BajaNomad

Clinic Where Coretta King Died Attracts the Desperate

BajaNews - 2-2-2006 at 10:07 PM

http://nytimes.com/2006/02/03/international/americas/03mexic...

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
February 3, 2006

ROSARITO, Mexico, Feb. 2 ? The cafeteria of the alternative medicine clinic where Coretta Scott King died this week was full of true believers on Wednesday afternoon, all swearing by the anticancer treatments of a man who never went to medical school and has a long history of fraud allegations against him in the United States.

That man, the hospital's founder, Kurt W. Donsbach, was presiding in the brightly lit room, asking for testimonials from his patients. Several said their doctors in the United States had told them to go home and wait to die. Then they came to the clinic and discovered that Mr. Donsbach's treatments worked.

"Nobody takes your hope away here," said a 65-year-old Catholic nun and registered nurse, who has ovarian cancer and asked not to be named.

To his critics Mr. Donsbach is a huckster who lures people in fragile condition to his clinic in Mexico with empty promises of revolutionary treatments. They say some become seriously ill or die from infections contracted at the clinic, known as the Hospital Santa M?nica.

To his admirers he is a practical healer who uses a combination of unconventional techniques to help the body's immune system fight off cancer rather than bombard the body with chemotherapy and radiation.

"We don't have miracle therapies," Mr. Donsbach said. "We have a mosaic of doing many different things to impede the progress of cancer in the body."

Huckster or healer, Mr. Donsbach and his hospital are part of a long tradition in Tijuana and nearby Rosarito, where clinics offering treatments not approved in the United States have flourished for years under a government not famed for regulatory scruples. In 1980, Steve McQueen, the actor, received an anticancer treatment in Rosarito known as laetrile, made from apricot pits. He died a few months later.

Mrs. King came to the Hospital Santa M?nica on Jan. 26, suffering from ovarian cancer that had spread to her intestines, doctors here said. She was also partly paralyzed from a stroke. Her daughter Bernice King and a nurse accompanied her.

Mr. Donsbach said the family had heard about his clinic from members of their church congregation. "They were faced with a wall," he said. "There was no answer in allopathic medicine and they wanted to try anything that might be beneficial."

But the doctors who saw her, Humberto Seimandi and Rafael Cede?o, told reporters they could do nothing for her either. Mrs. King's health was so precarious that they never started her on any of Mr. Donsbach's treatments. They said, though, that they tried, unsuccessfully, to restart her heart when it stopped beating on the fifth night of her visit, Jan. 30.

No autopsy was performed. The death certificate was signed by an adjunct member of the clinic's staff, Dr. Carlos Guerrero Tejada.

The hospital itself is a modest white two-story building on a dirt road. Patients wander about with IV poles, receiving intravenous drips of hydrogen peroxide and Vitamin C intended to boost the immune system. In another room doctors heat tumors with microwaves to weaken them.

The building faces a small piece of Baja California beach, bathed in clean Pacific light. At sunset, if one looks out to sea and squints, the spot could be mistaken for a paradise.

For George Ott, 63, a cabinetmaker from Lake Peekskill, N.Y., this paradise quickly turned into hell. Last summer Mr. Ott was told that the kidney cancer for which he had been treated two years earlier had returned, this time in his lungs.

Mr. Donsbach's claim that 70 percent of his patients are still alive after three years, as well as his promise of a cure without heavy chemotherapy, sounded enticing to a dying man, so Mr. Ott paid $12,500 for a 10-day stay in early August. Within five days, he said, he contracted a blood infection from a dirty intravenous needle that damaged his heart and nearly killed him.

"Desperate people do desperate things, and sometimes not the smartest thing in the world," he said.

Mr. Donsbach denied that Mr. Ott's infection had resulted from a dirty needle and said the infection did not develop until the day before he left the clinic.

Some patients swear by the clinic. Luke Ring, 65, a retired surgical assistant from Texas, said he had kept his throat cancer at bay for three years using Mr. Donsbach's treatments, especially one that mixed small doses of chemotherapy with glucose. "Nothing is perfect," he said. "But the treatment here is pointed toward raising the immune system to fight cancer."

