The NaturoDoc Blog

JACLYN O‘MALLEY
JOMALLEY@RGJ.COM

October 8, 2006

When veteran Reno cancer doctor James W. Forsythe was indicted last month on allegations he handed out smuggled, unapproved human growth hormones, a state medical board investigator called him “one of the five most serious physician offenders known in the state of Nevada.”

Loyal patients say Forsythe, a certified oncologist and homeopathic doctor, is wonderful and his alternative treatments saved their lives. They are shocked by the allegations and believe he is the victim of a political witch hunt.

Other patients contacted by the Reno Gazette-Journal accuse his clinic of falsely diagnosing them with illnesses and charging them for costly, unnecessary treatments that didn’t improve their health.

A Reno federal grand jury indicted Forsythe, 68, on allegations that he provided unapproved human growth hormones, smuggled from Israel, to at least one patient “” an undercover agent “” who wanted to look and feel younger. Court affidavits say Forsythe told the agent that the hormones would reverse the effects of aging, restore his sleep quality, improve weight control and enhance libido.

Forsythe denies the allegations, saying after his indictment, “I am confident we will prevail.”

While never before criminally charged, Forsythe or his clinic have been the subject of several regulatory investigations over the years. And controversy surrounds a practice that combines standard medical approaches to cancer with the alternative techniques of homeopathy.

Robert Rozen, 68, of Lauderhill, Fla., claims expensive and ineffective treatments his cancer-stricken wife Elisa received at The Century Clinic in Reno contributed to her cancer-related death in July 2000 at 63. Forsythe was the owner and medical director of that clinic beginning in 1994, later changing its name to Century Wellness Clinic and switching locations.

Rozen filed a civil medical fraud suit in 2001 in Washoe County that is ongoing against Forsythe and Katrina Tang, one of the primary homeopathic doctors at the former Century Clinic. In 2004 Tang surrendered her license and retired.

In 2002 the Nevada State Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners disciplined Tang by barring her from taking any new clients, according to a public settlement. The board concluded that there were violations: Tang told a terminally ill patient she could cure them so she could profit off treatment, her staff did not accurately report to patients when an oncologist would be available and she allowed nonmedical staff to attend to a critically ill patient. The board does not make public specific information about investigations or identify the patients involved.

Rozen said Tang insisted his wife didn’t have cancer, but rather Lyme Disease. In a 2005 deposition, Tang denied ever making that diagnosis.

Forsythe had diagnosed Elisa Rozen with stage IV non-Hodgkins lymphoma, according to a deposition he took last year. And, according to Tang’s own notes in medical paperwork, she too agreed Elisa Rozen had cancer.

“They ran a scam where they preyed on the sick and infirm,” Rozen said.

Forsythe has declined to comment, and his attorney did not return phone calls. The whereabouts of Tang, who separated her practice from Forsythe in 2003, was unknown. Phone calls to her family members, most themselves doctors, and her attorney went unreturned. Tang, in the deposition, said more than 90 percent of patients were from out of state, many finding the clinic through airline magazine advertisements, doctor referalls and the Internet.

Patients complain

Rozen was one of 19 people from across the country who wrote letters in 2001 to the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners demanding Tang and Forsythe be investigated for their practices. The letters, obtained by the Reno Gazette-Journal, accuse Tang of falsely diagnosing cancer and then saying cancer patients really had Lyme Disease; claiming she could cure terminal illnesses and giving patients painful medical treatments, including one purported to change the patient’s DNA. Some said when their finances dried up, they were kicked out of the clinic. Others demanded refunds and said the treatments didn’t work.

“I certainly feel that Dr. Tang and Dr. Forsythe and others should be barred from the practice of medicine,” wrote Betty Driver McCaa, a Virginia woman who was treated at the clinic for multiple sclerosis. “They prey on people who are desperate, taking their money and keeping them from conventional treatments that might help them.”

Sherrie Gershon, of Florida, said in a recent interview that her son, Michael, was a clinic patient for eight years and began suffering grand mal seizures before Tang said he had fatal brain cancer and told him to find another doctor. Another doctor immediately tested for the fatal brain cancer and discovered he did not have it, Gerson said.

Gershon was a patient who also worked at the clinic in exchange for treatment because her money ran out. Combined, she and her son were charged about $200,000 in medical bills that were not covered by insurance, she said. She said the treatments did not help.

“As a mother, I was desperate and we had exhausted all conventional medicines,” she said. “They kept saying they were the only ones who could help him. I clung to their promise that my son, my only son, would get better.”

Her son died at 14 in an ATV accident she witnessed on Thanksgiving Day 1999.

“From what I knew about Dr. Forsythe, he was very kind and understanding, a good doctor,” Gershon said. “But for the things that happened when he was the director and the fact he allowed it to happen, he should pay for that.”

Gershon said she supplied testimonials for patients and advertisements about the good care she and her son received but later wished she hadn’t.

In her 2001 letter to the medical board of examiners, she said Forsythe is guilty of the “unethical, cruel, and illegal things being done at the clinic because he allows it to go on daily.”

