Internationally known Harold Clark, PhD (1922-2007)
specialized in the study of mycoplasmas and their pathogenic/immune system
interactions with their hosts. He was the author of the 1997 book Why
Arthritis?, reviewed at the Arthritis Trust website. See Amazon's
Book Listing. Graduated from College of Wooster (`46); married Bonnie Greer
(`46); earned a PhD from University of Rochester School of Medicine (‘53);
worked at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (`52-`70) as
associate research professor of medicine and research director of the Medical
Rehabilitation Center.
In 1970 Dr. Clark joined the newly established
Arthritis Institute of National Orthopedic Hospital, Arlington,
VA, as research director and vice chair with Dr. Thomas McPherson Brown.
He retired in 1987 and established the Mycoplasma Research Institute in
Florida, publishing technical papers on mycoplasmas, antibiotic antimicrobial
protocols, and the causes of rheumatic illnesses. His
professional memberships included the International Organization for
Mycoplasmologists, the American Society for Microbiology, and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Clark studied and worked
for more than 45 years, investigating and documenting the role and biochemical
mechanisms of mycoplasma bacteria as a cause of rheumatoid autoimmune diseases.
He published more than 65 papers detailing evidence of the infectious
pathogenicity, the cellular affinities, and the antibiotic suppression of these
cell wall deficient (CWD) microbes. He presented his scientific findings in the
U.S. and abroad in Australia, Canada, Brazil, Egypt, France, Germany, Japan,
Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, and Scotland.
For many years (1952-1987)
Dr. Clark worked with Dr. Thomas McPherson Brown as his lab manager. In 1939, Dr. Brown, with Doctors Homer Swift
and Albert Sabin at the Rockefeller Institute Medical Research Hospital,
published their findings, proving that pleuropneumonia-like organism (PPLO)
microbes cause arthritis in mice. See the March 1939 NY
Times Science Article announcing that arthritis is caused by a PPLO
(a.k.a. Eaton Agent, a.k.a. Mycoplasma pneumoniae) citing Science, Vol. 89, No. 2308. March 24,
1939. After joining Dr. Brown at George Washington University, Dr. Clark
was to spend the rest of his life working to study how PPLO mycoplasmas cause
and aggravate autoimmune/rheumatic diseases. He became a world-renowned expert
in his chosen field.
When Dr. Thomas McPherson
Brown, with Dr. Clark’s help, challenged the rheumatologists’ short-term
cortisone cure, as a long-term failure, they became the enemy, much like
Wyburn-Mason (founder of the Arthritis Trust) did after he published his
infectious theory and his antibiotic therapy in 1978. From that time forward, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) research
establishment successfully obstructed the public’s efforts to get government
study funds to support the nation’s most successful privately established
center of excellence in arthritis treatment that Doctors Brown and Clark had
established in Arlington, VA, across the river from the impressive NIH
facilities being built and expanded in Bethesda, MD, using public research
funding.
Activist patients among the
tens of thousands of Dr. Brown’s grateful patients lobbied for federal funds to
conduct a study, Minocycline in Rheumatoid Arthritis (MIRA), to test the
already proven successful long-term antibiotic protocol for Rheumatoid
Arthritis (RA). Funds were appropriated; the study was reluctantly conducted in
a short term, using a partly defective design; results were published in 1995.
It did prove the tetracycline-based protocol was successful in improving the
symptoms, but only to a small degree above conventional anti-inflammation,
symptomatic treatments for a too-short period of treatment. Proving remarkable long term-improvements in
active condition and even remissions were not part of these tests.
Short-term improvement
itself is remarkable, considering that the most serious RA cases of infection
often have a strong Herxheimer inflammation flare at the start of antibiotic
treatment, and one must also use anti-inflammatory drugs to get past the
initial microbe kill-off and the resulting flood of toxins. Following the Herx
die-off, long-term, antibiotics gradually eliminate the microbes, leading to
remission of many autoimmune RA symptoms. Seriously infected patients always have a period of getting worse
under intravenous (IV) antibiotics in order to achieve a long-term cure.
What the competing research
teams ignored was that for many longer-term cases, the conventional
anti-inflammatory-only treatments usually failed, leading to a painful death,
while the Brown/Clark long-term, low dose antibiotic treatments led to
remission and a long productive life.
Requests were made to the
NIH to study the MIRA antibiotic protocols over longer periods. Long-term
treatment successes were already proven by many case histories to work quite
well. Despite thousands of personal requests to the Congress, the appeals were
denied and the statisticians won; the future patients lost. In retrospect, it
appears that medical politics, obstructive gatekeepers, bureaucrats, and
shortsighted, less-competent consensus had suppressed the successful maverick
practitioners, yet again.
