The Re-Discovery of the Paramount and Unsurpassed Importance of Optimal Nutrition in Human Health:

         As stated in the preamble of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA);

Science and medicine has shown that optimal nutrition is essential for good health, to prevent disease and to restore health.

Background

In 1984-85 eight patients with AIDS informed a small company in Dallas, Avacare Inc. that no longer exits, stating that  they had drunk the company’s aloe vera leaf gel beverage and that the signs and symptoms of their chronic virus condition had improved to the extent that they could return to school or work. 

As director of laboratories and chief of pathology at Dallas-Ft. Worth Medical Center, I was approached to do research on this aloe gel and promptly showed the door to the company president and his newly hired director of research.  Absurd!  

They kept telephoning and coming back to my office with their appeal and finally convinced me to do a pilot clinical study in 14 patients after receiving a FDA individual physician human research permit.  The research patients with AIDS improved the Walter Reed Staging of AIDs reported by Redfield in the NEJM 71% in 90 days.

                                          Forward

An analytical team organized by Carrington Laboratories Inc. of Irving, Texas, provided an extract from aloe leaf gel that was found by tissue culture and in feline retroviral disease to have general antiviral properties. 

The molecular structure of the natural active ingredient was found to be composed of chains of mannose sugars (mannans or polymannose).  This was not well received by scientists.  It had long been believed that sugars are simply used to generate energy to operate the human body. 

Eventually, it is recognized that the polymannose is the bioactive component of Coley’s toxins extracted from the cell walls of boiled bacteria that was developed at Sloan Kettering and the benefits in malignancies were first published in 1893.  At NYU in 1943 the active component of Coley’s toxin was found to be lipopolysaccharide (LPS) with anticancer properties, radio-protective action and anti-infectious activity, but the LPS is very toxic. 

To summarize our research team’s efforts, it was found in the aloe plant the complex polysaccharide free of the toxic lipid-A of LPS is the signal to the immune system to up-regulate innate gene-controlled mechanisms to increase synthesis of antiviral cytokines.   This same defense system also functions against all infectious agents.     Now we had a rational mechanism of action for a natural, non-toxic substance provided in the diet that supports the biochemistry for cellular synthesis of compounds assembled in cells under gene control.  

We were thwarted in the FDA new drug approval process because, 1. The polymannose had no demonstrable toxicity, total heresy in the drug paradigm.  2. Too many health benefits were documented to be fostered by this improved nutrition, especially in conditions where drugs have little on no benefit.   

This was a challenge, affront and triggered significant opposition and hostility by professionals totally oriented in the pharmaceutical drug premise for medical orientation.    It was finally recognized that this technology was not in the drug paradigm.    This approach simply improved the supply of micronutrients required in cellular synthesis.  

Armed with a new view of how to enhance health and healing by working with the engineering and design that is in the genetic code, we now have improved dietary supplement formulations that started with the original 5,000 years of human experience with aloe. The current formulation containing other sugars low in the modern food chain and phytochemicals from plant matured fruits and vegetables is now estimated to be 5 to 20 times more bioactive then the 1980s material composed of only the single micronutrient aloe polymannose.

The initial AIDS pilot clinical study was repeated by another physician, Terry Pulse, M.D., with 15 patients and he got a 69% improvement by the same criteria scale in 90 days.  This was reported to multiple major AIDS meetings and there was no interest and no source of funds to do the next phase of research.   In fact, we were ridiculed and ostracized by the medical profession.  I was turned in to the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners by my own medical school dean to defend my license against the charges of unprofessional and unethical conduct along with the unscientific practice of medicine. 

I kept my license because I was prepared, represented myself instead of using an attorney and knew I was working with the engineering and design created by the source of all life.   I  knew, “When you are right and you know you are right, you are a majority of one.”

Following an in depth analysis of the first 29 patients, continuing on a shoe string budget,  I predicted in a third pilot study who would and would not improve in 26 more AIDS study patients before they received the aloe polymannose.   The prediction was 92.5% accurate using  CD4 lymphocyte levels and reduction in viral load as the objective response criteria with improvement in the Walter Reed clinical scheme for staging AIDS.   In this group 16 predicted to improve did so, 7 of 10 deteriorated as predicted and 3 in this group improved like the first positive responding group.  Despite presenting this at international AIDS meetings, there was no interest shown from sources from which research grants are administered.

