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Jul 1, 2005 1:50 pm US/Mountain
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Naturopathic Doctors Not All Regulated
WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. (CBS4) ―
The CBS4 Investigates team is looking into why the state of Colorado does not regulate the growing profession of naturopathic doctors.
CBS4 has obtained documents that show that 6 years ago the state of Colorado started warning a group of naturopathic doctors. The state told the group to stop claiming they were regulated by the state.
The warnings continue, but they're too late for a Centennial couple who turned to naturopathic medicine in hopes of saving their dying son.
The man the couple turned to for help may have called himself a doctor, but his practice is a practice of betrayal.
* * *
The time has passed, but not the anger in the 2-and-a-half years since Dave and Laura Flanagan lost their son Sean.
Sick with terminal cancer, they turned in desperation to the man who called himself "Dr." Brian O'Connell.
"It was a situation where Brian O'Connell was telling us what we wanted to hear and that was that," Dave Flannagan told CBS4 investigator Rick Sallinger. "He was going to save our son's life."
They said O'Connell removed a small amount of their son's blood, put it under ultraviolet light and returned it to his body along with hydrogen peroxide. His son begged to have the treatment stopped. He died the next day.
"I just feel I let him down as a parent -- that I didn't make the best decisions for him to help get him through this," Laura Flannagan said.
The Flannagans said they thought O'Connell, who practiced in Wheat Ridge, was a medical doctor. It said doctor on his literature, and they saw certificates on his wall. What they did not know was that the Colorado University of Naturopathic Medicine, which was on the certificates, was not a real college.
O'Connell's diploma was endorsed with a seal from what's called the Colorado Alternative Medical Regulatory Board. The Flanagans also did not know that this group had a history of being accused by the state of misleading the public.
A January 1999 letter from the Colorado attorney general to that board warned the group "has no legal authority to engage in any regulatory activity" associating itself with the state of Colorado. But the board's seal appears on Brian O'Connell's certificate, dated 2002, despite the state's warning 3 years earlier in 1999.
The Flanagans say had they known this, they might not have gone to O'Connell. "There would be no question it would put a level of doubt in our minds that, 'OK, hey, this is not on the up and up,'" Laura Flanagan said.
Dr. Rena Bloom is president of a rival group, the Colorado Association of Naturopathic Physicians, which is seeking state licensing and requires graduation from a government accredited medical school. Bloom went to authorities after she spotted the diploma in O'Connell's office.
"I was appalled that there is this framed ribboned, gold medallion diploma on the wall where every single patient would assume it's true, and it's a complete lie on his wall," Bloom said.
The Colorado Attorney General's Office then acted again, sending out a letter last year ordering the Colorado Alternative Medical Regulatory Board to "cease and desist" from making false representations.
CBS4 went to the head of that board, Dr. William Betzner. Betzner is the doctor who signed O'Connell's diploma.
"I'm not going to give any statements," Betzner told Sallinger.
"The state told you to cease and desist," Sallinger said.
"Yeah, We quit doing that," Betzner said.
"But you continued 3 years after that, did you not?" Sallinger asked.
"No, no, no. Certainly not," Betzner said.
Betzner said he was not aware of the 1999 letter from the Colorado Attorney General and replied in writing to the state's 2004 letter saying, "it's attempts to regulate were for quality and safety," adding "we do not represent ourselves as offering required licenses."
CBS4 made numerous attempts to ask O'Connell questions, but were told no comment with his trial pending on charges of manslaughter and criminal impersonation.
The Flanagans now believe the state needs to regulate legitimate naturopathic doctors.
"There are people out there who are being made to look like quacks because of people like this and organizations this man belongs to," Laura Flanagan said. "We have to prevent this from happening to other families. When you're desperate you want to do anything you can to save your child, and there are many kids out there who have cancer."
The state says it has a medical board in place and that when people practice medicine who shouldn't be, they are criminally charged. O'Connell was scheduled to go on trial this week, but it was postponed after he was arrested for violating his bail and his attorney quit the case.
(Copyright © MMV CBS Television Stations, Inc.)