Cancer-Remedy Maker Closes
The maker of a controversial herbal treatment for prostate cancer has announced it will go out of business June 1 because of financial problems resulting from a voluntary recall of the small company’s two products and a pending class-action lawsuit against it.
“It was a combination of the recall and being shut down for five months. We just didn’t have the financial capabilities,” said Barre Rorabauch, chief of operations for International Medical Research Inc. of Brea, which does business as BotanicLab.
The company produced PC SPES, a formula that contained eight herbs used in treatment of prostate cancer, and SPES, marketed to boost immune function. Several small studies found that PC SPES was effective against late-stage prostate cancer.
But in February, the company voluntarily withdrew both products from the market after the California Department of Health Services found traces of the prescription drug warfarin, a synthetic blood thinner marketed as Coumadin, in PC SPES, and traces of the prescription anti-anxiety drug alprazolam, known by the trade name Xanax, in samples of SPES. The company denied that any prescription drugs had been knowingly added to its products, which would be illegal without approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
The same month, several prostate cancer survivors who had used PC SPES filed a class-action suit against the company, its officers and Sophie Chen, an associate research professor of medicine at New York Medical College who developed PC SPES, alleging unlawful business practices, false and misleading advertising, negligence and “medical battery.”
Last month, Dr. Robert Nagourney of Rational Therapeutics, a treatment and research group in Long Beach, presented results from a two-year analysis of PC SPES samples at the American Assn. of Cancer Research meeting in San Francisco. The analysis found samples contained varying amounts of DES, a synthetic female hormone that has been used in treatment of prostate cancer; warfarin; and the prescription anti-inflammatory drug indomethacin. At least two other labs also found traces of DES in PC SPES.
The controversy has divided many prostate cancer survivors. “It’s very sad.... It saved many lives; it was a very good medication,” said Charles Reinwald, chairman of the nonprofit Cancer Cure Coalition in Scarsdale, N.Y. Reinwald estimated that about 10,000 men had been using PC SPES, which was developed in the early 1990s. John Tiedt of Moore, Winter, Skebba & McLennan of Glendale, one of three law firms representing plaintiffs in the class-action suit, said he understood “the plight of those men.”
But, he said, some men suffered dangerous side effects, such as excessive bleeding or blood clots, because of prescription drugs in the formula of which they and their doctors knew nothing.
