"Clinic closed after Coretta Scott King's death"

Clinic closed after King's death
By Traci Carl
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 4, 2006


MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican clinic where Coretta Scott King died has
been closed, U.S. Embassy officials said yesterday.
Mexican officials weren't immediately available to explain why the
clinic was shuttered, but Judith Bryan, a spokeswoman for the U.S.
Embassy in Mexico City, said the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana was helping
patients find new facilities.
The consulate's spokeswoman, Liza Davis, said 20 American patients
were at the clinic when it was closed Thursday. Mexican authorities
gave the Americans three days to leave the country.
"None of them were in serious enough condition that we had to get
them back in an ambulance," Miss Davis said. "Lots of them had family
with them or means to get back on their own. Those that don't, we'll be
working with them, and the hospital will be helping them as well."
Mrs. King traveled last week to the beachside Santa Monica Health
Institute in the Mexican resort of Rosarito, 15 miles south of San
Diego. She was seeking treatment for advanced-stage ovarian cancer and
a stroke she suffered several months ago.
Mrs. King's children have said she died there Monday night,
although a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana has said she
died early Tuesday.
The clinic specializes in alternative treatments for patients with
incurable illnesses.
Its founder and director, Kurt W. Donsbach, has a criminal past and
a reputation for offering dubious treatments to desperately ill
patients, according to court records and a watchdog group.
However, the clinic doctors assigned to Mrs. King's case said she
arrived in poor health and they could not even begin to treat her
before she died.
"She came here with half her body paralyzed," Dr. Rafael Cedeno,
who was overseeing her case, told reporters after Mrs. King's death.
"She was in really bad condition."
Mrs. King's death raised questions about the safety of alternative
medical clinics across Mexico, many of which aren't closely regulated.
It was not clear whether Mr. Donsbach's past had anything to do
with the closing of the Santa Monica clinic.
In 1997, Mr. Donsbach was sentenced in federal court in San Diego
to a year in prison for smuggling more than $250,000 worth of
unapproved drugs into the United States from Mexico, according to court
records. Mr. Donsbach was sentenced on three felony counts, including
introducing unapproved drugs into interstate commerce, smuggling
merchandise contrary to law and income tax evasion.
In 1988, the U.S. Postal Service ordered Mr. Donsbach and his
nephew to stop claiming that a solution of hydrogen peroxide that they
sold could prevent cancer and ease arthritis pain.
A woman who answered the phone at the clinic's corporate offices in
San Diego said she had no information on the closure of the Rosarito
clinic. Identifying herself only by her first name, Maria, she said she
did not know where Mr. Donsbach could be reached.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the clinic's
closure in yesterday's editions.

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