 in Great Britain is used in the United States.
Due to Hermon-Taylor's work, the British government announced last August -- garnering headline news there but not a word in the American press -- that experts from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will spend 18 months investigating at least 1,000 samples of all types of milk for the bacterium.
"I've known that this organism is a strong candidate for causing chronic inflammation of the intestine in humans for a long time," says Hermon-Taylor. "But in order to cross a Rubicon that has very substantial implications, I had to be certain and even more certain. I became absolutely certain about three years ago. It's not a question of whether Mp can act as a human pathogen or not. It's a question of does it cause 50 percent of Crohn's disease or 90 percent of Crohn's disease? And my hunch is -- based on the evidence available, and more is needed -- it causes 90 percent."
In addition to the strong correlation between the genetic fingerprint for Mp and people with Crohn's disease, Hermon-Taylor says that when he treats patients with antibiotics known to be effective against mycobacterial infections, between two-thirds and three-quarters of his patients report improvements, some remarkable.
"I've seen people who were without hope get better like magic," says Hermon-Taylor. "I've been a doctor for nearly 40 years, and it's the best thing I've ever seen in clinical medicine."
One such patient who improved dramatically on Hermon-Taylor's antibiotic regimen is Vanessa Buchanon, who, coincidentally, holds a Ph.D. in microbiology. Buchanon, 28, from London, had been diagnosed with Crohn's and was receiving conventional treatment for about a year.
"In December 1997, I was really ill, and it was getting worse. It was then that my mom gave me an article about Hermon-Taylor. ...I phoned up his secretary and [wondered] if I could get treatment. He actually came to the phone and chatted with me for about a half an hour about the research he'd been doing.
"So I started the treatment in April 1998. I was really sick. I'd lost about five kilos in weight [more than ten pounds] and I couldn't eat anything. I had these abscesses in my rear end and was really ill. So I started on the treatment, and it was a rough ride in the first few months, because you get high fevers and general exhaustion. When it got towards the end of June, I suddenly started feeling better and, by the end of July, a lot better. Last year, I was dead; I couldn't do anything at all. Now I lead a perfectly normal life, with the exception of not eating dairy products."
Joe Solek, a 47-year-old dentist from Chicago who was diagnosed with Crohn's disease in July 1997, is also on Hermon-Taylor's antibiotic regimen.
"It's really funny because my internist, the guy who has been doing my colonoscopies since 1986, thinks [the antibiotic regimen] is unnecessary treatment. ...But my last colonoscopy was in December 1998, and he said to me after the procedure, 'Boy, this is very close to normal.' He said if he had to rate my disease on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the worst, I'm a one. I asked if that was due to the medication, and no one really knows.
"I'm a dentist," continues Solek. "[Because of] the lack of research and clinical trials, I'm surprised I'm doing this. But all I have to lose is money. Is this the placebo effect? I don't know. Why couldn't this theory [of a connection between Mp and Crohn's disease] be the case? Especially in light of the fact that it causes a very similar disease in cows. It's an uphill battle because traditional medicine doesn't think there's a connection."
"Now, of course, the proper way in clinical research is to do a pilot study and expand into a randomized control trial," says Hermon-Taylor, who acknowledges that the results Crohn's patients exhibit from his antibiotic regimen are only a step above anecdotal evidence. "We were actually denied the funding to do a randomized control trial. So I did the best that I could with what I've got." To date, 25 of Hermon-Taylor's grant propo