Self-Taught Allergist Loses Appeal to Get His License Returned

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge Friday refused a Canoga Park doctor’s request to reinstate his medical license, which was revoked by state medical officials because he treated allergy patients by injecting them with their own urine.

Judge John Zebrowski denied an appeal by Dr. George R. Borrell to overturn a Dec. 4 decision by the Medical Board of California to cancel his physician’s license.

Borrell was ordered by another judge Dec. 8 to discontinue his urine treatments, which Borrell has said he used on more than 5,000 patients. But the judge also temporarily blocked the license revocation until Zebrowski could hear Borrell’s appeal. Borrell, 69, operates clinics in Canoga Park and Anaheim under the name Allergy Control Medical Group.

State medical authorities said Borrell’s urine injections constituted an “extreme departure” from proper medical care. They said Borrell, who attended a military medical school in Mexico but was described as “self-taught” as an allergist, also exhibited a “shocking and extreme” lack of medical knowledge.

Borrell could not be reached for comment Friday, but in previous interviews, he has defended his urine injections as a safe and effective “folk remedy” that has been practiced for more than a century.

He said urine contains protein compounds which, when reintroduced into the body, stimulate the immune system to produce allergy antibodies. He compared the process to polio vaccination, in which the weakened virus is injected into the body to produce immunity to the disease.

Borrell said that while urine treatment sounds “kind of preposterous or ugly or dirty,” it had helped numerous allergy sufferers.

But state medical officials labeled urine injections as quackery. They said such injections can lead to infection, kidney failure, breathing difficulties and death.

In a written ruling, Judge Zebrowski said his decision was based not on “either tolerance or repugnance for the concept of urine injections” but on a lack of legal evidence that Borrell’s license was improperly revoked.

“The court finds that while some reasonable persons might consider the penalty harsh, other equally reasonable persons might consider it warranted in view of the unknown risks of urine injections, plus the fact that the petitioner realized, or should have realized, that he did not know what those risks might be,” wrote Zebrowski.

Borrell’s lawyer, Herbert E. Selwyn, said he was disappointed with the ruling but did not know whether Borrell will appeal.

Selwyn said Zebrowski and state medical officials had “already made their minds up” to revoke Borrell’s license after first hearing of his unconventional treatments.

State Deputy Atty. Gen. Earl Plowman said the license revocation means Borrell will have to sell or close his two clinics.

In an interview with The Times last December, Borrell said he injected 5,000 to 6,000 allergy patients with their own urine over a 12-year period. He said only two or three of his patients developed infections from the therapy.

State officials acknowledged they knew of no patients who died or required hospitalization as a result of urine therapy and that they received only one complaint about Borrell.

But they said many of Borrell’s patients were chronic sufferers desperate to believe that his unusual therapy was helping them.

“This is something we’ve seen again and again and again in quack cases,” said Plowman. “There’s a lot of people out there who are deathly afraid of institutionalized medicine, who are looking for quick cures.”