LAT: Mexican Clinic Where (Coretta) King Died Is Closed

[DeepModem Mom]

Mexican Clinic Where King Died Is Closed
By Michael Muskal, Times Staff Writer


The Mexican hospital where Coretta Scott King spent her last hours has been closed, a U.S. Embassy official in Mexico City confirmed this morning.

The Santa Monica Health Institute, 16 miles south of San Diego in Rosarito, was closed by Mexican authorities, Judith Bryan, a spokeswoman for the embassy said in a telephone interview. U.S. consular officials were helping relocate American patients, she said.

No reason for the closure was immediately available....

***

According to its web site, the clinic was founded Dr. Kurt W. Donsbach, in 1983, and "is based on a very eclectic approach to the treatment of chronic degenerative disease, diseases by and large considered incurable by the orthodox medical profession."...

***

Its major clientele is cancer patients, like King who was suffering from advanced-stage ovarian cancer when she arrived. King died early Tuesday at 78....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-020306clinic_lat,0,4500460.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=morenews

[xultar]

1. Whom ever sent her down there deserves a beat'n

[cantstandbush]

12. You can't really say that about the terminally ill. Until you are in tha

position, I wouldn't second guess anyone on what they do to try to live.

[chaplainM]

2. Kurt Donsbach has a long history of fraud

Here's a great summary of Kurt Donsbach's more serious problems with the law:

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/donsbach.html

[PSPS]

3. This is fairly common

People who have little or no hope with traditional medicine will sometimes try one of these "alternative medicine" clinics in Mexico. And, frankly, I can't blame them. When you're dying, you'll try anything (you can afford) to avoid it. And even though the odds are long that anything worthwhile will come out of it, desperate people will do desperate things. People buy lottery tickets too.

Steve McQueen and many others have been this route.

[chaplainM]

4. And the people who prey upon the sick and desperate...

...are the most despicable crooks in the world.

[ariesgem]

5. My best friend who at 36 found out she had breast cancer

in the early stages went to one of those clinics in Mexico because she wanted an alternative to chemo. Precious time and money was wasted with "doctors" giving her their "cancer fighting" herbal treatments. They told her she was cured. When she got back, the cancer had advanced to where it was terminal. She died at age 37.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Oh, gosh -- so sorry, ariesgem.

[pitohui]

8. that's awful but it depends on the clinic

my friend was only accepted after she was told there was no treatment in the usa but my friend was significantly older and would not have survived chemo/radiation nor was it offered to her because they said bluntly it would not help and it would only increase suffering

the usa doctors just wanted her to accept that she'd be gone in 6 weeks and she simply didn't feel bad enough yet to be willing to do that

we all have to make our own choices

[Bridget Burke]

9. Your friend's case is really sad.

She might have had a chance with "conventional" treatment.

[pitohui]

7. some hope is better than no hope

my friend was an older lady also, given 6 weeks to live by usa traditional medicine

went to a clinic in mexico and gained several more months, plus sufficient energy to travel about the country and take a last trip to see friends, family etc.

king wasn't going to survive end-stage ovarian cancer, no one does, wasn't gonna happen, if they gave her some hope and attention at the end, then i won't crap on them

if there is evidence of abuse or of a rip-off it's different of course

[chaplainM]

10. Nope

False hope, usually bought at the price of financial ruin, and lost opportunity for effective conventional treatment, is much worse than facing up to one's fate.

[pinniped]

11. The other day I read on sfgate.com this clown wasn't even a real doctor.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/01/MNGHHH0QT91.DTL&hw=alternative&sn=043&sc=451

--Donsbach, who describes himself as a doctor on his Web site, has no medical degree, and has been accused in California, New York and by the FDA of improperly selling vitamins and supplements as medicines to treat disease, and of awarding diplomas at an unaccredited school that taught nontraditional nutrition.--

--"There's nobody worse," said retired psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Barrett of Allentown, Pa., who runs www.quackwatch.org, a Web site that tracks health frauds and has been monitoring Donsbach's activities since 1971.--

[BlueIris]

15. Hey, thanks. I'd never heard of quackwatch.org.

Excellent. I'm so happy to know that such a website exists. We could use more of that in this confused society, rife with illiteracy about health information and the many creeps attempting to swindle, cheat, molest, torture and fuck us over under the guise of being healthcare providers, something this thread provides several examples of.

[BuddhaGirl]

16. that doctor that runs quackwatch site is a freak

he even goes after Dr. Andrew Weil, who is a Harvard-trained physician and runs a renowned and highly respected integrative medicine program at the University of Arizona. Definitely not a "quack."

Western medicine is definitely not the be all end all!

[edhopper]

17. He may not be a quack,

but he isn't trustworthy. Harvard or no Harvard (ever hear of Dr. John Mack?), he touts alternative cures without any verifiable testing. He makes millions marketing and endorsing supplements.
The latest issue of Nutrition Action Newsletter, put out be the Center for Science in the Public Interest, has a scathing assessment of Weil's medical judgment.

[UTUSN]

13. and Mexico's fault was - beCAUSE - ????????? n/t

[DeepModem Mom]

14. It sounds like it was Mexico itself which closed the clinic. nt