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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2006 
Mexican Clinic Where Coretta Scott King Died is Closed
 Traci Carl - Associated Press
| | The Santa Monica Health Institute in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where Coretta Scott King had been seeking treatment when she died, was shut down Friday. (Associated Press) |
Mexico City - The Mexican clinic where Coretta Scott King died has been closed, U.S. Embassy officials said Friday.
Mexican officials weren't immediately available to explain why the clinic was shut. But Judith Bryan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, said the U.S. consulate in Tijuana was helping patients find new facilities.
The consulate's spokeswoman, Liza Davis, said 20 American patients were at the clinic when it was closed Thursday. Mexican authorities gave the Americans three days to leave the country.
"None of them were in serious enough condition that we had to get them back in an ambulance," Davis said. "Lots of them had family with them or means to get back on their own. Those that don't, we'll be working with them, and the hospital will be helping them as well."
King traveled last week to the beachside Santa Monica Health Institute in the Mexican beach resort of Rosarito, 15 miles south of San Diego. She was seeking treatment for advanced-stage ovarian cancer and a stroke she suffered several months ago.
King's children have said she died there Monday night, although a spokeswoman for the U.S. consulate in Tijuana has said King died early Tuesday.
The clinic specializes in alternative treatments for patients with incurable illnesses.
Its founder and director, Kurt W. Donsbach, has a criminal past and a reputation for offering dubious treatments to desperately ill patients, according to court records and a watchdog group.
However, the clinic doctors assigned to King's case said she arrived in poor health and they couldn't even begin to treat her before she died early this week.
"She came here with half her body paralyzed," Dr. Rafael Cedeno, who was overseeing her case, told reporters after King's death. "She was in really bad condition."
King's death raised questions about the safety of alternative medical clinics across Mexico, many of which aren't closely regulated.
It was unclear if Donsbach's past had anything to do with the closing of the Santa Monica clinic.
In 1997, Donsbach was sentenced in federal court in San Diego to a year in prison for smuggling more than $250,000 worth of unapproved drugs into the United States from Mexico, according to court records. Donsbach was sentenced on three felony counts, including introducing unapproved drugs into interstate commerce, smuggling merchandise contrary to law and income tax evasion.
In 1988, the U.S. Postal Service ordered Donsbach and his nephew to stop claiming that a solution of hydrogen peroxide that they sell could prevent cancer and ease arthritis pain.
A woman who answered the phone at the clinic's corporate offices in San Diego said she had no information on the closure of the Rosarito clinic. Identifying herself only by her first name, Maria, she said she did not know where Donsbach was and there was no one else available to comment.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the clinic's closure in Friday's editions.
Associated Press reporter Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report. |
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