If the AIDS patients had only improved their retroviral infection this communication would not exist nor would the story of micronutrition have continued.   

I observed that when the immune system was seriously damaged a broad spectrum of other disease states bloomed forth in the AIDS patients.  When the CD4s rose, the other diseases such as diabetes, ulcerative colitis, autoimmune conditions, numerous infections and malignancies faded away.  

The aloe polymannose was tried in patients without AIDS that were failing all medical modalities and their health was restored.  That phenomenon has not stopped for almost 20 years.   I continue to hear of difficult diseases responding that no medication has worked, as well as in over 50 genetic and then in rare conditions that I have never seen in print over the 42 years of being a physician. 

We now have a current generation of glyconutrients (polymannose is included) and other phytochemicals from dehydrated plant matured fruits and vegetables that return to the diet molecules low or absent in the modern food chain that are necessary for optimal cellular synthesis.  

There is no representation that this micronutrient technology can be used to treat or cure AIDS or any other disease.   All the products do is improve the diet and thus nutritionally support the gene-coded instructions for defense, repair, healing and regulation of human cells.   Such dietary supplements take human physiology to new heights of health restoration possibilities. 

A more detailed mechanism of action manuscript is attached that just may help a person get over the educational bias I had to overcome that all physicians get in medical school.     

Fortunately, it is in harmony with the law of the land as expressed in the DSHEA .    There are small groups that have taken this technology to practical application in AIDS.   This includes a presentation on 6 AIDS patients with CD4s of less than 100, multiple drug resistance, rising viral titers and clinical deterioration that were reported at the International Congress for Clinical Nutrition in London, England in 2000.      In Katmandu, Nepal, a mission group has reported on the use of the glyconutrients given girls with AIDS and Hepatitis C.  These females were thrown in the streets to die by the brothels where they were too sick to work having been sold into sex slavery  by their parents at the age of 10 years.   

I am informed that with 1 teaspoon of the current complete glyconutrient formulation these girls stopped having the symptoms of AIDS, ceased to die and are being placed in private homes.    In Kenya, Africa, an internist informs me that he gave 6 patients the micronutrients that were brought to the hospital to die where all treatment are suspended to hasten death.  

He reports that between 10 and 12 days the patients walked out of the hospital and are still alive over two years since they were expected to die.    In Dallas, a immigrant Mexican group with AIDS called Esperanza has been provided the supplements and significant health restorations, measured primarily an ability to return to work have been documented despite compliance challenges.  

Scattered anecdotal reports of individuals having benefits with their advanced AIDS status continue to come into my office as medical director of MannaRelief Ministries. 

Basic science experiments support the fact that innate antiviral compound synthesis is enhanced by the addition of glyconutrients and other micronutrients low or mission in the modern food chain.   This has been confirmed in tissue culture and a large feline retroviral study conducted by a veterinarian.    Almost twenty years of drug development has lengthened the survival of AIDS patients.   However, the toxicity and side effects greatly limit the quality of life for long term survivors.  

It is long past time to formally evaluate the role this glyconutrient technology can play in improving the quality of life and capacity for restoring productivity in AIDS patients.   The pandemic is far from over, infection spreads, the deaths continue world wide and it is time to explore the scope of benefits micronutrients play in the role of managing this lethal retroviral disease.

 I have seen many incredibly talented and productive people die from the modern plague of AIDS.  It is past time to explore how supporting the same mechanisms that naturally get a human being over a common cold or influenza by boosting the same innate antiviral mechanisms of recovery to new levels of defensive activity.  

Since the fall of 1985 when I saw that the original 8 AIDS patients were correct in their reports of benefit, I have not abandoned my efforts to take this technology forward. 

My ability and efforts have not been impressive primarily because I can not find funding to do what has to be done for “Evidence-based Science”.  

My prayer is that a new day is here and this economical, safe and effective micronutrient technology that supports natural defense against viruses will get its day in a critical clinical study.

Serving,

H. Reg McDaniel, M.D.
Medical Director, MannaRelief Ministries
Director of Research, Fisher Institute for Medical Research 

  May 21, 2005