Mr. Donsbach, 72, has been fighting legal battles with the authorities in the United States for decades over claims he made about nutritional supplements he sold, as well as a correspondence school for nutritionists he founded in 1977.

None of his legal troubles in the United States bothered the Mexican health authorities. Dr. Francisco Vera, health secretary for the state of Baja California, said that the clinic was registered under Dr. Cede?o's name, not Mr. Donsbach's, but that it would make no difference, since his department did not consider crimes committed in other countries when licensing medical practitioners. The clinic passed regular inspections, the most recent last June, he said.

Mr. Donsbach dismisses questions about his checkered history or lack of medical credentials as irrelevant. He maintains that most of his patients do better than those receiving conventional therapies in the United States. "They smear me instead of looking at results," he said.

Other patients here said they had turned to the clinic as a last resort. Susan Purkhiser, 38, a stuntwoman from Long Beach, Calif., said she was watching her mother, Jean Purkhiser, 72, suffer through chemotherapy when a friend told her about the clinic. Her mother decided to stop taking the drugs, and her doctors said she had only weeks to live.

"They gave my mom six weeks to live when we were stopping treatment," she said. "I said: 'Mom, you have six weeks to live. Let's go to Mexico.' "

Since arriving, Ms. Purkhiser said, her mother's condition has improved markedly. "They don't promise a cure," she said. "But even if she were to die in two months, the experience I have had down here with my mother is the most amazing I have had."

elgatoloco - 2-3-2006 at 10:03 AM

They closed it down.

lizard lips - 2-3-2006 at 02:55 PM

I was at this Clinic a few weeks ago regarding an American that had a simple procedure done and ended up dying. It really is something that a "Clinic" can operate anywhere and express hope for individuals that are terminal and take thousands of dollars for their worthless treatments.....These doctors are oportunists with no regard for anyone other than themselves. They will BURN IN HELL Im sure. Carma is a wonderful thing!

Dave - 2-3-2006 at 03:40 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by lizard lips
I was at this Clinic a few weeks ago regarding an American that had a simple procedure done and ended up dying. It really is something that a "Clinic" can operate anywhere and express hope for individuals that are terminal and take thousands of dollars for their worthless treatments.....These doctors are oportunists with no regard for anyone other than themselves. They will BURN IN HELL Im sure. Carma is a wonderful thing!


By the same token, no one is forcing stoopid gringos to part with their money. We talk to these folks all the time. I have to bite my tongue and not scream:

"Are you out of your friggin mind?"

[Edited on 2-3-2006 by Dave]

TMW - 2-3-2006 at 06:43 PM

When someone is told there is no hope, you have x weeks or months to live, they most likely aren't thinking logically. Some will accept it and some will fight it, looking for any cure available anywhere in the world if they have the money. Often even the family is on their side in the search. I personally have not had a family member in such a condition nor do I know of anyone. But I can understand it. People will do strange things when afraid. And there are people all too willing to help them out, some good and some bad. In the end what do they have to lose, they're already going to die. If spending their money on an alternative treatment doesn't harm their surviving family I don't have a problem with it.

lizard lips - 2-4-2006 at 10:22 AM

TW. Your absolutly right and thank God I have never been in that position. Through my work I have been involved in checking on these different facilities in Playas as well as Rosirito and several along the border in Chihuahua, Sonora and Tamaulipas. Many of these "Clinics" are owned and operated by individuals from other countries who have lost their license to practice medicine or saw the opportunity to make mega bucks on the "HOPE" that their family members health will improve. Mexico has opened the door to these individuals for many years and there is no control through the Mexican Government to oversee the different treatments that are being used such as injecting different metals into the bodies of cancer patients or being hooked up to an IV full of Hydrogen Peroxide. There is one doctor in Tijuana who has a hugh room full of lounge chairs with IV poles next to them. There must have been thirty chairs. His clinic is dirty--very dirty but his brand new Hummer parked in the driveway is spotless. He has offered alternative treatments for the last 40 years as his father did and has brochures that state that his treatments have a 80% sucess rate for different types of cancer. Something has to be done in Mexico to control these clinics and investigate the use of alternative treatments that are completly worthless. Then again there are preachers in the US that put their hand on the forehead of a cancer patient and the cancer is completly gone---totally amazing....and they dont have to go to Mexico.

