Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 15, 1993 TAG: 9307150109
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CELESTE KATZ STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Last summer, Mary Maxey of Salem was stung by 800 honeybees. The barbed stingers pumped their poisonous venom into her arms, her hands, her spine. And it hurt.
But Maxey, who recently turned 65, wasn't the victim of a swarm run amok. Each sting was carefully administered by her husband, Cordy, a full-time beekeeper since the mid-1940s.
The Maxeys are part of a growing group of people around the world who believe the venom of the honeybee may be the key to human health.
Maxey, 72, gave his wife the bee-sting treatment to relieve her of arthritis pain in her right arm and shoulder.
"She'd wake up at night crying, that muscle was hurting her so. Yet she'd help me in the honeybees," he recalled.
As for the pain of the stinging treatment itself, "She never said a word about it, but her muscle looked like a pincushion."
Today, Maxey says her arthritis no longer troubles her as it did. In the manner of many patients who swear by bee venom therapy - BVT for short - she proudly flexes joints once too sore to budge and scorns the doctors whose pills and bills could not bring her the relief she sought from modern medicine.
Maxey said he's stung "better than 100" people for rheumatic illnesses - arthritis, bursitis, gout - and that most patients have profited from what he describes as the natural cortisone treatment. However, he tries not to make any blanket statements about the curative effects of his honeybees.
"I'm very careful about saying what we cure. I usually say, `if it cures you, don't come back,' " he said. "But I'm not the only one that believes in bee stings."
That's true. Apitherapy, from the Latin for bee, has long been used to treat illnesses. Records of health-promoting bee products - venom; raw honey; and propolis, a glue bees make to cement hives - date back to the world's oldest civilizations, including those of Egypt and the Far East.
Today, scattered beekeepers provide free stings for problems ranging from tennis elbow to lupus and multiple sclerosis.
It isn't the bees' venom that produces the healing effects Instead, the sting and venom produce a reaction in the adrenal glands, which reportedly increases the output of cortisone. Most scientific testing so far has been conducted on animals.
In the United States, Vermont beekeeper Charles Mraz, 88, is looked on as one of the major proponents and practitioners of the folk remedy. Mraz, who has tended bees since 1919 and has stung patients free of charge since 1934, co-founded the American Apitherapy Society several years ago to promote bee venom awareness and research by pharmaceutical companies.
But the road to recognition has been a hard one for Mraz and his followers.
"They're not very happy about appropriating funds for research into natural products; there's no money in it," said Mraz. "Bees are as free as the air. How in hell are you going to make money with bees, for God's sake?"
As with many BVT believers, Mraz and Maxey cite seemingly miraculous cases of people rising from their wheelchairs, solving their incontinence problems, regaining their vitality.
"I've treated people [with BV therapy] who couldn't even get out of bed, . . . and in a couple of weeks, they're dancing," said Mraz.
And as for the possibility of a fatal allergic reaction to bee venom, Mraz claims he's never seen more than a slight local reaction in anyone in all the years he's stung rheumatism away.
"I've been testing people for allergies, and there hasn't been one in 60 years. I think that the chances are better of getting hit by a meteor than getting an allergic reaction to bee stings," he said.
Most of the modern medical and scientific industry seems unconvinced.
Dr. Richard Fell, an associate professor of entomology at Virginia Tech, is one of the unconverted. "I'm not going to be out there recommending that people do this," he said. "We don't know enough about the pharmacological aspects of the material. The reports have been anecdotal, not carefully conducted experiments."
While Fell conceded that "there is some evidence that [bee venom] may help" certain conditions, he warned against putting too much faith in the unpredictable venom.
"These things are largely composed of toxins," he added, "and you don't have things like controlled dosages. But if people want to sting themselves, I suppose that's their business."
From the federal standpoint, it's nobody's business. According to a spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration, the government has "never seen any evidence of effectiveness" in curing arthritis or MS, although the venom "will stimulate the adrenal cortex to a very limited degree."
"You can market bee products as long as you don't make any medical claims," the spokesman, who asked that his name not be used, said.
In many cases, BVT is sought when nothing else seems to help, or when lightning-fast miracle cure stories seem very seductive. Groups such as the Arthritis Foundation have published pamphlets that warn against "unproven remedies," such as honeybee, tree ant, cobra or rattlesnake venom, biofeedback and vaccine therapy, as conceivably having a placebo effect or even being potentially dangerous.
"Our advice is not to forsake medical science in the hopes of receiving a simple cure," said Curtis Allen, a spokesman for the Amercan Cancer Society.
"What happens is that people will give up a really promising cancer treatment to take something that appears to be an easy out."
The apitherapy society is waiting for the verdict of the National Institutes of Health, which is considering granting money for research into BVT. France and China already have conducted considerable studies of the effect of bee products on human health.
"It's no longer speculation, no longer folk medicine," argued Vermont physician Dr. Bradford Weeks, president of the apitherapy society.
"I'm a scientist. I don't believe it works. I don't disbelieve it. I want the research done," he said.
In the meantime, beekeepers such as Cordy Maxey continue to sting despite the scientists' misgivings.
"It just don't pay to knock what God Almighty put here," he said.
by CNB