Three times a week, Cynthia Cox uses a pair of tweezers to place more than 30 honeybees on her husband's body.
She has to wait only seconds for one to sting before moving on to another.Jon Cox barely flinches anymore as his wife of 20 years places the bees and picks out the stingers. When it's over, Jon puts on his shirt and they return to their kids' ball games and music lessons and church.
For Jon Cox, the sting of a bee - make that the sting of 35 bees - means he no longer depends on a cane and is working full time. The effects of the multiple sclerosis he's lived with for a decade have subsided. He credits the simple stings of honeybees.
Apitherapy is the little-understood technique of using honeybee products for medical therapies. It's been around for centuries and was written about by Hippocrates and in ancient Chinese texts, according to the American Society of Apitherapy.
Bee stings are not only believed to help MS, but skin problems, infections, arthritis, chronic pain, asthma and psychological problems.
Modern clinicians usually dismiss it as folk medicine. The Multiple Sclerosis Association of America has funded research at Georgetown University on bee-venom therapy, but it doesn't recommend people try it on their own.
The Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, the nation's largest, also doesn't condone the practice.
The MSAA estimates between 350,000 and 500,000 Americans are afflicted with MS, a crippling disease of the nervous system for which there is no cure.
For Jon Cox, stinging himself with bees was a last resort. The sales rep from rural Rigby, Idaho, had pain in his legs and head so severe, he was contemplating taking disability. When he visited a neurologist last spring, the diagnosis was discouraging: His MS was in the chronic progressive stage, meaning his condition would only continue to deteriorate.
For a man who grew up farming and now had five sons and a daughter, not being able to walk to the house next door was devastating - and frightening.
"We were really scared. He was doing so poorly," Cynthia Cox said. "He would have headaches all day and all night. He was in severe, chronic pain."
He tried Beta Seron. The injections cost $1,000 a month, and his pain didn't go away. He was shaky and should have been using a cane constantly, though he dreaded it and tried to get by without it.
One night, a friend called, telling the couple to turn on the television. There was a report about people with MS improving from bee stings.
Skeptical, Cynthia Cox began painstakingly researching apitherapy. Finally, with nothing to lose, the couple called a friend who set up a hive on the farm where Jon Cox grew up.
On Feb. 20, Jon Cox was stung for the first time. It didn't take long for his headaches to fade away and his energy to increase, he said. His dependence on his cane ceased almost completely. He put aside his disability papers.
For the first time in years, he hasn't been in and out of the doctor's office and pharmacy. The couple hasn't yet reached their insurance deductible this year.
On their last family vacation, Jon Cox hiked with his children through the Mesa Verde Indian ruins in Colorado - a feat that would not have been possible six months earlier.
Bee-venom therapy is not a cure. It's not condoned by insurance companies and most doctors. It should never be tried without the help of someone with experience and an epinephrine kit, in case something goes wrong.
But, for some who have reached the end of modern medicine's miracles, it, at least, is another option.
A small study by an Illinois physician has produced favorable results. Since May of 1996, bee-venom therapy has had an 80 percent success rate in Ross Hauser's patients. The study is too small - only 75 participants - to make premature scientific conclusions. However, Hauser said the anecdotal evidence is happening every day. People, he said, are improving.
"It can increase your hormone level by manyfold, and that's probably the method by which it has its therapeutic benefit," Hauser said. "You have more energy, more muscle strength, more coordination, you think clearer."
By increasing hormone levels, the body's cortizone and histamine level increase, Hauser said, kind of like turning on the body's immune system.
Pat Wagner is one of those people.
Wagner calls herself the "bee lady" of Waldorf, Md. Diagnosed at 19 with MS, she was bedridden by her 40s, losing her hearing, sight and unable to stand. She was first stung March 24, 1992, after a friend persuaded her to try it.
She was skeptical until she began to see what she calls huge improvements.
"I was a breathing corpse," Wagner, 47, said. "Within two weeks my energy level was so high and my vision was coming back. My husband was so impressed he went out and bought a beehive, and I changed his name from Ray to Stingray."
Nothing else had worked, Wagner said. She hears the criticisms. Yet, she sees the successes in her and in people she has helped with the therapy.
"It hasn't been approved by the FDA, but it was approved by G-O-D and that's good enough for me," Wagner says.
Still, health professionals worry that such tales send messages of hope that may not be realized. Dr. Jack Petajan is not a believer. A professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine and an MS specialist, Pentajan fears people get false hope with such tales of miraculous recovery.
Petajan founded the U's multiple sclerosis clinic in 1972. In his years working with MS patients, Petajan says he's seen more than 40 "miracle cures" roll through the community. Each was shortlived.
MS is hard to diagnose and its symptoms are so different in every person, Petajan warns patients can experience the"placebo effect" with any treatment. "There is a placebo effect even in progreessive diseases," Petajan said. "It's very possible that someone feels better but if they were examined there would be no neurological change."
Still, he would welcome scientific study on bee-venom therapy.
"I'm not trying to poo-poo any ideas on how to treat MS but this needs to be studied in a systematic manner," Petajan said.
That's why additional research is so important, says Peter Damiri, public director of the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America. Damiri said the association opted to fund the $250,000 Georgetown study to finally get some hard evidence on whether bee-venom therapy is safe and effective. If the results are negative, the MSAA will at least be able to eliminate the false hope people left with little hope find in such ideas, he said.
"We don't recommend or endorse people going out and getting bee sings," Damiri said. "So many people want to know if this works, how it works. And there is no answer to that. There are moving stories, but let's find out the science behind it."
For more information on bee-venom therapy or multiple sclerosis, there are several sources available:
- Pat Wagner, the "bee lady," has written a book, "How Well Are You Willing to Bee?" and now helps others with bee-venom therapy in her Waldorf, Md., home. She can be reached at 301-843-8350.
- Hauser says people should never try apitherapy without someone who has experience with bees. More patients are being accepted for his study, which uses injectible bee venom rather than actual bees. He can be reached at 708-848-7789.
- The Utah Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society can be reached at 575-8500.
- The Multiple Sclerosis Association of America can be reached at 609-488-4500.
- The American Apitherapy Society can be reached at 937-466-9214 or on the Internet at (http://www.beesting.com/)