Oversaw clinic’s practice

Rozen and his attorney, Ann Hall, accuse Forsythe of overseeing Tang’s medical practice and agreeing with her treatment of Elisa Rozen. They said that Forsythe had to sign off on all medical paperwork and had to be aware of the testing and treatments. Also, Rosen said Forsythe was present during some conversations with Tang when Rozen said Tang adamantly opposed chemotherapy and demanded his wife be treated instead for Lyme Disease with her homeopathic treatments.

According to a deposition, Forsythe said his role in the Century Clinic as medical director was primarily to treat cancer patients, hospitalize them and refer them for more advanced treatment.

“And basically make sure that, you know, the patients were getting good care at the clinic and the standard of care was up to community standards,” Forsythe said in the deposition.

In that deposition, Forsythe also accused the Rozens of not wanting to pursue the conventional medical treatments he recommended and said they didn’t follow treatment schedules. He said he could not recall ever hearing Tang tell them Elisa Rozen didn’t have cancer.

Dr. Wallace Sampson, a retired oncologist in Los Altos, Calif., who has spent much of his career investigating fraudulent health care and alternative medicines, is a national expert being used in Rozen’s case. Sampson said the case seems to be a break in the patient-doctor contract.

“The patient goes in with the expectation their physician can cure or effectively treat them,” Sampson said. “And the doctor can really believe treatment is going to work and say he can cure someone.”

Or, he said ,they can take a “psychopathic approach” and knowingly give someone a useless treatment and justify it because other medical treatments didn’t work, either.

Sampson said the physician has the obligation to tell the patient the chances of recovery and the benefit, if any, of the treatments.

“Elisa Rozen had lymphoma,” he said. “What on Earth reason would there be to run tests for viruses other than to mislead the patient or enter into a doctor’s own fantasy world?”

Rozen lawsuit

Rozen’s lawsuit accuses Forsythe and Tang of proximately causing his wife’s death, or causing the loss of a chance for her survival. He wants a jury civil trial to determine whether the doctors are guilty of fraud, medical negligence and operating a criminal enterprise.

When Elisa Rozen sought treatment at the Reno clinic, her cancer was isolated to her armpit. Six months later, it spread to her other armpit, neck, abdomen and pelvis, Rozen said of his wife who then weighed less than 100 pounds.

Elisa Rozen was first diagnosed in June 1998 with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, cancer of the lymphatic system. She sought treatment at the Century Clinic between February and July 1999 on another doctor’s referral.

Rozen had called Forsythe to inquire about the treatment. He wanted to know whether they had certain chemotherapy treatments.

“Dr. Forsythe said it was premature to consider chemotherapy because he wanted to find the cause of Elisa’s illness and treat it,” he said. “Those representations excited us, and we came to Reno.”

When they arrived in Reno, they first met with Tang, who told her she didn’t have cancer, rather a virus that mimicked cancer symptoms, Rozen said. Tang would not look at medical records they brought, he said.

“The second or third day, she was holding a bunch of lab tests in her hands and said, ‘you don’t have cancer,’” Rozen said. “You can’t imagine the feeling because we had been in emergency mode for months … both of us starting crying we were so ecstatic and weak in the knees.”

But Rozen was confused. How come the other doctors said she had cancer?

“Tang held up lab tests and said the symptoms are caused by viruses and bacteria. She said Elisa had Lyme disease,” he said. “She said our doctors were not stupid or incompetent but they didn’t think to look where they look and they did different tests than they did to find things they are not aware of.”

But Hall said that on medical paperwork signed by Forsythe, it says Elisa Rozen has non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

At least three times during meetings with the couple and Tang, Forsythe recommended Elisa Rozen have chemotherapy, but Tang refused and said it would sabotage her homeopathic treatments, Rozen said.

Sampson said it is possible that an oncologist could recommend chemotherapy while a homeopath says it would interfere with their treatments.

Patients could ask for homeopathic treatment first and follow it with chemotherapy, he said. The cancer doctor could then agree to it because the patient makes the decision.

“People went to the clinic relieved because Forsythe served as a stamp of legitimacy,” Hall said. “They had an oncologist on board, and that lent to its legitimacy.”

When Elisa Rozen became deathly ill on numerous occasions, her husband said Tang told them it was a good sign. She said it proved the body was fighting the virus.

“Elisa would look at me and say don’t worry, I’ll be better in the morning,” Rozen said. “They told her each time she relapsed that it was the viruses leaving her body.”

Rozen says Tang once told the couple they were exposed to atomic toxins on a plane ride home and used a machine called a Dermatron to detect electrical imbalances. She used the machine to prove to the couple they had been exposed, Rozen said.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration twice raided Century Clinic and in 1993 banned Tang from using the Dermatron. In 1998 a judge ordered Tang and the clinic to pay a $400,000 fine for using similar illegal machines in an experimental study, according to FDA records. In 2002, the state homeopathic medical examiners board settled with Tang and ordered she not accept new patients. The board, in a public settlement agreement, said it still had 18 complaints against Tang that had not been investigated.

“There is no question her cancer progressed because she wasn’t being treated for it,” Rozen said.

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View the original article from the Reno Gazette Journal here.

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