King joined the desperate in turning to Mexican clinic

BajaNews - 2-4-2006 at 04:40 PM

http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/nationworld/articles/2257627...

Martin Luther King Jr.'s wife went to visit a Tijuana clinic in a final search for a cure for ovarian cancer. Mexico closed the clinic Thursday.

By Elliot Spagat
February 04, 2006

SAN DIEGO -- Like thousands of other desperately ill Americans, Coretta Scott King was apparently hoping for a medical miracle when she crossed into Mexico.

For a half-century, patients have flocked to clinics south of the border for treatments that are shunned, prohibited or regarded as outright quackery in the United States. Among the treatments offered: blood transfusions from guinea pigs, colon cleansings and the zapping of cancer cells with electrical current.

Supporters say the clinics offer an alternative -- and sometimes a cure -- to people written off by U.S. doctors. Critics say the worst of the clinics do nothing but offer false hope while taking money from people when they are most vulnerable.

"Were patients to return from Mexico cured and doctors saw the unbelievable, positive results, we would pursue it, but we just don't see it," said Dr. Jack Lewin, chief executive of the California Medical Association. "We don't have patients coming back with miraculous cures."

On Thursday, the clinic where the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. died this week was shut down by Mexican authorities. Mexican state officials said the clinic had been carrying out unproven treatments and unauthorized surgeries, employed people who were not properly trained, did not follow proper procedures for treating terminally ill patients, and failed to meet sanitary requirements.

The clinic's director has a criminal past and a reputation for offering dubious treatments. But its assistant administrator, Cesar Castillejos, defended the clinic's record and said he believed the government closed the clinic because of King's death.

King "wasn't stupid," Castillejos said. "She was very smart. She wanted an alternative."

There are about 35 clinics around Tijuana, according to Dr. Alfredo Gruel, health services director from 2000 to 2002 for the Mexican state of Baja California.

The first of the clinics opened in the 1950s to administer laetrile, a substance made from apricot pits that is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The clinics received attention in 1980, when cancer-stricken actor Steve McQueen went to one for laetrile treatment. He died there.

Dr. Sergio Maltos, who regulates clinics at Mexico's Federal Commission for Protection Against Sanitary Risks, said Mexican authorities periodically visit the clinics. But he acknowledged there may be some instances of "pseudo-professionals ... who use treatments that are not backed by scientific evidence."

In 2001, Mexico closed down a Tijuana clinic for operating without a license. The clinic was owned by a San Diego woman, Hulda Clark, who has claimed that a "zapper" cures cancer patients by eliminating parasites and toxins with a mild electric current.

Peggy Pousson went across the border out of desperation in 1978, when her son, Shawn, was battling leukemia. She credits a Tijuana clinic's vitamin-heavy regimen for extending her son's life a year. Pousson said Shawn died at age 10 because doctors at a San Diego hospital bungled a prescription.

For the past decade, Pousson, 65, has ferried patients across the border to clinics in and around Tijuana. She favors those that emphasize nutrition and limit chemotherapy doses.

"There are a lot of bad clinics that I don't go to," she said. "A lot of the patients I took there died, so I stopped going."

The clinics typically charge about $7,000 a week for treatment, meals and lodging, Pousson said.

Three buses and two vans shuttle six days a week between the International Motor Inn, a hotel on the border in San Diego, and the clinics.

Tibor Fodor checked in on Tuesday, one day after Las Vegas doctors delivered a grim prognosis for his 57-year-old wife, Marcela, who has lung cancer.

"They told my wife she had three months to live, but I know that's a lie," said Fodor, whose wife registered at a Tijuana clinic for radiation and hoxsey, a combination of plant extracts.

Some hotel guests say their treatment has worked wonders. Tim Craney of Pueblo, Colo., said he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1983 and has been visiting a Tijuana clinic for two years. He pays $200 a day for daily injections of vitamins and minerals.