Culture of the Mycoplasmae and other CWD
organisms is quite hard, due to the fastidious nature of the microbe. Mice
given the PPLO show pneumonia and later show chronic arthritis. The
original 1939 microbe came from a human case of rheumatic fever. It was unclear
at that time whether the Streptococcus pneumoniae L-form (Pneumococcus)
or the Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacteria (or both) were the reported
troublemakers.
Today the list of CWD bad actors includes both of
these and the list is now much larger. But most of these bacteria are, in
certain stages, susceptible to tetracyclines and other macrolides when used in
long-term pulsed dosages, with probiotics to control dysbiosis, with
antioxidants to suppress oxides and toxins, and also with various concurrent
anti-inflammatory interventions. Yeast
overgrowth countermeasures may also be necessary, involving probiotics as
supplements. The total treatment is highly individualized and can be quite
complex and time-varying, requiring exceptional medical attention, special and
frequent lab testing, and above average anti-microbe treatment skills.
We now have a polyvalent Pneumococcus
vaccine, but attempts to produce a Mycoplasma pneumoniae vaccine have
failed to produce a safe and effective one. There is also the problem of the
huge number of mycoplasma sub-species and strains. See Dr. Clark’s Mycoplasma
elephantis paper listed at the end of this article.
Private funds sources for
the successful Arthritis Institute were drying up. Brown and Clark applied for
further research funds to the NIH and were turned down by a committee of rival
peer reviewers. This enabled the NIH
then to apply the Congressional appropriated study funds to support their own
research bureaucracy, effectively diverting the money and subverting the will
of Congress and the people. NIH’s supported
future results have proven to be much less effective than the clinical results
obtained by Brown and Clark and documented by the Road Back Foundation.
After so many years of
successful work and helping so many persons, Dr. Brown published his book, The
Road Back, in 1988 with the help of the prolific popular
science writer Henry Scammell. Sadly Dr. Brown died of cancer soon after
completing the draft. At about the same time (1987), Dr. Clark retired, but he
continued to educate on the topics of mycoplasmas and their long-term
pathogenic characteristics in both humans and animals. He turned his notes into the book Why
Arthritis? Searching for the Cause and Cure of Rheumatoid Disease.
Dr. Joseph Mercola, D.O.,
participated actively in the medical conferences organized by Dr. Brown’s
Arthritis Institute. Successful treatments at the time were made possible by
Dr. Clark’s amazing microbe identification and specific immune reaction tests
in the Institute’s own world-class laboratory, which he directed.
Dr. Clark wrote the foreword
to the 2002 book Rheumatoid Arthritis: The Infection Connection by
Katherine Poehlmann, PhD. This book was based on Dr. Brown’s antibiotic
protocol consisting of long-term tetracycline antibiotics plus
anti-inflammatory drugs, and nutritional improvements all taken together. Dr.
Joseph Mercola describes the pulsed antibiotic protocol in Dr. Poehlmann’s
book.
One of the great problems
with propagating the knowledge into the future was that Dr. Clark’s skill and
competence was so great that it was difficult for others in this country to
duplicate his work. His peers and
collaborators in Mycoplasma bacteriology were worldwide. The U.S. NIH doctors
had competing agendas and were rivals for public funds.
No funds were available for
educating the next generation of microbiologists and immunologists. Doctors
Brown and Clark were so successful that they were able to obtain private
donations to establish their Institute and to run it for many years. However, the expectation of public support,
given the demonstrated wide success, met with peer arthritis research
opposition and never materialized.
Instead, age, retirements,
illness, and deaths removed the key team members one by one, and the private
funds dropped to the level of operational unsustainability for the Arthritis
Institute. The public health rivals
grew to a huge bureaucracy of research gatekeepers that have consumed large
amounts of funds, supporting favored projects and impressive building programs,
but they have failed to duplicate the high levels of excellence achieved by
Doctors Brown and Clark.
Today arthritis treatments
remain symptomatic. Treating the microbial causes, though documented repeatedly
in the literature, still remain officially “unknown” and/or
“controversial.” It is as if the gatekeepers still do not even bother to read
medical papers published, still do not want to understand or want to disprove
the medical history of accomplishments of Drs Brown and Clark.
According to Dr. Clark:
“The problem
is that rheumatoid diseases, among the most complex medical problems, are still
thought to be controllable by some magic bullet. I wish it were that simple.
