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Looking for hope

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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 want patients coming back with
miraculous cures.''

On Thursday, the clinic where the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. died this week shut down and the 20 American patients there were
told by Mexican authorities to leave the country, according to the U.S.
Embassy in Mexico. Mexican officials were not immediately available to
explain why. But the clinic's director has a criminal past and a
reputation for offering dubious treatments.

The area around the border city of Tijuana is a hotbed for the clinics,
with about 35 of them, 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 widespread 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
drug 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.

(Published: February 4, 2006)