"I'm not convinced that chemotherapy is the way to go because it kills everything," said Craney, 78. "Most people I know who have taken it are not alive."

King, who had advanced ovarian cancer, died before ever getting any treatments at the Santa Monica Health Institute, a beachfront compound in Rosarito, about 16 miles south of San Diego, doctors at the clinic said.

The clinic's Web site, www.hospitalsantamonica.com/, said treatments include using microwaves to "heat" cancer cells, nutritional supplements, "ultraviolet blood purification" and colonics.

Kurt W. Donsbach, a former San Diego chiropractor, opened the clinic in 1987. In 1988, the U.S. Postal Service ordered him to stop claiming that a solution of hydrogen peroxide could prevent cancer and ease arthritis pain. In 1997, he was sentenced in San Diego federal court to a year in prison for smuggling more than $250,000 worth of unapproved drugs into the United States from Mexico, according to court records.

"I know of nobody who has engaged in a greater number and variety of health-related schemes and scams," Dr. Stephen Barrett of Allentown, Pa., wrote on his Web site that tracks health fraud, www.quackwatch.org.

Dr. Ted Gansler, director of medical content for the American Cancer Society and an Atlanta physician, said some of the treatments on Donsbach's Web site have no scientific basis.

"It's understandable that people would try anything that offers a reasonable chance of living longer, but the key word is 'reasonable,' " he said. "Treatments being promoted at a place like this include ones that have been shown not to work."

Donsbach did not respond to repeated interview requests. However, on the Web site he defends his work and says that if the definition of "quackery" is the practice of nonconventional forms of healing, "I proudly proclaim myself a 'quack!' "

Clinics under the radar no longer

BajaNews - 2-4-2006 at 04:43 PM

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20060204-9...

Unorthodox treatment facing new scrutiny

By Anna Cearley and Sandra Dibble
February 4, 2006

ROSARITO BEACH ? The death this week of Coretta Scott King at an alternative clinic has brought attention to the proliferation of unorthodox treatment programs in Baja California and is raising questions over how they are monitored.

Baja state health officials said yesterday that the clinic where she died ? Hospital Santa Monica ? evaded detection through misleading information, such as being registered under a different name. Such tactics are often used by clinics that market controversial treatments, said Dr. Francisco Vera Gonz?lez, Baja California's health secretary.

?They start out as a normal clinic and start to practice alternative medicine with promotions in the United States . . . and that's what brings us to this situation,? Vera said.

Baja California health officials are in the process of closing the clinic. They have ordered all patients to leave by Monday.

On its Web site, the 30-bed Hospital Santa Monica describes itself as ?the largest wholistic, alternative medicine hospital in North America.? Most patients, it states, ?have been told that there is no more hope, all traditional therapies having failed.?

King, the widow of civil-rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had gone to the clinic to obtain alternative health treatment for advanced ovarian cancer, but she died Monday, apparently of complications, before treatment.

The facility's Web site lists Kurt Donsbach, a Bonita chiropractor, as its director. However, the health secretary said documents showed another man's name. ?Unfortunately, there are a lots of people who loan their names,? he said.

Donsbach was not at the clinic yesterday.

Irregularities listed by the health department at the clinic include: unknown substances under Donsbach's name; incomplete medical records; and practice of unconventional treatments.

Under its registered name, Santo Tom?s, the clinic was licensed to provide blood transfusions. However, the facility was found to be offering other, unauthorized services, including surgical procedures, X-rays, a clinical laboratory and a pharmacy, according to the Baja California Health Secretariat.

Cesar Castillejos, an assistant administrator at Santa Monica, said staff members had been in contact with Baja California health authorities about a week before King's death to update their records and address concerns.

?They had knowledge of everything,? Castillejos said. ?We don't have a permit for surgeries and other things, but we do have some permits that allowed us to work.?

Also this week, a man from the United States ? Jason Sears, 38, the singer in a punk-rock band ? died while receiving treatment for drug addiction at a Tijuana clinic that uses experimental procedures. Vera said that center wasn't licensed, and it has apparently been abandoned. Mexican authorities attributed his death to other health problems.

