa Park, where neighbors say he, his wife and children have lived for about three years. His wife, Jean, and two children were at home at the time of the arrest.

“You couldn’t ask for any better neighbors because they always stick to themselves,” said one neighbor who asked to remain unidentified.