Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 12, 1993 TAG: 9301120237
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
ONCOLOGIST DEFENDS UNUSUAL TREATMENTS
Dr. Vincent J. Speckhart was tired of signing death certificates. He wondered what homeopathic medicine could offer patients who struggled in vain to beat a killer cancer.By embracing alternative medicine, he could give patients an option to the debilitating effects of radiation and chemotherapy, he told a committee of the Virginia Board of Medicine on Monday.
That option involved unusual regimes, like vaccines derived from patients' urine or fecal matter.
The board of medicine has charged Speckhart with 13 counts of conducting medicine with no therapeutic purpose. The board also alleges that the Ghent oncologist used an experimental device called an "electro acupuncture" machine to diagnose patients, an allegation he denies.
When the hearing is finished, the panel can reprimand, fine, put Speckhart on probation or take no action. Appeals are made to the full medical board.
During a daylong hearing in Norfolk, Speckhart offered a thoughtful defense of his practice. About 35 loyal patients, many with cancers in remission, looked on.
"My whole purpose in life has been to treat my patients," said Speckhart, an oncologist with 20 years of experience. "I'm intellectually curious and my concern is the welfare of my patients."
Speckhart said he considered chemotherapies just as experimental as vaccines made from bodily fluids, called autogenous vaccines because they "originate from within."
These were prescribed in select instances because, Speckhart said, they were non-toxic and provoked a biological response from the body. They would help the body naturally, where chemotherapy is poison that attacks cancer and caused anguish to patients.
The vaccines were based on the idea that people with cancer have a number of unwanted organisms swimming in their blood that also exist in the cancer cells. Once a specimen of blood or urine was obtained, it was sent to a laboratory for the six-week process to become a vaccine.
The sample was placed in an alcohol-based gelatin to eliminate certain unwanted organisms, and from it a culture grew. From the culture came microbes that were separated, then washed in a detergent. The process was repeated and the vaccine then given to patients.
Through it all, Speckhart said, he became "acutely tuned in" to the principle of informed consent, insisting that patients fully understand what they were taking.
"Many came into my office with resentment over chemotherapy and simply said to me, `Do you have anything else to offer?' " Speckhart said. "Many of these patients are still alive and some of them are in this room."
Not all his patients received the vaccine. Most have not. Like any oncologist, Speckhart said he often prescribed chemotherapy, radiation or both, plus surgery to remove cancerous tumors.
Speckhart also said that the "electro acupuncture" device measures electrical activity along roughly 800 acupuncture points of the body. By comparing the response at selected points, he said, the performance of the body's organs can be measured.
The machine, which he bought in 1986 for about $1,300, does not diagnose, he said, but only offers insight into the body's electrochemical performance. "The only diagnostic device I have is between my ears," he said.