2 Physicians’ Licenses in Jeopardy Over AIDS Drug : Medicine: State authorities say the doctors used an ineffective remedy on hundreds, treating patients ‘like guinea pigs.’ It’s the first such case in California.

In the first such case in California, state authorities have moved to revoke the medical licenses of two Southern California doctors who they say treated hundreds of AIDS sufferers with an ineffective remedy produced in a crude laboratory in one physician’s kitchen.

Four patients died after receiving the treatment, including a Los Angeles floral designer who lay immobile in his bathtub for several days. Officials said they cannot prove the untested drug, called Viroxan, caused the deaths, although they may have been hastened by it. They accused the doctors of treating AIDS patients “like guinea pigs.”

In documents released this week, the Medical Board of California brought civil charges of gross negligence, incompetence, dishonesty and other offenses against Dr. Valentine Birds of North Hollywood and Dr. Stephen Herman of Villa Park in Orange County.

Herman was arrested by state investigators in January, 1990, after selling 10 vials of the substance to an undercover agent for $300, authorities said. The doctor, who said he developed it from plants, also faces 16 criminal counts in Orange County related to the advertising and sale of Viroxan.

The promotion and sale of useless treatments for acquired immune deficiency syndrome are widespread in the United States, medical experts say. Hucksters taking advantage of patients’ desperation have sold them purported remedies ranging from hydrogen peroxide to pills containing white blood cells.

Some researchers feel that “quackery is the standard of practice for AIDS--that’s how bad it is,” said William T. Jarvis, executive director of the National Council Against Health Fraud, based in Loma Linda.

Dr. John H. Renner, director of the Consumer Health Research Institute, a Missouri-based clearinghouse for information on medical products, said his group has identified more than 120 phony AIDS drugs being marketed around the country, including through the mail and toll-free telephone numbers.

At a recent scientific meeting, he said, “it was estimated that the average AIDS patient spends upwards of $2,000 a year” on the unapproved AIDS remedies.

State officials said one of the AIDS patients Birds and Herman treated with Viroxan was a Los Angeles floral designer, Mark Snider, who died in November, 1989.

Investigators said Birds initially treated Snider with typhoid vaccine, despite a recommendation from an AIDS clinic that he receive AZT, a drug that has been shown to prolong the life of a majority of people with AIDS and AIDS-related conditions, though some patients are unable to tolerate it.

Without recommending AZT, Birds urged Snider to see Herman at his Orange County home, where Herman began injecting Snider with Viroxan, state investigators said.

Snider later complained to Birds that he was experiencing “severe breathing problems and was acutely ill” after three days of nausea and vomiting, officials said. But Birds gave him more Viroxan and taught him to inject himself with the drug, they said.

About 10 days later, Snider was found immobile in his tub, where he apparently had been for several days. Despite several phone calls from Snider’s friends beginning at 2:30 in the morning, Birds did not call for an ambulance until almost 9 a.m., authorities said.

Snider was admitted to Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center showing signs of meningitis, blood poisoning and dehydration, and died four days later after his heart stopped.

Birds, Herman and their lawyers could not be reached for comment Tuesday. In an interview in February, after he was charged in Orange County with falsely advertising and selling an unproven drug, Herman denounced the allegations as “mindless innuendoes and attacks.”

“They are purely minor harassment, and the issues involved are far above the charges,” he said. “Viroxan has been openly understood and accepted by the medical community outside the United States.”

Herman added that he has been treating himself with Viroxan for a lymphoma, a form of cancer, and that he began research on the drug after his 28-year-old son, Ken, died of AIDS in 1987. He said the project has cost him more than $3 million.

State medical authorities said Herman and Birds began treating patients with Viroxan without receiving approval from federal or state drug regulators that the substance was safe and effective.

They used it despite advice from another doctor who said the drug had a toxic effect on animals at certain doses and that the vials they were using were not properly sealed and might become contaminated, officials said.

Herman mixed the drug in the kitchen of a cottage behind his house, investigators said.

“I think they took advantage of some people who were already desperately ill and dying and put them through a process that made them sicker,” said Kathleen L. Schmidt, a senior state medical board investigator.

“They all died quicker than they had to,” she said, referring to the doctors’ patients. “I think they just essentially treated them like guinea pigs.”

Times staff writer Lynn Smith in Orange County contributed to this story.