Mexican Clinic Where King Died Is Closed

By TRACI CARL, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 3, 1:02 PM ET

MEXICO CITY - The Mexican clinic where Coretta Scott King died has been
closed, U.S. Embassy officials said Friday.

Mexican officials weren't immediately available to explain why the clinic
was shut. 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," 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."

King traveled last week to the beachside Santa Monica Health Institute in
the Mexican beach 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.

King's children have said she died there Monday night, although a
spokeswoman for the U.S. consulate in Tijuana has said King 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 King's case said she arrived in poor
health and they couldn't even begin to treat her before she died early this
week.

"She came here with half her body paralyzed," Dr. Rafael Cedeno, who was
overseeing her case, told reporters after King's death. "She was in really
bad condition."

King's death raised questions about the safety of alternative medical
clinics across Mexico, many of which aren't closely regulated.

It was unclear if Donsbach's past had anything to do with the closing of the
Santa Monica clinic.

In 1997, 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. 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 Donsbach and his nephew to stop
claiming that a solution of hydrogen peroxide that they sell 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 Donsbach was and there was no one else available to comment.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the clinic's closure in
Friday's editions


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