Sea change in government tactics against CAM providers

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Jan, 2007 by Thomas S. Lee

On September 28, 2006, Dr. James Forsythe, MD, HMD, was informed that he was being indicted on charges of smuggling Human Growth Hormone (HGH) from Israel. In a third assault on his family and practice, armed government agents from the FDA pushed into the waiting room of the Century Wellness Clinic in Reno, Nevada, loudly stating their intention to arrest the doctor. Invading the doctor's office during a patient consultation, FDA agent John Zelinsky demanded that the doctor appear in court the next day. In addition to courtesy, these public servants lacked identification, warrants, or court documents of any kind.

Sadly, observers of regulatory efforts against alternative medicine might not consider this type of harassment even unusual in recent years. Some aspects of this case, however, concern us as indications of an ominous shift in FDA enforcement strategies.

While agents intimidated staff and patients at his office, slanderous charges were published by the Reno Gazette Journal. One quoted an investigator from the Nevada State Medical Board who described Dr. Forsythe as one of the state's "worst offenders" licensed as an MD in Nevada. Selective claims from a disgruntled employee and charges that had already been dismissed as frivolous helped to round out the initial hit piece in the local newspaper.

The coordinated attack on Dr. Forsythe included simultaneous pressures on hospitals to deny him privileges, on insurance companies to drop him, and on nursing home to sever directorships. This method of breaking a doctor financially and professionally has proven to be effective elsewhere in America. In bypassing the US legal system, the cost benefits to these huge executive branch agencies must be impressive. Agency decision-makers evidently are satisfied with these methods, as they are becoming more coordinated and brazenly used throughout the regulatory environment to pre-empt citizen rights to due process.

The new acting director of the FDA, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, is an oncologist from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and a former head of the National Cancer Institute. He is not yet confirmed as Director, and his agenda is unclear, but this bust confirms that current FDA priorities are to curtail the efforts of all medical pioneers who, like Forsythe, popularize complementary or alternative cancer treatments. A particular thorn in his side may be that Forsythe's clinic is getting radically better results--70-80% response rates in even stage 4 cancer patients, compared to the 3-14% gains seen in even the most innovative recent chemotherapeutic trials.

Charges that Forsythe now faces regarding the illegal importation of HGH from Israel and the treatment of a non-disease--aging--with an "unapproved" medicine are not only false, they are moot. Dr. Forsythe is a board-certified oncologist practicing within the scope of his license as an MD and a homeopathic medical doctor. He uses medicines and chemotherapy drugs in which he has been trained and which he has used for 33 years of undisputed success, and these have been obtained only through legally approved pharmacies.

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The practice of medicine in any medical philosophy permits the use of naturally occurring human biochemicals to treat patients for any range of symptoms or diseases for which the doctor has been educated, tested, and licensed by his/her state. Thankfully, federal approval is not yet a requirement for the practice of medicine.

The Reno Gazette Journal also featured seemingly irrelevant information about Dr. Forsythe's wife, Earlene, a nurse practitioner also working at the Century Wellness Clinic. In citing her activities as a Republican Party activist, the local media deviated from reporting pertinent information about this incident. Informed observers will note, however, that this reflects a deeper context to the whole affair.

Earlene Forsythe has long antagonized the Nevada Medical Board through her work in forming the Homeopathic Medical Board, helping to save chelation therapy as a choice for Nevada citizens within the scope of that Board in the late 1990s, and, more recently, in initiating the daringly conceived Nevada Institutional Review Board (NIRB). The NIRB became law in 2005 and is administered by the HMD Board to evaluate scientifically appropriate natural medicines. The political horse-trading to get the NIRB functioning has been fearsome, and both Dr. Forsythe and Earlene Forsythe have become problematic for some powerful interests that are shaping American health care services.

The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) is an organization of medical (MD) licensing boards from all 50 states in the US as well as the osteopathic (DO) boards in 13 states. Their stated mission is to "improve the quality, safety, and integrity of health care by developing and promoting high standards for physician licensure and practice." In actuality, a major objective of the FSMB is to offer training to all state board officials in how they can deal with "disruptive" physicians by systematically decreasing their ability to participate in managed care and insurance programs. Coordinated media and business accusations comprise the increasingly familiar strategies.