Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was first recognized in 1981 among a group of five homosexual men living in Los Angeles. Armistead recalls, “In the beginning no one knew what caused it, how you could get it, and how to test for it. There were no drugs to treat it and many people got sick and died within a matter of months. Before the dying slowed in 1995, I knew over 200 people who passed away from this mysterious disease.”

Since the mid-1980s, Armistead has been what he calls a “scientific monk,” reviewing the latest minutia of technical AIDS research found in medical journals. He also works with various research groups in Africa and has his own group of research doctors there. “My job,” he says, “is to translate the latest technical science into practical therapy in order to relieve the pain and suffering of millions of Africans because the AIDS epidemic.” Armistead wants to create a therapy for HIV that is universally affordable.

Researchers learned that aspirin is effective in treating the disease because it inhibits HIV replication in the nucleus of CD4 immune system cells, rather than in the cytoplasm, where the popular HIV treatment AZT does its work. The aspirin tells the immune system to increase the production of CD4 cells. Armistead discovered research supporting the effectiveness of aspirin against HIV, but the information came from deep within volumes of medical publications rather than from doctors or government health organizations. He says critical information sometimes does not make it to the public because of economics, politics, and, in cases like Armistead’s, the public’s general misunderstanding of science.

“For almost nine years, aspirin was my focus and I became known as ‘The Aspirin Man’ at international AIDS conferences,” says Armistead, “Then I found out about selenium.” Selenium is a naturally occurring trace element used by the body to provide an adequate level of immunity, and HIV causes AIDS by depleting selenium from the immune system. “Few in the field of HIV know this,” Armistead says, “despite the recent discoveries that support this fact.”

In 2000 at the Durban AIDS Conference in South Africa, Armistead proposed using a combination of selenium, aspirin, and a multivitamin (SAM) as a low-cost treatment for HIV; the annual cost for the treatment is only about $60. Working with scientists and doctors in southern Africa, Armistead has proven the effectiveness of the SAM therapy. At the Bangkok AIDS Conference in 2004, he demonstrated that just three aspirin are more than twice as effective as eight AZT tablets in treating HIV, and at less than one-percent of the cost.

Armistead spends nearly every dollar he has talking to doctors, scientists, government officials, and fellow activists. “My responsibility,” adds Armistead, “is putting research in the hands of health officials.” The reason so few people know about using aspirin and selenium is because “there’s no economic incentive to get this information to the people—if I could charge a dollar an aspirin, every American with HIV would be taking it!” More common HIV treatments, like AZT, cost patients thousands of dollars each year.

Armistead calls not providing available low-cost treatments “passive genocide.” “Every life should have value,” says Armistead, “whether you are living in a village where you make $50 a year or in a penthouse in New York City.”

Howard Armistead ’74 wants to bring low-cost HIV treatments to the world.

But preaching to doctors and AIDS activists satisfied Armistead only so much. That is why he decided to found SAM Medical Products and provide selenium directly to HIV patients in sub-Saharan Africa. Starting a business in Zambia has been difficult, to say the least. “The first shipment of selenium was quarantined for 18 months,” he recalls. “Meanwhile, I was paying for warehouse space and paying my employees to stick around.” Then it only got worse; after the quarantine was lifted authorities seized his inventory. Armistead says, “The hardest part to figure out is the bureaucracy and corruption.” He hit a third stumbling block shortly after leaving Zambia to get more money in the United States; his business manager (presumably thinking the business had folded) took all of the company’s furniture and sold Armistead’s car. Despite these setbacks, SAM Medical Products is up and running and providing selenium to HIV patients in southern Africa. Armistead regularly hears from doctors prescribing selenium who laud the remarkable effectiveness the supplement has in treating HIV.

Armistead is no stranger to adversity. In 1972, he set up a tent on the lawn of Atkinson Hall for a month, helping to win the right for students to have female visitation in the dorms. As chairman of the Honor Court in 1974, he was hung in effigy from a light pole in Fraternity Circle. “Someone had fired a gun at a streetlight,” he recalls. “I was the Honor Court Chairman, so I had to investigate … and I did.” Armistead says he does not remember the outcome of the case, but says the trial made life uncomfortable for a while. Armistead majored in government and foreign affairs at Hampden-Sydney, and after teaching English in Japan, he returned to get a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Virginia. Although he was aiming for a career with the State Department, he ended up in procurement with the Department of Defense in Los Angeles. Later he took the analytical expertise he developed at both Hampden-Sydney and the DOD and put it to use scouring medical journals for information doctors and scientists may have missed in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Developing regular selenium treatments for fighting viral infections will benefit more than just HIV patients, according to Armistead. He says there is a host of viruses that could affect everyone, including Avian Flu, West Nile Virus, and SARS. Scientists are working on a vaccine for Avian Flu, but Armistead says our defenses against a major viral outbreak should be multiple, just as they are against a terrorist attack. Finding a vaccine is great he says, but “selenium treatment is another line of defense.”

As billions of dollars go to fund military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Armistead worries that the country is fighting the wrong war. He says viral infections “are the real enemies of the country.” He adds, “The thing that will kill millions of Americans is newly emerging viral infections.”