Doctor Arrested For Supposed Cancer Cure

Posted on 11 October 2009 by Stenberg-Tendys W.L. in Health

Minister, Dr Christine Daniel, 55, arrested on charges of mail and wire fraud. Bail was set at $150,000.

Daniel, a family practitioner in Mission Hills, California, collected between $1.1 to $1.5 million from 55 cancer stricken families, between 2001 and 2004. Daniel claimed her expensive brown herbal liquid, infused with herbs and known as ‘C-Extract’, could cure cancer.

Daniel discussed her treatment on a talk show on the TBN Christian cable channel, in2002. She claimed she had a 60% cure rate and her cures were an alternative to traditional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy.

Bishop George McKinney, founder and senior pastor of St. Stephen’s Cathedral Church of God in Christ, consulted Daniel in December 2004, placing faith in Daniel being not only an ordained minister, but a doctor as well. McKiney’s wife had terminal cancer.

Daniel gave Jean McKinney herbs she claimed were grown in South America and Africa. Prosecutors say they were in fact vitamins that could be purchased at any local drugstore.

McKinney paid Daniel more than $100,000 for the herbs and treatment, which McKinney was forced to borrow from friends. McKinney was not only having to deal with his wife’s illness, he was also suffering from deep financial difficulties. Jean McKinney took the herbal mixture three or four times a day for her terminal colon cancer. She passed away in June 2004.

Soon after his wife’s death, federal agents contacted him telling him that Daniel was being investigated. Daniel’s arrest capped a six-year federal and state investigation, triggered by complaints to a consumer agency by Easton Shakespeare, of Cambridge, Mas., who lost his wife to cancer after following the Daniel regime.

It is alleged some patients gave up traditional therapy at Daniel’s urging.

Manual Miller, of Woodlands Hills, California, lawyer for Daniel, claims he believes his client is innocent. “If the case goes to trial she will be acquitted.” Daniel denies ever practicing alternative medicine and that she never talked about a 60% cancer cure rate on television. She described the federal investigators as ‘nut cases and evil’.

It’s legal to sell herbal cures to sick people, but it is not legal to say on TV that the herbs you sell cures cancer, until their curative powers have been proved satisfactory to the FDA. Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, Joseph Johns, said “You can’t be selling stuff and represent it as being a cure for human diseases until it has been passed by the FDA”.

Daniel completed her medical degree at Temple University School of Medicine and finished her residency in Anesthesiology at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Centre in California.

Daniel is facing two counts each of mail and wire fraud and if convicted, could face up to 80 years in prison.

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