Mexican clinics sell hope, questionable cures

CNN ^ | February 8, 2006 | Staff

[Anti-Bubba182]

For a half-century, patients have flocked to clinics south of the border for treatments that are shunned, prohibited or regarded as 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.[snip]

[snip] On Thursday, the Santa Monica Health Institute -- the clinic where Coretta Scott King died last 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............"

[Anti-Bubba182]

Sad that desperate people are taken advantage of.

[The Red Zone]

Well at least they waited till Ms. King was gone. Otherwise the poop would've struck the propeller.

[Sybeck1]

Steve McQueen tried this years ago before his passing right?

[Wally_Kalbacken]

McQueen had mesothielioma - a cancer which is in the lining covering the lungs, caused by asbestos exposure and inhalation. He was given no hope in LA and went to Baja California to some clinic which was run by a fellow who had formerly been a licensed dentist in the U.S. There patients were treated with a lot of unconventional (read: quack) modes of cancer treatment, including coffee enemas. He died of cardiac arrest caused by blood clotting which occurred after surgery to remove tumor masses in his chest and abdomen.

[Mack the knife]

Reminds me of an editorial in Analog Science Fiction a number of years ago that advocated allowing "quacks" to operate with one condition: all patient records had to be kept up to date and published. That way the efficacy of a "non-establishment" treatment could be verified independently. If the quack fudged the numbers, he was out of business and prosecuted for fraud.

Had a certain appeal, considering the current state of the FDA regulation of medical procedures.

[bjs1779]

Maybe if he tried the coffee enemas first instead of the chemotherapy, he may of had a better chance? I don't anybody who brags about chemo either. In fact, all the ones I have known that had their hopes buoyed up by it are dead. Have you noticed the same?