There obviously is no quick fix. Starting with the premise that every patient
is different, therapy should be customized to achieve complete and permanent
remission and even prevention. It is not surprising that investigators have
found so many different alternative therapies that could hit the diverse
targets.”
“It took
over 40 years for the tetracycline therapy to be proven safe and effective, but
[it] is yet to be accepted by the FDA.”
“Most unfortunately Economics is
driving Health Care and Research [and] …. Profits and not patients come
first.”
“When I
retired in 1987 I formed the Mycoplasma Research Institute primarily as an
information center. What started as a quarterly newsletter soon became the book
[Why
Arthritis?] at a sizable cost. My goal still is to educate the
patients and doctors hoping it will help them to obtain and to provide the best
appropriate treatment.”
Review of A sample article: Multiple
Uses of Antibiotics by H. W.
Clark, PhD, 2000/06
[A better title might be Multiple Actions of
Tetracyclines]
Summary: A tightly worded functional summary of tetracycline
(macrolide antibiotics) actions—anti-inflammatory, chelating, in sera
antimicrobial, intracellular antimicrobial, immunosuppressive, protein-synthesis
suppression, collagenase neutralization, etc. This article is so rich in ideas
that you may need to read this three times to understand all the concepts
packed together in each paragraph.
The 1995 MIRA study was designed to test the short-term
anti-inflammatory value of minocycline. The MIRA test’s pass/fail criteria were
not set to measure or to record long term results. Thus the short-term failures
of comparable treatments were not contrasted with the long-term successes of
the MIRA antibiotics.
Antibiotic
Treatment Case Histories: Road Back
Foundation Interrupted Journeys
The Road Back Foundation has documented treatment of more than fifty of the most remarkable of the tens of thousands of patients successfully treated by Dr. Thomas McPherson Brown using antibiotics in IV form, injected, and in pulsed dosages over a long time period at Dr. Brown’s Arthritis Institute. These case histories show conclusively that a long-term antibiotic (macrolide/tetracycline) protocol can effect a long-term improvement and often a remission. If re-infection occurs, a subsequent course of antibiotics can again quell the infection and stop the arthritis or autoimmune inflammation condition. The effectiveness of the treatments depended heavily on learning the patients’ microbe antibodies. This was accomplished using the immune system tests developed and applied in Dr. Clark’s laboratory.
Many other doctors worldwide have applied
antibiotics in this way, successfully, to treat arthritic autoimmune conditions
in humans and in many different wild and domestic animals. The thoroughness, depth, and breadth of Dr.
Clark’s practical understanding is found in the many of the papers that he and
Dr. Brown published over the many years they worked together.
Bibliography:
Online
hot links to papers by Doctors Brown and Clark:
References: Dr. Clark’s and other Authors’ Works
Supporting Mycoplasma Pathogenicity
Townsend Letter For Doctors and Patients:
Index of contributions by
Harold W Clark, PhD
1.
Autoimmune Diseases Caused by Mycoplasmas (letter),
#243, p.143+ Oct 2003
2.
The
Case for Mycoplasma's Role as a Cause of Autoimmune Rheumatoid Diseases, #208, p.78-80
3.
Multiple
Uses of Antibiotics, #226,
p.47-48
4.
Mycoplasma
Contaminated Vaccines
(letter), #222, p.110
5.
The
Role of Chelation Therapy (letter),
#209, p.111
World-Class thoroughness in
identifying pathogenic mycoplasmas characteristic of the work of the
mycoplasma-specializing HW Clark colleague microbiologists in Europe. (117 strains tested and ruled out)
Table 1 below is from Mycoplasma elephantis sp. nov., a New Species from Elephants (1996) -- HELGA KIRCHHOFF, ROSEMARIE SCHMIDT, HEINER LEHMANN, HAROLD W. CLARK, AND AURIOL C. HILL. Institut fur Mikrobiologie und Tierseuchen, Tierarztliche Hochschule Hannover, 301 73 Hannover, ' and Botanisches Institut, and Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit, Carshalton, Surrey SM5 4EF, United Kingdom; Tierarztliche Hochschule Hannover, 30559 Hannover, Germany; Mycoplasma Research Institute, Beverly Hills, Florida 32665
TABLE 1. Mycoplasma, Entomoplasma,
Mesoplasma, and Acholeplasma
Strains and antisera used in comparative
serological tests with the new elephant mycoplasma. (1996)