This is not the first time Hospital Santa Monica has been in the public eye in recent years. Eugenia Serebryakova, a 76-year-old woman diagnosed with early stages of colon cancer, died in 2001 after seeking treatment there ? and her two daughters blame the clinic for her death.

Donsbach told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2002 that Serebryakova was very ill when she arrived ? an assertion the daughters denied. They filed a medical malpractice suit against Donsbach in San Diego Superior Court, but a judge threw it out in 2004.

It was unclear whether Mexican health authorities had taken measures against Santa Monica before this week.

Vera said, ?We can't intervene simply for questions of the press. . . . We can't act directly without a complaint.?

Baja California health authorities have previously made efforts to close unlicensed clinics, with mixed success.

?It is very easy for clinics to reopen. It is very difficult to close them down permanently,? said Dr. Alfredo Gruel Culebro, a former Baja California health official who led a sweep against unlicensed alternative clinics in 2001. ?Even if they are shut down, they can request a new permit altogether and start operating practically next door.?

Sometimes law enforcement officials on both sides of the border collaborate to shut down alternative clinics. U.S. and Mexican authorities worked together in May 2004 to close a Tijuana clinic, Hospital San Mart?n, also known as St. Joseph's Hospital, and its Bonita-based operator, American Metabolic Institute.

The two key figures, American Metabolic director William Fry and San Mart?n director Dr. Geronimo Rubio, have been charged with filing false tax returns and fraudulent billing of U.S. insurance companies. Each is free on $100,000 bond while awaiting trial, scheduled for April.

At Hospital Santa Monica, a modest white compound overlooking the ocean, patients and family members said they were frustrated to hear they would have to leave by Monday.

Susan Purkhiser, 38, whose mother was being treated for cancer, said she believes the closure is due to international pressure after King's death.

?I think our government put pressure on the Mexican government because I believe they are probably quite embarrassed that someone of her stature would think to go out of the U.S. for health care treatment,? Purkhiser said. ?But the U.S. health care system leaves us no alternatives, because most of these holistic places are usually shut down in the U.S.?

-----------------------

Photo by DAVID MAUNG
A sign posted by Baja California officials on the door of the 30-bed Hospital Santa Monica in Rosarito Beach says the clinic's operations have been suspended.

[Edited on 2-4-2006 by BajaNews]

TW On The Money

MrBillM - 2-4-2006 at 06:00 PM

The people who are showing up at these clinics are those that have been written off and directed to a nearby Hospice to go and die. What have they got to lose ? If they can afford it and it gives them some comfort and hope in their final days, why not ? It's their money and their choice to make. That money would simply go to their heirs, anyway, so they might as well spend it the way they want to. I've watched too many people I have cared for who died without hope to begrudge it to anyone.

Paulina - 2-4-2006 at 07:36 PM

Here?s my personal take on the subject in case anyone?s interested. My father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was a smoker and worked hard his entire life around cancer causing petroleum fuels. His tumor began in his lungs and had grown all the way up his neck and into his brain.

He and my Mother decided that they would investigate alternative medicine south of the border.

They bought the ticket to recovery at a very healthy cost. They were told to expect criticism. Western Medicine as well as the rest of his family and friends would discourage the treatments. The medical industry and insurance companies would be out of business if they admitted that the alternative route worked. The families left behind only want the money that would be paid to the doctors to save his life. He was a victim of civilized medicine and greedy children.

They moved into their motor home and into a campground/hotel at the border in San Ysidro where a shuttle bus took them and a large group of other hopefuls into TJ. They changed their diets, changed medication, their outlook on life and relationship with their family. The family was an enemy out for money, out to discourage and rob them of hope.

My parents lived in San Ysidro for months, alone except for their new friends and doctors who encouraged them to continue the expensive treatments even though there was signs that one might think that his cancer was progressing. The seizures he was experiencing were due to the tumor shrinking, leaving air pockets in his brain that would eventually fill in as his health improved. The same with his loss of speech. This also was a good sign. The wooden spoon that he had to carry with him to put between his teeth so he wouldn?t swallow his tongue would soon be on the mantle as a trophy to the cancer battle he was to win!

