San Francisco Chronicle - Monday May 15, 1989
Randy Shilts

"People want to know where they can find Q, how to take it," says Tate, who coordinates the group's hotline. "A lot of people are desperate. A lot are hopeful. It has generated a certain level of electricity on the lines."

Q is slang for the drug GLQ223, the purified extract of a Chinese cucumber root. The AIDS world is bursting with optimism at the prospect that GLQ223 might spell a cure for AIDS, bringing a rare element to the fight against the epidemic: hope.

The herbal version of the drug has been used in China for 1,600 years to induce abortions, but it was only in 1986 that a Hong Kong doctor suggested to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco that it also might be effective against the human immunodeficiency virus.

To their shock, UCSF doctors found that in the test tube, the substance sought out and selectively killed HIV-infected immune cells. This led researchers to the startling conclusion that if Q worked the same way in people, they might not only have an AIDS treatment on their hands, but a virtual cure.

After two years of early studies, the local researchers revealed this publicly last month - after UCSF and the Palo Alto-based firm Genelabs had received their patent on GLQ223 - and the Q phenomenon exploded.

What fueled this Q fever further was that people who had never had much hopeful to say about AIDS treatments were suddenly bubbling. Experts such as the cautious Dr. Paul Volberding of San Francisco General Hospital's AIDS Clinic and the sober staffers of the American Foundation for AIDS Research were buttonholing everyone to say that maybe, just maybe, this could be it.

"Of course, it's too early to tell," says Project Inform's co-director Martin Delaney, another once-wary pundit who is now brimming with optimism. "But nothing in the lab has ever worked like this before. Optimism is warranted."

Thoughts that local gay men had long ago banished from their imagination - about a time when the epidemic and all its suffering would be finished - have begun to flourish.

Enthused one HIV-infected landscape architect last week, "After I went to a public forum on Q, I went home, put a log in the fireplace and for the first time thought about what I'd want to be doing in five years. I haven't thought that way in a long time. All I've done is wonder whether I'd even be alive in two years. I almost feel like I can start planning a life again."

One San Francisco doctor has gone so far as to advise patients, "The epidemic will be over in a year."

Charlatans have not been far behind. Delaney says one Los Angeles herbalist is running advertisements offering derivatives of Chinese cucumber root for $1,000 a bottle. A black market already has opened up for the herb.

Just about everybody involved in the scientific and community efforts around Q, however, agree on one thing: All this is premature and possibly dangerous.

A Kansas City man injected a boiled extract of the cucumber root and ended up in an intensive care ward with liver poisoning, Delaney warns. Without the purification involved in the drug manufacturing process, the Chinese herb can have other life-threatening side-effects.

Moreover, nobody knows whether the drug will work and be safe once it is out of the test tube and in the body. Other drugs have shown terrific test-tube potential and turned out to be ineffective and sometimes very harmful.

The excitement surrounding the introduction of this fresh hope, however, has presented a major challenge to the San Francisco researchers conducting the first human trials on Q, which are slated to begin in a few weeks. If official testing does not move quickly, scientists can be assured that unofficial testing will.

Past delays in the testing and approval of promising AIDS treatments, such as aerosolized pentamidine, have left a legacy of distrust between the gay community and researchers associated with the National Institutes of Health, the agency that normally supervises drug trials. Assurances of speedy testing will not be enough if expeditious action doesn't follow.

"Two years to do all the normal testing translates to about 50,000 people who will die in the interim - people who will die unnecessarily, if Q works," says John James, editor of the well-respected AIDS Treatment News. "A lot of people won't accept that."

Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 1989. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

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