What's with all of these fake doctors suddenly coming out of the woodwork? A clinic operator pleaded guilty to unlawfully posing as a doctor and selling misbranded drugs with intent to defraud or mislead patients, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Between November 2001 and April 2009, Kurt Donsbach offered dangerous dietary supplements and unapproved drugs for cancer, arthritis and other ailments, notes the Associated Press.
While lacking a California medical license, he also hosted an Internet radio show--letstalkhealth.com--where he represented himself as a chiropractor and naturopathic doctor, according to authorities. He faces up to one year in jail, followed by probation, upon sentencing March 4 after pleading guilty to 13 felony charges.
Donsbach's lawyer, however, maintains that his client was not practicing medicine, but instead providing advice on various alternative treatments, notes the Union-Tribune. Following Donsbach's medical guidance, though, an arthritis patient suffered severe osteoporosis after taking a recommended drug for six years.
Donsbach also founded a health clinic in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where he treated Coretta Scott King--widow of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.--before she died of ovarian cancer in January 2006. Authorities shut down the clinic the following month, only to close it again in September 2007 after it reopened, according to the Union-Tribune.
For more:
- read the Associated Press article
- check out the San Diego Union-Tribune article
- read the KFMB report