Chelation Advocates Face Legal and Image Problems
Dr. Ross Gordon, president of the American Academy of Medical Preventics, a trade group for chelation practitioners, realizes that his field suffers from an image problem--too often, for good reason.
“It scares the hell out of me, the quality of some of our people,” Gordon said recently in an interview at his office in Albany, Calif. He conceded that chelation practices have been known to attract physicians who have been unable to establish themselves in conventional medicine.
Many of these doctors establish what Gordon and others call “mills,” or high-volume clinics where chelation therapy is essentially administered to as many patients as can be accommodated.
“We have mills,” Gordon observed. “Though fortunately not very many of them. They are a constant threat to me.” Across the country, medical license authorities have found cases that underscore the weakness in the chelation field of which Gordon is only too aware. In California, five of the 74 doctors who are listed as members of Gordon’s group are veterans of license revocation actions and two more are under investigation in possible revocation cases, license officials said.
While the total is only about 7% of the group’s membership in the state, the proportion is far higher than the 1.25% of all California doctors at large who have been subjected to severe disciplinary sanctions. Discipline officials generally concede that they only take action against a small fraction of the total number of physicians who are incompetent or negligent.
Two recent examples--in different parts of the country--underscore the image and quality problems faced by chelation. The first involves Dr. Frank L. Gaunt, who, before his license to practice in California was finally revoked in 1981, established himself as one of the most notorious physicians in the state with a record of malpractice verdicts, patient deaths and injuries and unsuccessful attempts to lift his license that stretched back into the 1960s. His purported practice involved mainly cosmetic surgery.
Gaunt was sued for malpractice 37 times in Los Angeles County alone from 1969 to 1978--court actions that led to more than $2.3 million in judgments against him. Two patients died in his office in Hollywood under questionable circumstances, and, in 1968, an office he maintained in San Jose was raided by drug agents who charged him with smuggling liquid silicone from Japan--disguised as furniture polish--for use in illicit breast enlargements. Gaunt was subsequently convicted of running an illegal hospital and selling drugs.
Moved to the Ozarks
When Gaunt finally was stripped of his license in 1981, medical discipline officials in Sacramento thought they were rid of him. But Gaunt had some insurance for just such a development in the form of a second medical license he originally obtained, in Missouri, when he graduated from osteopathic school in 1954. So, quietly, Gaunt moved to the Ozarks nearly 2 1/2 years ago and went into the chelation business.
He first attracted the attention of local doctors because of the nature of his practice--he claimed to be an expert in preventive medicine--and because he advertised heavily. In Springfield, Mo., where Gaunt moved last year after practicing farther south in a town called Kimberling City, the local Greene County Medical Society immediately began trying to get Gaunt’s license revoked because it seemed to local doctors, said Dr. B.G. Prater, a past president of the society, that “this guy was evidently a borderline practitioner from the beginning.
“This is the type of person who’s going to end up in chelation or something else like it to make a living. He is not a physician who can make a living like most doctors do.”
Dr. Frank Corry, president of the society, agreed, but he contended that chelationists and other fringe doctors are able to establish themselves by selling hope--something mainstream physicians often cannot realistically offer.
Surrendered Certificate
The battle against Gaunt continued until two weeks ago today. The Missouri Board of Registration in the Healing Arts first tried to take Gaunt’s license 18 months ago, but Gaunt obtained a stay in a county court. Last year, medical board attorney David Brydon noted in a letter to the medical society that “I could not agree with you more that Dr. Gaunt’s conduct and practice are atrocious and we do hope to have him out of business very shortly.”
Two weeks ago, Gaunt finally surrendered his medical certificate and his practice of chelation apparently came to a close. In a tense encounter with a reporter and photographer from The Times in his office nearly a month ago, Gaunt contended the impending move was only his “retirement.” He accused the newspaper (the first of several to focus on Gaunt in 1980 and 1981) of perpetrating a “smear” against him.
Dr. Frank Mosler’s story is different, but, like Gaunt, Mosler--who does business as the Nutrition & Metabology Medical Group in Van Nuys--is a chelation practitioner with a checkered past. Mosler is one of two chelation practitioners against whom license revocation actions have been filed in the last few months--though under what amounts to a truce between chelationists and the Board of Medical Quality negotiated several years ago, state officials do not file incompetency proceedings just because a doctor is offering chelation.
Admitted Mistreatment
In 1982, Mosler admitted he mistreated a woman he first saw in 1975 and agreed to accept a five-year probation term in lieu of revocation of his license. Then, last year, with the probation still in force, Mosler was sued by the survivors of two patients who died, the court actions charged, while Mosler was giving them chelation therapy. The medical board subsequently filed two new revocation complaints as a result.
Mosler claimed he admitted to the original counts in 1982 only because he lacked the funds to sustain a protracted legal battle. In an interview, he protested his innocence in the new cases as well, vowing to fight the charges. “What else can you do? These charges are completely without merit as far as what my attorney says,” Mosler said.
The interview and documents reviewed by The Times indicate Mosler was graduated from the USC Medical School in 1961, and that he completed a residency in psychiatry in 1964. But just after he finished that program, he dropped out of medical practice for nine years. Mosler says he spent the time as a stockbroker.
Gravitated to Chelation
He kept up with medicine, he said, by reading journals and, in 1973 or 1974, joined a weight-loss clinic. From there, he gravitated to chelation. He has no hospital admitting privileges and no malpractice insurance--he says because the company that covered him went bankrupt. Mosler has never attained certification in any recognized medical specialty.
Mosler contends that he has drawn the attention of medical license officials more because he offers chelation than because of any deficiencies in his practice. He declined, however, to say chelationists are being persecuted.
“I don’t like to use a term that strong,” Mosler said. “But (it’s like) any alternative therapy that is very much against the mainstream and has made inroads. There’s an awful lot of empty hospital beds out there and a lot of expensive equipment sitting around.”
Opening for Opponents
The image problem and the backgrounds of many chelation practitioners concern Dr. H. Richard Casdorph of Long Beach, one of the nation’s best-known chelationists. He concedes that the questionable backgrounds of many chelation specialists offer an opening for opponents to attack the therapy as a whole.
“Frankly, I think it is a (widespread) problem,” Casdorph said. “I think it (the competency problem) is one reason organized medicine has made the decision that they would try to stand off chelation.
“My answer is they should eliminate the bad guys without eliminating chelation therapy. It’s like throwing the baby out with the water.”