|
Mycoplasmas Antisera Strains |
Mycoplasmas Antisera Strains |
Mycoplasmas Antisera Strains |
Mycoplasmas Antisera Strains |
|
Mycoplasma adleri G-145T |
M. dispar
462/2T |
M. maculosum PGIST |
M. yeatsii GIHT |
|
M. agalactiae PG2T
|
M. edwardii PG24T
|
M. rneleagidis 1 7529T |
Entomoplasma ellychniae ELCN-lT |
|
M. alkalescens DIZT |
M. equigenitalium T37T |
M. moatsii MK405T |
E. lucivorax PIPN-2T |
|
M. alvi IlsleyT
|
M. falconis H/TIT
|
M. mobile
163KT |
E. luminosurn PIMN-lT |
|
M. anatis 1340T
|
M. fastidiosum 4822T |
M. molare H54ZT |
E. melaleucae MIT |
|
M. anseris 1219T
|
M. faucium DC333T
|
M. rnuris
R1114T |
E. somnilux
PYAN-lT |
|
M. arginini G230T
|
M. felifaucium PUT |
M. mustelae
MX9T |
Mesoplasma entomophilum TACT |
|
M. arthritidis PG6T |
M. feliminutum BenT |
M. mycoides
subsp. mycoides PGIT |
M. jlorum LIT |
|
M. auris UIAT
|
M. felis COT
|
M. mycoides subsp.
Capri PG3T |
M. lactucae 831-C4T |
|
M. bovigenitaliiim PGl lT |
M. fermentans
PG1gT |
M. neurolyticum type AT |
M. seifferti F7T |
|
M. bovirhiizis
PG43T |
M. gallinaceum
DDT |
M. opalescens MH540gT |
Acholeplasma axanthum S-743T |
|
M. bovis DonettaT |
M. gallinarum PG16T
|
M. orale CH19299T |
A. cavigenitalium GP3T |
|
M. bovoculi
M 1 65/69T |
M. gallisepticum
PG3 lT |
M. ovipneumoniae Y9gT |
A. equgetale C112T |
|
M. buccale
CH20247T |
M. gallopavonis WRIT |
M. oxoniensis
12gT |
A. granularum
BTS39T |
|
M. buteonis
Bb/T2gT |
M. gateae CST
|
M. penetrans GTU54T |
A. hippikon CIT |
|
M. calijomicum ST6T |
M. genitalium G37T
|
M. phocacerebrale
1049T |
A. laidlawii PGgT |
|
M. canadense 275CT
|
M. glycophilum
486T |
M. phocarhinis 852T |
A. modicum
PG49T |
|
M. canis PG14T
|
M. gypis Bl/TIT |
M. phocidae
105T |
A. morum 72-43T |
|
M. capricolum subsp.
capricolum California KidT |
M. hominis
PG21T |
M. pirum HRC
70-159T |
A. multilocale PN 525T |
|
M. capricolum subsp.
capripneumoniae F3gT |
M. hyophalyngis H3-6BFT |
M. pneumoniae FHT |
A. oculi 19LT |
|
M. caviae
G122T |
M. hyorhinis BTS7T
|
M. primatum HRC292T |
A. parvum H23MT |
|
M. cavipharyngis 1 1 7CT |
M. hyosynoviae S16T |
M. pullorum
CKKT |
Bovine serogroup strain 7PG50 |
|
M. citelli
RG-2CT |
M. imitans 4229T
|
M. pulmonis
PG34T |
|
|
M. cloacale
383T |
M. indiense 3TT
|
M. putrefaciens KS-IT |
|
|
M. collis 58BT
|
M. iners PG30T
|
M. salivarium PG20T |
|
|
M. columbinasale 694T |
M. iowae 695T |
M. simbae LXT |
|
|
M. columbinum
MMP-lT |
M. equirhinis M432/72T
|
M. spermatophilum AH 159T |
|
|
M. columborale MMP-4T |
M. jlocculare
M ~ 4 2 ~ |
M. spurnans
PG13T |
|
|
M. conjunctivae
HRC581T |
M. hyopneumoniae JT |
M. sualvi Mayfield
BT |
|
|
M. corogypsi BVT
|
M. leocaptivus 3L2T |
M. subdolum TBT |
|
|
M. cottewii
VIST |
M. leopharyngis LL2T |
M. synoviae WVU
1853T |
|
|
M. cricetuli CHT
|
M. lipofaciens R171T |
M. testudinis 01008T |
|
|
M. cynos H831T |
M. lipophilum MaByT |
M. verecundum 107T |
|
If you know of other papers by Dr Thomas McPherson Brown or Dr Harold W Clark, please tell us about them and their web location.
We will undertake to update this memoriam page to include the references so that their contributions to medical science are more easily found.
Please email the information to kpoehlmann@RA-Infection-Connection.com with the title/subject: “HW Clark Update Info”