The NaturoDoc Blog

On September 28, 2006, Dr. James Forsythe, MD, HMD — who has been called “the best complementary and alternative physician in the U.S.” by Burton Goldberg, the voice of alternative medicine — was informed that he was being indicted on charges of smuggling Human Growth Hormone (HGH) from Israel. Armed government agents from the FDA pushed into the waiting room of the Century Wellness Clinic in Reno, Nevada, loudly stating their intent to arrest the doctor. Invading the doctor’s office during a patient consultation, the agents demanded that he appear in court the next day. Not to mention courtesy, they lacked warrants, identification, or court documents of any kind.

While FDA agents were intimidating staff and patients over unfounded charges, slanderous articles were being published by the Reno Gazette Journal. One quoted an investigator from the Nevada State Medical Board who described Dr. Forsythe as one of the “worst offenders” licensed as an MD in Nevada. Selective claims from a disgruntled employee and charges that had already been dismissed as frivolous by federal and state courts helped to round out the initial hit pieces in the local newspaper.

The coordinated attack on Dr. Forsythe included simultaneous pressures on hospitals to deny him privileges, insurance companies to drop him, and nursing home directorships to be severed. This method of breaking a doctor professionally and financially has proven to be effective elsewhere in America, and in bypassing the U.S. legal system, the cost benefits to these huge investigative agencies must be impressive. Agency decisionmakers evidently are satisfied with these methods, because they are becoming more coordinated and used brazenly in today’s regulatory environment.

The new director of the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, is an oncologist from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and former head of the National Cancer Institute. His new priorities for the FDA appear to be to curtail the efforts of pioneers such as Forsythe who are popularizing complementary and alternative cancer treatments. A particular thorn in his side may be that Forsythe’s clinic is getting radically better results — 70-80 percent response rates in even the most advanced cancer patients, versus the 3-14 percent gains seen in conventional protocols using highly toxic and obscenely expensive chemotherapy drugs.

The charges Forsythe faces regarding HGH are not only false — they are also moot. Forsythe is a board-certified oncologist practicing within the scope of both of his licenses as an MD oncologist and a homeopathic medical doctor, with medicines and chemotherapy drugs he has procured through approved channels. The practice of medicine — under any type of medical licensure — permits the use of naturally occurring human biochemicals to treat patients for any range of symptoms or diseases that the doctor deems appropriate.

The Reno Gazette Journal also featured seemingly irrelevant information about Dr. Forsythe’s wife, Earleen Forsythe, a nurse practitioner who also works in the clinic and who has had an important role in the Nevada Republican party. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic (Minority) Leader of the U.S. Senate, is apparently intent upon neutralizing Republican opposition at election time in his home state. This attack has conveniently removed Mrs. Forsythe from her critical role as a Republican fundraiser and campaigner exactly at election time. With the partisan loyalties involved, the timing of the FDA action is clearly more than a coincidence.

The Federation of State Medical Boards is an organization of medical (MD) licensing boards from all 50 states in the U.S. as well as the osteopathic (DO) boards in 13 states. The stated mission of the FSMB 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 in how medical boards can deal with “disruptive” or “rogue” physicians by systematically decreasing their ability to participate in managed care and insurance programs. The shared goals of this FSMB dovetail closely with national regulatory agencies such as the FDA and international pharmacy cartels, which are all seeking more centralized standards designed to benefit the most powerful forces influencing modern medicine.

Protecting the public from harm is a serious responsibility, and state legislators, medical boards and health provider institutions certainly must take that responsibility seriously. However, a physician must be given due process under the state law that licenses and defines that practice, including the right to respond to his accusers and defend himself in a duly-constituted state court.

In this case, the “trial” was in the popular press, from accusations made by government and business interests that seek to eliminate this doctor’s successful practice. Efforts to discredit this renowned oncologist and homeopathic physician and remove his income by destroying his ability to practice have been accomplished even before the first hearing.

Furthermore, the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners, which has been consistently opposed to every gain by the Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners since its inception, has now publicly slandered its own licentiate without any investigation or substance to those claims whatsoever.

Given the coordinated nature of these attacks on Dr. Forsythe, regulatory decisionmakers appear to be seeking controls over all doctors and allied professionals, particularly those offering effective alternatives to the expensive, outmoded conventional approaches to serious degenerative disease.

The groundswell of patient support has been very heartwarming to Dr. Forsythe, but for less-established freethinking physicians, these harassment tactics are often completely effective. Those who hope to resist this push toward centralized control must participate in professional and public organizations that protect our constitutional rights as providers and consumers of health care.

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