Mexican clinic where Coretta King died shut down

Associated Press in Mexico City
Saturday February 4, 2006
The Guardian


The Mexican clinic where Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, died suddenly this week has been closed, US embassy officials said yesterday, and American patients had been given three days to leave the country.

Mexican officials were not immediately available to explain why the clinic, which specialises in alternative treatments for patients with incurable illnesses, was shut on Thursday. The US consulate in nearby Tijuana was helping the 20 American patients who had been at the clinic, according to a spokeswoman

"None of them were in serious enough condition that we had to get them back in an ambulance," she 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."
Coretta Scott King, 78, travelled to the beachside Santa Monica health institute in the Mexican beach resort of Rosarito, 16 miles south of San Diego, last week, seeking treatment for advanced ovarian cancer and a stroke she had suffered several months ago.

However, the doctors at the clinic said they had been unable to begin treating her before she died. "She came here with half her body paralysed," Rafael Cedeno told reporters after her death. "She was in really bad condition."

Mrs Scott King's death raised questions about the safety of alternative medical clinics across Mexico, many of which are not closely regulated.

The clinic's founder and director, Kurt Donsbach, was sentenced to a year in prison by a federal court in San Diego in 1997 for smuggling more than $250,000 (£141,000) worth of unapproved drugs into the US from Mexico. He was charged with introducing unapproved drugs into inter-state commerce, smuggling merchandise contrary to law and income tax evasion.

In 1988, the US postal service ordered Mr Donsbach and his nephew to stop claiming that a solution of hydrogen peroxide that they sold could prevent cancer and ease arthritis pain. Mr Donsbach was not available for comment yesterday, and no one was at the clinic's corporate offices in San Diego. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the clinic's closure.

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