Henry David Thoreau (on Francis Bacon).

The healthcare crisis is attributed to many factors, but not the suppression of innovation. Innovation that improves the quality of care, thus reducing utilization, was advanced twenty years ago as the only solution to healthcare economics. The ability to stimulate immune function would have vast implications for health reform, but is held to be unavailable. In reality, the potent immunostimulating properties of lithium and antidepressants were documented as early as 1981, but suppressed by vested interests. Some individuals may have ignored the paradigm shift due to an inability to understand the research and its implications. The same cannot be said of journal editors, peer reviewers, members of infection societies, medical school professors, and government health agencies.    

Immunostimulation is highly relevant to all pathogens, including HIV+, MRSA, HAI, many parasitic disorders including malaria, influenza, and pandemic influenza. It is relevant to primary immunodeficiency disorders, bioterrorism, and cancer. It has a vast potential role to play in veterinary medicine, marine biology, and the preservation of species. To this day, government and private laboratories are pursuing immunostimulation with a vengeance; they will not succeed, because the problem was solved more than a quarter of a century ago.  In a review I published in 1983, I proposed that in order to stimulate immune function, an agent would need to have mood elevating properties.     

It would seem that none of these facilities do literature searches, or publicize studies that are inimical to their own interests, and could lead to cancellation of their funding, or its renewal. Horrobin noted, ”When clinical progress occurs, research funds related to the problem dry up.” A patient mentioned that the advent of the polio vaccine was a calamity for "March of Dimes."  “If a cure for cancer emerged,” he added, “the American Medical Association would suppress it.” I viewed these remarks as cynical and paranoid, until the roof fell in on my innovations. While the inertia in implementing medical advances is often attributed to “resistance” or "prematurity," ethical violations would seem to be the factors in common.¹¹ Over the past quarter of a century, I appealed to more than a thousand prominent individuals or institutions to support the advance, none of whom obliged.  Elite medical journals, specialty infection journals, family practice journals, government agencies, HIV+ organizations, both national and international, more than sixty medical schools in the U.S, Canada, Great Britain and South Africa, politicians at all levels, lay media, twenty two drug companies, and others too numerous to mention. ^11,12,13

In a village somewhere in Africa, a thirteen year old orphaned by HIV+ is co-infected with HIV+, T.B, and malaria. As much as I wish to, I cannot spirit bottles of an antidepressant/immunostimulant to her. Thousands of people and institutions failed her, and failed us all. That must stand as an egregious, collective violation of ethics. Is withholding lifesaving treatment from a million people, less of a transgression than gassing them to death? Francis Bacon noted that ethics and charity are indispensible components of successful science. Jonas Salk resisted pressure to patent his vaccine, stating that nothing should stand in the way of its reaching every human being. The healthcare crisis may not have been inevitable, or at least it’s dimensions, were it not for an epidemic of ethical transgressions.   

1.Lieb J. “Immunopotentiation and inhibition of herpes virus activation during therapy with lithium carbonate. Med Hypoth 1981; 7:885-890

2. Lieb J. “Remission of herpes virus infection and immunopotentiation with lithium carbonate: Inhibition of prostaglandin E1 synthesis by lithium may explain its antiviral, immunopotentiating, and antimanic properties.” Proceedings of the Third World Congress of Biological Psychiatry, Stockholm. Biol Psych Perris C, Struwe G, Jansson B. (eds.) 1981 695-698

3. Horrobin D, Lieb J. “A biochemical basis for the actions of lithium on behavior and on immunity: relapsing and remitting disorders of inflammation and immunity such as multiple sclerosis or recurrent herpes as manic-depression of the immune system.” Med Hypoth 1981; 7:891-905

4. Lieb J. “Remission of rheumatoid arthritis and other disorders of immunity in patients taking monoamine oxidase inhibitors.” Int J Immunopharmac 1983; 5(4): 353-357

5. Lieb J, “Lithium and immune function.” Med Hypoth 1987; 23:73-93

6. Lieb J. “Invisible antivirals.” Int J Immunopharm 1994; 16:1, 1-5

7. Lieb J. “Lithium and antidepressants:  Inhibiting eicosanoids, stimulating immunity and defeating microorganisms.” Med Hypoth 2002; 59(4): 429-432

8. Lieb J. “The immunostimulating and antimicrobial properties of lithium and antidepressants.” J Infection 2004; 49(2): 88-93

9. Lieb, J. “Lithium and antidepressants: stimulating immunity and reversing infection.” Med Hypoth (2007) 69 ;(1): 8-11

10. Manku MS and Horrobin DF. Chloroquine, quinine, procaine, quinidine and clomipramine are prostaglandin agonists and antagonists. Prostaglandins 1976 Nov; 12(5):789-901

11. Horrobin DF. Effective clinical innovation: an ethical imperative. Lancet. 2002 May 25; 359(9320):1857-8. .

12. Horrobin DF. Are large clinical trials in rapidly lethal diseases usually unethical? Lancet 2003 Feb 22; 361(9358):695-7.