The Catch-22 about surviving AIDS is that people believe nobody survives AIDS. As one AIDS patient told the Weekly, “i’m beating this disease. I hope I’m not disappointing anybody.” A five year survivor emphasized, “You have to decide whether, for you, ultimate reality is the death statistics compiled on AIDS patients.”

Mike Borowski, in the fall of 1985, was both antibody-positive to the AIDS virus and symptomatic, with skin lesions that wouldn’t heal. His hair was dry and falling out. He had night sweats. His ears were separating from the sides of his head.

“My doctor,” Borowski recalls, “was a man I’d known for years. Now I could see he was afraid, because he didn’t have the answers to AIDS.”

At this point, Borowski, a trained nurse who had been working for 11 years in surgery and three years in a cardiac unit, left his physician. He also left his job and went to work for a holistic M.D. Then he began taking “huge doses of vitamin C, 80 to 100 grams a day.”

Eventually, Borowski began a series of body cleansings with detoxifying herbs from the southwestern United States. He attributes a great deal of progress to these herbal preparations.

“For a while,” he says, “I had a friend who insisted on cooking for me. She stayed with me. Because I had so many allergies, for a month I avoided 27 different foods. All during this period, I also fought fatigue as much as possible. For me, fatigue meant giving up. I would jog every night for an hour and a half.

Borowski cites “a psychological leper-phase. Physically, I looked shabby. My hair was so bad. I had a big lymph node under my chin….”

Today, Borowski’s lesions are only intermittent. His hair has stopped falling out and has grown back. The swollen lymph node is down to normal. His ears have stopped their separation and the connective tissue has all grown back all that remains of the problem are hairline cracks in his ears. The night sweats are gone.

As far as laboratory tests are concerned, Borowski “had a couple of T-cell ratios done after I was diagnosed (as having the AIDS virus). But then I didn’t do any more tests. They scare the shit out of me. I felt I’d automatically side with their findings. Even scientific papers on AIDS—I avoid them for the same reason.”

Crediting what for him was an important attitude change “from observer to participant,” Borowski created an educational foundation called the Positive Immunity Foundation. It now operates in three cities including L.A. The organization, which schedules lectures by alternative health professionals and offers counseling, is temporarily housed at 1544 Sixth Street in Santa Monica and operates in conjunction with the Natural Therapies Medical Group, headed by Dr. Laurence Badgley, author of HealingAIDS Naturally.

Scott Gregory, a Santa Monica acupuncturist and author of Conquering AIDS Now, is completing his second book, They Conquered AIDS. “It’s case histories of people who have survived,” Gregory says. “Warner is publishing it in January. I’ve seen 150 people with AIDS since 1979. I’ve never charged for my time. I give advice. The results: Of the 75 people who’ve stuck it out and followed the plan we worked out, none have died; 45 have been in remission for at least six years.”

We asked what he meant by “remission.”

“The symptoms are gone. The blood chemistry is normal.”

Gregory has found common denominators among his patients: 80 percent bad been taking recreational drugs (if prescription drugs were lumped in, the figure rose to 90 percent), and more than 70 percent had a history of venereal disease. Among other things, this means they were taking considerable amounts of antibiotics.

Many of the people who come to Gregory are fresh from their doctors’ offices, where they have, essentially, been handed death sentences. Gregory’s healing modalities are spelled out in his books. They basically involve dietary supplements and changes in habits of nutrition and lifestyle.

Jack True, who helps run the Natural Therapies Medical Group, emphasizes that there is no magic bullet, no magic cure for AIDS. The clinic tries to educate clients in various holistic modalities that improve general health and boost immune response.

Every approach to disease we’ve traditionally been taught tries to slip over a cure,” True says. “What we need to think about is living an altogether better life, a healthier life. That’s a person’s own choice. We provide information. The person picks out his own plan.”

. . .

Mark had an AIDS blood test in May of 1983. It came out positive. He had been having nights sweats and experiencing a great deal of fatigue.

“I went to three doctors. After they told me essentially that they couldn’t do anything for me, I asked them what they thought of the holistic alternatives. They all said pretty much the same thing: None of the treatments were proven, they could run into lots of money, and I was playing games with my health.

“I said, ‘Why games? What do I have to lose? What can you do for me?’ After that, they’d kind of shift gears, without really answering my objection. They’d say, ‘Oh, the holistic people are quacks.’ Somehow, the word ‘quack’ was supposed to make me want to stay away.

“But I kept on. I said, ‘Suppose I can find a treatment that isn’t expensive and is basically harmless? What’s wrong with trying it?’ That sort of stopped them, but one of the doctors said, ‘Well, you’ll get pulled into a jungle of treatments and you won’t be able to tell the difference between them.’ As if something bad might come from that. Here I was with basically the beginnings of an incurable, deadly disease….”

Mark saw an acupressurist for several months, and his fatigue spells began to shorten. Then he began to swim every other day and drink herbal teas. “From there I went to a modest vitamin and mineral regimen. By 1985 my shelves were filled with all kinds of health-food-store stuff.” Mark also changed his diet, eliminating beef and refined sugar, increasing his intake of fish, fruit and steamed vegetables.

“By 1986, my general level of health had improved a great deal. The night sweats were mostly gone, and I had a lot more energy. I cut out drugs— I’d been doing coke, and sometimes Valium–which may have been the biggest immune- depressers. Also smoking. I just dumped all that and started feeling better after a few weeks of depression and cigarette withdrawal.

. . .

From these and other conversations with AIDS patients and those who treat and advise them, several things seem clear. First, patients react differently to the advice that they change their lifestyles and habits. Some welcome the idea as long overdue; other refuse to budge. (The latter are in the majority.)

Second, in the process of improving diet and eliminating bad habits, many AIDS patients report a diminishment of their AIDS symptoms. This is sometimes accompanied by positive changes in lab tests.

Most people with AIDS who reported beneficial results form their programs of holistic modalities felt there was a spiritual component involved. It might have been the realization that “they were more than their body.” It might have been some sense of a higher power, a quality within, a sense of acceptance of themselves, or simply the development of a more positive attitude. Several people brought up the possibility that, insofar as psychosomatic factors play a part, as more people survive AIDS and as that information is spread around, more people will realize it can be done, and that will make the job easier.

An engagingly frank, chain-smoking physician told me, “The whole orientation of the medical profession is against folk remedies, which is where modern medicine came from. The thrust of our education in school is ‘The Dark Ages were the times of unproven folk medicine, when people died early and times were hard. now we’ve escaped from that outlook, and we don’t want to go back.’ Of course, holistic treatment doesn’t necessarily equate with folk medicine, but we tend to lump things together—you know, weird stuffdrinking tea, eating pieces of bushes. It’s primitive to us.”

“On the other hand, changing your lifestyle is very smart if your diet is unhealthy and you’re engaging in high-risk behavior like drugs. But we professionals don’t know a hell of a lot about that. We’re too busy in the lab and the office.”

Several doctors acknowledged that AIDS is causing a degree of crisis within the medical system. Patients some of them are leaving for sunnier shores, where changes in diet and attitude are seen as the way to a better immune system. That pretty well describes the route of the AIDS survivors I spoke with all of whom expressed considerable satisfaction with their choice of direction.Battling AIDS with Holistic Regimens