The Fifty Foot woman versus the poisoned supplements

*Written as a presentation to my current Allied Health Sciences students as an example of the need for "Trust" in the health sciences.

Perhaps best remembered today for her starring role in the now cult Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman, Allison Hayes was a talented and beautiful actress whose career and life were cut short all due to a dire prescription of ill regulated supplements

Born Mary Jane Hayes in Charleston, West Virginia, on March 6, 1930, Allison Hayes grew up to become Miss Washington D.C. in 1949. Hayes took jobs in early television in Washington before moving to California in 1953 to begin an acting career. Allison Hayes acted in a string of B movies, along with a few "A" films, from 1954 to 1965. In addition, Hayes made many guest appearances on popular TV programs in the 1950s and 1960s. Always in demand, Hayes' busiest period came in the late 1950s when she was cast in numerous B film roles, such as Gunslinger (1956), The Unearthly (1957), The Disembodied (1957) Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman (1958), and The High Powered Rifle (1960). After 1960, Hayes began taking on more television roles and made films only sporadically thereafter. In her last film, she appeared alongside Elvis Presley in Tickle Me (1965). Hayes is featured in the beginning of Tickle Me as a drunken bar patron who lunges as Elvis as he performs. Viewers will note that she looks thin and gaunt in this, her only scene in the film. For years, Hayes had taken a doctor-prescribed calcium supplement with extreme levels of lead---so extreme that she contracted lead poisoning. After the onset of her illness in the mid 1960s, she was simply too ill to work and was housebound for long periods of time.

Sometime in 1962, Allison began seeing Dr. Henry Bieler, on the advice of her close friend, actress Gloria Swanson who had been his patient for many years. From Dr. Bieler’s recommendation and with his prescription, Allison began talking a calcium food supplement daily. Another physician, Dr. William H. Crosby later wrote that the supplement would have done nothing to correct the problem Allison originally went to Dr. Bieler forIn 1964, Allison returned to Dr. Bieler with a variety of complaints. The doctor told her to increase her daily intake of the supplement. By 1967, she had experienced a multitude of symptoms. She was unable to walk without a cane and her career virtually came to an end. Her auburn hair turned black and began to fall out. She had wrist-drop syndrome in her right hand and a constant gnawing sensation across the bridge of her nose. She also became surly. Something she had never been.Her friends were worried.

She consulted over 20 doctors and endured over 340 X-ray examinations. Most doctors told her that her symptoms were psycho-neurotic. None were able to identify the source of the problems.

In 1968, during hospitalization for a fever, Allison stopped taking the supplement on her own.

Allison herself wrote:

"....as I finally came to see it, I had three options: (1) commit suicide; (2) go to a psychiatrist to attempt to learn to live with the pain accepting the fact that doctors couldn’t diagnose it; or (3) find the answer myself. I called suicide prevention though I was sure I wasn’t going to kill myself. I just wanted someone to tell me it was worth it not to. But I was placed on "hold" and they never came back to the phone. So I laughed and thought, "that’s the end of that!" Then I said to myself, ‘There’s an answer to everything. There has to be an answer! I’m going to find out.’ The question was where do I start?"

First she got copies of her medical records--a process she likened to "pulling teeth." Then Allison enlisted the help of friends who carried her to the medical library at UCLA. Because she had lost the use of her right arm, she sat on the floor making notes with her left hand. The technical books could not be checked out, so she would stay for hours, her friends picking her up sometimes after midnight. While reading a book called Toxicology Of Industrial Metals Allison came across a description of the metal poisoning of factory workers. She writes: "...the descriptions of some of the illnesses fit my own like a glove...ultimately I learned the truth; I had been poisoned!"

Strong words, but true. The lead content as shown by later analysis of the supplement she had taken daily for six years was 190 parts of lead per million. As was later discovered, the supplement was made in England from the bones of horses over 30 years old. Horses that had been sold to glue factories, the older the horse, the higher the lead content of the bones. The supplement had been imported into the US in 500 lb. drums and used in a number of products including baby food! And Dr. Bieler was still prescribing it to his patients!

After contacting a toxicologist (Dr, Karl Schwarz a researcher at Veterans' Hospital in Long Beach) and sending him a sample of the supplement, Allison got a telegram that told her to contact him immediately. Allison writes more: "...the...call came in January, 1970, on a day that was dark and cold and dreary. My first reaction was one of relief. I hadn’t been losing my mind. There was an organic reason for this. Then the anger set in. I’d spent thousands of dollars being bandied about from one specialist to the other with not a few of them baldy implying that my problem was primarily psycho-neurotic...in the end I had to depend on myself to educate the experts."

Allison started a campaign to get the FDA to stop import of the supplement Its lack of interest was based on the official judgment that food supplements were a "gray area." That changed when the FDA wrote: "We are incorporating health food issues into our FY ‘77 and ‘78 compliance programs, including the bone meal and heavy metal matter. Your case is a key stimulus for so doing."

Things do not seem to have improved however, as many substances are still unregulated by the FDA.By then, Allison had begun then dropped a lawsuit again Bieler, when he pleaded for her to. He died soon after. She did win a settlement of $50,000 against the Los Angeles distributor of the supplement in 1970.