Three years ago, my friend Kathy's 21-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer. In the process of seeking medical treatment, he was told he needed invasive surgery, something that terrified him and he resisted. He asked Kathy if she could help him find an alternative, and being a mom who was desperately worried about her son, she swallowed her skepticism and recommended a self-professed "herbal healer" in San Francisco whom a close friend had enthusiastically endorsed as helping to cure her own cancer.
At one of the very first sessions with Dr. Edward Feng in his clinic in San Francisco, Kathy reports that he told her son he could cure his cancer if he would come for treatment every day for three months (at $50 a pop). Kathy's son wanted to believe so much that he agreed. Kathy went with him in the beginning, hoping to convince him to return to medical treatment if the herbal cures didn't work.
The herbal cures turned out to be something Dr. Feng called "foot acupressure", in which he used a metal prong and banged on the son's feet until they were black and blue. The treatment was very painful but the son persisted in going back, somehow becoming convinced that the pain was actually helpful. After about a month, on one of the visits, Kathy told Dr. Feng that she had the flu, and he gave her some Chinese medicine, some pills on which he wrote some Chinese characters that translated roughly 'Six spirit pills." Kathy took them home with her and somewhat reluctantly popped one into her mouth. Within a few hours, she was vomiting violently, and by morning her hands and arms had swollen to twice their size and she had a terrible earache. Of course she stopped taking the pills, and when her son insisted on continuing his treatment, she told Dr. Feng about her reaction. He denied that the pills had anything to do with her symptoms.
Kathy and her son quickly ran out of money for the treatment, and the gas costs to drive all the way to San Francisco every day were mounting up. Dr. Feng agreed to keep on treating her son without charge with the agreement that the son would pay him back when he was "cured". After three months, Dr. Feng claimed that the tumors had shrunk and that the son was close to being cured. Kathy convinced her son to have a CT scan to confirm that the tumors had indeed shrunk. The scan revealed that not only had the tumors NOT shrunk, they had grown. Kathy and her son returned to Dr. Feng with the news, at which point Dr. Feng said that if the son EVER went to a western doctor, he would never treat him again. He threatened them both angrily, although at that point, they were pretty much finished with him.
But that was not the end of the story by any means. Sometime later, Kathy came to me and asked if I could help report Dr. Feng for his "quackery". She was convinced that his claims of curing cancer were harming other people, and she thought the pills he was dispensing must have something in them that was illegal. Since Dr. Feng did not have a license to practice medicine in California, I wasn't sure what to suggest, but I helped her compose a letter to the Medical Board of California. At that point, I assumed nothing would happen but that she would feel she had done the responsible thing by reporting him. There were many other patients who were relying on him for their treatment, but apparently no one else had reported his treatments to the authorities.
To both of our surprise, an investigator from the Medical Board contacted her right away and asked for additional information. In fact, investigators visited her home and interviewed her extensively. Since she had kept the pills he gave her, the case was referred to the FDA, who analyzed the pills. The pills were determined to contain arsenic and an extract of poisonous toad venom. No wonder she became so ill! The FDA then did a sting operation in which an agent bought five vials of the pills from Dr. Feng to confirm their contents. When confronted with the results, Dr. Feng admitted they had frog poison but he claimed it was "good poison". Dr. Feng's case was sent to Federal Court, and while we do not yet know the outcome (he has a hearing on June 24), if found guilty he will have to stop dispensing the pills, close down his clinic, and/or pay a fine of up to $100,000. He may even be sent to prison.
The moral of this story is sad and it is simple. People seek treatments with no evidence of effectiveness when they are desperate. But not only do these treatments not cure cancer, they can be seriously harmful, both in the substance they deliver to the body as well as the delay in getting more effective treatment. The fact that Kathy had the guts to admit her gullibility, get over her embarrassment for having enabled her son's behavior, and do something about it is the lesson here. She spent little time blaming herself and decided to turn her anger into action.
If you or someone you know has had a similar experience, encourage them to report the provider to the Medical Board of California or the Board in your state. In Kathy's case, the Board as well as the FDA were incredibly supportive, attentive and responsive. And her actions may have saved the lives of countless others.
If you have any bad experience with Dr. Edward Feng of the China House Clinic in San Francisco, you can contact the FDA at the following address (Case #: CR 3-11-70565 EMC):
Health care professionals and consumers are encouraged to report any adverse events or side effects related to the use of these products to the FDA's MedWatch Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program. Reports can be made by:
· completing and submitting the report online at www.fda.gov/MedWatch/report.htm1; or· calling (800) 332-1088.
There is a happy ending here. Kathy's son subsequently went for legitimate medical treatment (i.e. chemotherapy and ultimately some surgery), and he is currently in remission and the tumors have truly disappeared. He hopes to return to college in the Fall.
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Our current medical system is also plagued with fraudulent administering of pills by greedy doctors