Frauds that kill

Charlie Anderson at Stuff reports:

Her only mistake, she said, was that she cared too much.

As cancer ate away at Yvonne Maine’s skull, the only crime, iridologist Ruth Nelson said, was not giving up on the patient earlier.

But she didn’t. Instead, for 18 months, she treated Maine with alternative therapies after diagnosing her problem by looking into her eyes. Months later, after Maine’s cancer had begun to expose her brain, Nelson continued to warn her client off seeing a doctor. Finally, in 2009, Maine went to hospital. A year later she died.

It takes a special breed of delusion or evil to not just make money from dying desperate patients, but to manipulate them away from actual treatments that could extend their life.

Head of Waipuna Hospice Richard Thurlow said the increasing encroachment of unproven therapy into the care of vulnerable patients was “insidious”.

“When you have terminal diagnosis your hope levels are quite low so anyone who provides the opportunity for that hope increasing will appeal to those individuals.”

Thurlow, who has a background in pharmacology, said one patient was told to move house because it was on a “ley line” that carried a bad spiritual aura.

“At that time a family is so vulnerable it makes you feel quite sick to the stomach to hear that.”

Sick, and angry, is my reaction.

New Zealand Society of Medical Herbalists president Leanne Halliwell said cases like Maine’s threatened to tarnish the reputation of all alternative therapists.

Her organisation had lobbied hard to get members under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act that holds medical professionals legally accountable. Alternative therapists are either self-regulated or not regulated at all.

That’s probably because they are not health practitioners. It would be like Benjamin Easton being registered with the Law Society because he represents himself in court.

In 2003, former GP Ricky Gorringe was struck off the medical register and ordered to pay more than $100,000 in fines and court costs after the Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal found him guilty of disgraceful and professional misconduct for his treatment of two Hamilton women.

The tribunal said Gorringe’s methods, which revolved around a scientifically unproven test and asking God to kill bacteria, led to unnecessary pain for one of the women as her illness went untreated.

Gorringe is still operating a health clinic in Hamilton which offers bio-energy diagnosis and homeopathy.

Bio-energy!! Total delusion.

However, Holt said regulation was not the answer as that would legitimise practises he says are “ridiculous”.

Instead, he believed the current law was appropriate.

If, as it seemed with Maine’s case, that someone had contributed to her death, the law was simple.

“There is a clear cut legal case and they should be prosecuted accordingly.”

Absolutely.