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 Health & Beauty | September 2007 
Baja Clinic Known for Unorthodox Care Closed
 Anna Cearley & Penni Crabtree - San Diego Union-Tribune
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| | A Baja state health official said Hospital Santa Monica is authorized for "general medicine and for consultations and diagnostics." Nothing outside the building indicates its ties to Bonita businessman Kurt Donsbach, known for offering alternative treatments considered dubious by many medical experts. (John Gibbins/Union-Tribune) |
Tijuana – For the second time in two years, Baja California health authorities this week shut down an alternative health clinic that provided unorthodox treatments to mostly gravely ill U.S. patients.
The clinic, promoted over the Internet by its San Diego-based marketing arm as Hospital Santa Monica, originally was closed in early 2006 after civil rights activist Coretta Scott King died there.
It had since quietly reopened without a permit under the name Centro de Atención Integral, Baja California health officials said. But the clinic was still peddling the unproven treatments of its founder, Bonita businessman Kurt Donsbach, under the Hospital Santa Monica moniker.
This time, the Rosarito Beach clinic was providing unauthorized services, said Jose Guadalupe Bustamante Moreno, the state's secretary of health. Health authorities also documented 11 irregularities such as incomplete medical records, improper storage of medications and propaganda of unorthodox treatments.
The unorthodox treatments, promoted on the Hospital Santa Monica Web site, included treating cancer with insulin and unproven, experimental vaccines.
Similar irregularities were documented last year at the clinic. The 78-year-old widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. died there in January 2006, though the hospital said at the time that her treatment hadn't begun. It was closed a month later.
Bustamante said the new clinic had obtained a “notice of operation,” which is the first step toward obtaining a permit.
It presented itself to Mexican health authorities as a provider of regular clinic services and was never authorized to provide alternative medicine, he said. Donsbach's name never appeared in documents.
“They aren't doing what they told me they would do,” Bustamante said.
Several patients or patient family members treated at the clinic in recent weeks have said Donsbach was regularly there and presented himself as the person in charge.
The Web site for Hospital Santa Monica last week said all therapies at the clinic are “selected and are coordinated by Dr. Donsbach.”
Donsbach, who has a 1996 felony conviction for tax evasion and smuggling illegal medicines across the border, has no medical degree and isn't licensed to practice medicine in Mexico or the United States.
Carlos Negrete, Donsbach's attorney, said his client is a “nutritional consultant” and doesn't treat patients. He acknowledged that Mexican officials have “temporarily interrupted” clinic operations and said the clinic is challenging the closure in the Mexican court system.
Yesterday, the Hospital Santa Monica Web site wasn't operational. Negrete said the Web site is “undergoing routine maintenance and updating.”
The clinic closure follows a story in The San Diego Union-Tribune on Sunday about the clinic's latest incarnation and its continued marketing as Donsbach's Hospital Santa Monica.
The clinic is one of numerous alternative health care facilities that have opened in the Tijuana area over the past few decades. Many are controlled by U.S. citizens who register the facilities through Mexican operatives to avoid detection by local health authorities.
The alternative clinics lure mostly U.S. patients with promises of potential cures. Many medical experts dismiss the treatments offered by such clinics as dubious at best and potentially dangerous at worst.
“Cross-border clinics have been problematical for years, and they seem to keep rising from the dead,” said Dr. Robert Baratz, acting president of the Massachusetts-based National Council Against Health Fraud. “Every time you think they've been stopped from doing these shenanigans, they reincarnate with a new name and new front people, but usually the same people behind them.”
Bustamante said health officials failed in previous visits to the clinic to detect that it was operating because patients apparently were being kept at nearby hotels. No patients were at the clinic Tuesday, but health authorities said they found documentation on nine.
Bustamante said Baja California is trying to build its reputation as an option for U.S. citizens to obtain affordable, quality health care with the opening of modern, private facilities.
Clinics such as the one closed Tuesday have no place there, he said.
“We don't want them because it affects our other doctors and clinics and we lose credibility,” Bustamante said. |
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