We were asked to visit and ride along on the bus to meet the doctors who had all the answers and were so misunderstood. I was shown x-rays that were a little blurry, but if I looked hard enough and only believed what I saw, I could see the areas where the tumor had retreated, leaving healthy gaps that were causing the epileptic reactions my father was experiencing. Sorry, but I just couldn?t see it. But, they were warned that I might be a nay-sayer.

The doctors had moved him from their motor home to a ?hospital? where they could keep a closer eye on him as he improved. My mother slept in a bed next to his, leaving him alone but under the watchful eye of a Nurse and his wooden spoon everyday while she went to get food, do laundry, buy medications, transfer money, check on the motor home etc.

One night around 9 pm I got a phone call from my mom. It seems that maybe I had been right all along. My dad wasn?t getting better and they were scared. Would I please come down and get them. At their motor home I found the name of the ?hospital? and from there got a map from the night desk clerk.

Around midnight I found them in a rat hole of a hotel. Their room was dark; he was on a bed pushed against the back wall. It seems that hope had run out and so had the doctors. For some reason they stopped coming. My father was able to tell my mom that the last time she was out he had a seizure while the ?nurse? stood over him and watched, not offering to help as he reached out for his spoon that was sitting on his bedside table. His bed hadn?t been changed, his wounds hadn?t been dressed. It is amazing what hope will do to the eyesight of those who hang on to dreams.

I phoned my father?s family doctor in the states and informed him of my dad?s grave situation. He made the necessary phone calls to the hospital in Glendale as well as an ambulance service that was willing to come into Mexico to carry him home. I then phoned the Mexican doctor. He told me that he would be right over to meet me; I should cancel the ambulance as they will be forced to ?dump your father on the curb at the U.S. border as he would not be allowed back into the States without his authorization.? He would bring with him my father?s medical charts, as this has all been a misunderstanding as I was over reacting. If I did anything else to alter the situation the police would be called.

Somehow the ambulance from Glendale was able to meet us in TJ before the doctor. They couldn?t believe their eyes and fought back gagging reflexes as they rolled my dad onto two gurneys connected side by side and wheeled him to the curb and into the ambulance. We were at the border and into the U.S. without a blink of an eye by the border agents. We had flashing lights and a clear shot to Glendale the entire way home.

I watched my dad take his last breath three days later. We buried him on his birthday.

It is not always the heirs that are the ones left without money that was spent on the hopes of the dying. It is most often the spouses who have lost more than a life partner. They have lost hope, trust, family, and the money that should have been there for them to see retirement. Instead it went to fill the pockets of those ?doctors? who are so misunderstood by Western Medicine, insurance companies and money hungry families back home. We weren?t robbed of an inheritance, that money should have been there for my mother. We were robbed from spending time with our father, my children?s grandfather the last months of his life.

There were some that fully recovered, my mom exchanges mail and photographs with the family of a young girl that they met in the campground. She has grown up to be a beautiful young lady. Some believe that it was the alternative medicine that did the trick. I chose to believe otherwise. It just wasn't her turn, or maybe it was.

P<*)))><

An edited post script. This topic hit a nerve with me, thus my need to post. I would appreciated those of you who knew my family back in the Amigos days to not broach the subject with my mom as it is still a very sensitive subject. Thanks! P.

[Edited on 5-2-2006 by Paulina]

bajarich - 2-4-2006 at 10:07 PM

I'll bet he got his money up front, and I bet it was a lot of money. Fraud is fraud, and just because the victims had nowhere else to turn doesn't mean that he should not be shut down and thrown in a Mexican clink. He was not even a real doctor.
People who are that ill and need someone to give them hope should turn to their church for solace.

David K - 2-4-2006 at 11:13 PM

Thank you for sharing this Paulina... I am without words....

LarryK - 2-5-2006 at 09:16 AM

I had a friend of mine that was given 6 months to live by two doctors is still alive 15 years later. He had skin cancer on his back. He went to a Clinic in Tijuana that put hilm on a diet and skin treatment.

But also on the down side we took a friend of ours to the same clinic that had throat cancer, and they were unable to help him.

I think that each case is different.