A California doctor has been sentenced to 14 years behind bars for claiming her herbal supplements, for which she charged up to $100,000, could cure cancer.
The Daily Mail is reporting that Christine Daniel, 58, is said to have bilked the suffering out of more than one million dollars for a phony supplement cocktail that apparently contained ingredients such as sunscreen preservative and beef extract flavoring.
Daniel, who was also a Pentecostal minister, claimed the concoction could cure cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and other ailments. She told cancer patients her phony brew had a 60 to 80 percent chance of success and often counseled clients to stop receiving their chemotherapy treatment and substitute her natural cure instead.
In some cases, patients were charged up to $100,000 for six months of treatment.
Daniel leaves behind a trail of tragedies involving dozens who died as a result of her treatment.
One woman, Paula Middlebrooks, who was suffering from breast cancer, was charged nearly $60,000 for the supplements. After five months, Daniel claimed she was free of cancer. However, her cancer had spread and she died soon after.
Another woman, a 22 year-old who was suffering from neck lymphoma could have been cured but died because Daniel told her to avoid receiving radiation or chemotherapy for her condition.
Twenty-eight former patients and family members of those who died testified against Daniel, with some calling her a “cold-hearted fraud.”
Even the lawyers were repulsed by her heartless scamming of the desperately ill.
“Daniel robbed victims of more than money – she also stole their hopes and dreams for a cure,” said U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. after Daniel was sentenced.
U.S. District Judge Robert Timlin ordered Daniel to pay back nearly $1.3 million and sentenced her to over four counts of mail and wire fraud, six counts of tax evasion and one count of witness tampering.
She was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
So many people write to our ministry saying that their dissatisfaction with modern medicine and “Big Pharma” is why they’re turning to alternative cures. I always caution them not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Modern medicine has its problems, but it’s responsible for ridding the world of untold amounts of suffering from diseases such as TB and polio to replacement of severed limbs and major organ transplants that have saved countless lives. A bad drug reaction or insensitive doctor is no reason to turn from evidence-based science to untested alternatives and outright quackery.
As was the case with so many of Daniel’s patients, the decision to forgo conventional treatment for an alternative could cost you your life!
