WEST COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – When Katherine Bibeau’s body arrived at the morgue, she was covered in large, deep purplish-black bruises.

But the woman had not been beaten, Coroner Gary Watts discovered. Rather, she had bled internally, and massively, after receiving an unconventional treatment for her multiple sclerosis.

Intravenous infusions of hydrogen peroxide, administered by a physician named James Shortt, had produced bubbles in Bibeau’s bloodstream that started her down a fatal spiral into multiple organ failure and cardiac arrest, Watts concluded.

The death, he ruled, was a homicide.

This case and the death of another of his infusion patients have put Shortt at the center of a controversy over a treatment that its opponents say has no proven benefits and serious risks.

Some 100,000 infusions of the chemical – a refined form of the first-aid kit standby – are given each year across the nation as a treatment for a variety of diseases, according to proponents.

Shortt, who is fighting to keep his medical license, denies harming anyone. “I might be the world’s greatest lunatic,” he says, but “I’m not going to do anything to my patients that I think might hurt them.”

At the root of hydrogen peroxide’s purported power is the same action that makes it foam when placed on a cut. Proponents of oxidative or “hyperoxygenation” therapy believe that many diseases – including cancer and HIV – can be linked to oxygen deficiency. They say that infusion or even ingestion of substances such as hydrogen peroxide, ozone and germanium sesquioxide deliver an “oxidative burst” that can kill cancer cells and viruses, and boost the immune system.

Shortt says he has been a believer since infusion guru Dr. Charles Farr helped him save a lupus patient’s blackened toes from amputation.

Shortt says he has administered as many as 1,800 hydrogen peroxide treatments to patients from as far away as Europe, and has seen people in the midst of severe asthma attacks “go from gray to pink” during an infusion.

On a recent day at his clinic, Health Dimensions, patients occupied two of the dozen black leather chaises arranged in a spacious lounge off the waiting room. They watched videos as IV bags of yellowish and clear liquid emptied slowly into veins in their left hands.

Many of his patients, Shortt says, come to him when conventional medicine has run its course.

“We go to work from this point where you’re hopeless,” the 58-year-old said in a recent telephone interview.

But health experts say injecting hydrogen peroxide directly into the bloodstream can cause convulsions, acute anemia and deadly gas emboli. A 1991 article in the “Journal of Emergency Nursing” blamed the death of a 39-year-old cancer patient on such “cancer quackery.”

The American Cancer Society says treating certain tumors directly with hydrogen peroxide “remains an area for responsible research.” But as for infusion of the chemical into the bloodstream, there is “no scientific basis for the regimens utilized by the oxymedicine promoters.”

In September, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Web site posted a “Medical Alert,” saying: “Hydrogen peroxide, administered either orally or by intravenous infusion, is not a recommended or approved treatment for multiple sclerosis. … Dr. Aaron Miller, the National MS Society’s Chief Medical Officer, strongly urges people with MS to avoid this unproven and potentially unsafe treatment.”

Physicians in Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee have had their licenses suspended or revoked for giving patients intravenous hydrogen peroxide. In the Tennessee case, the medical board said the physician exhibited “gross malpractice … and incompetence and ignorance in the course of medical practice.”

In September, armed state and federal officers raided Shortt’s office and confiscated his files. Later that month, the South Carolina Board of Medical Examiners asked a judge for an emergency suspension of Shortt’s license.

As the investigations go forward, Shortt has voluntarily ceased performing hydrogen peroxide infusions. The South Carolina medical board has scheduled a Jan. 21 hearing to revisit his case.