Chasing after hope, south of the border

It's somewhere between a haven of hope and a den of deception. And it's nearly 1,500 miles from the rolling farms of Sleepy Eye, Minn.

But if, as authorities suspect, cancer-stricken Danny Hauser and his mother have fled from their farm to Tijuana, Mexico, they have joined a steady stream of sick people who cross the border searching for answers they don't believe they can find anywhere else.

With dozens of cancer treatment centers, ranging from sketchy to legitimate, Tijuana boasts the world's most concentrated battlefield against the multi-faceted disease.

Free from much regulatory scrutiny, the centers offer unorthodox options, from low-voltage electrical Zapper treatments to coffee enemas to high-fever inductions that they hope will destroy cancer cells though sheer heat. But there are also U.S.-schooled oncologists working in high-tech facilities.

"When you think 'Mexico,' you think 'uh-oh,' but so much of that is unfair prejudice about anything south of the border," said Katherine Staskus, a microbiologist at the University of Minnesota. "The truth is, there are a lot of credible doctors down there and some legitimate places. There are quacks, too, but there are a lot of quacks in the United States."

Staskus first researched Tijuana's alternative approaches to fighting cancer when her sister, Jean, was diagnosed with breast cancer about 12 years ago. She's now in complete remission, thanks to something called Insulin Potentiation Treatment, which includes low doses of chemotherapy.

When Staskus was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago, she followed her sister's path to Tijuana. But the treatments didn't work for her, and she has returned to her St. Paul home and her local oncologist to treat her disease.

She doesn't condone Colleen Hauser's decision to bolt with her 13-year-old son, but she empathizes with a mother who feared that her son would be forced to undergo a strict court-ordered chemo regimen.

"I can understand someone wanting to try something different and being suspect of convention medicine," she said. "When you receive a life-threatening diagnosis in this country, typically there's a lot of pressure put on you to get with the program and do what you're told."

Costly and glitzy

Some of the Tijuana clinics seem to market themselves almost more like spas than treatment centers. The Hope4Cancer Institute, for example, offers ocean views, wireless Internet and "a private driver for shopping and sightseeing outings (because there are no side effects to our treatments...)"

The glitzy marketing and offers for last-chance miracles often carry $25,000 price tags that insurers won't cover. But that hasn't stemmed visitors, from the anonymous to the famous, from coming.

Actor Steve McQueen was treated for cancer in a Tijuana clinic with laetrile, a treatment made from apricot pits. McQueen died a few months after his treatment. Civil rights champion Coretta Scott King also sought alternative remedies to her ovarian cancer but died in Tijuana in 2006.

Experts say research on many of the treatments is anecdotal at best and shrug off the odd case of spontaneous remission as coincidental to the alternative treatments.

"My guess is that Tijuana's bars are more honest in describing what they can do for you than its naturopathic cancer centers," said Dr. Steven Miles, who works at the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics.

The Hausers didn't need to run to Mexico to find so-called alternative approaches to fighting cancer, according to Dr. Gregory Plotnikoff, the medical director at the Institute for Health and Healing at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.

He says it's not an either-or dilemma and prefers the term "enhanced care" to describe the mix of traditional and newer-age cancer fighting strategies available in Minnesota.

"For alternative treatments in Mexico, we have no comparative effective data," he said. "Decisions to seek such care are frequently based upon personal values, beliefs and hopes -- which can be influenced by marketing."

If the Hausers want new-age approaches such as guided imagery, visualization, acupuncture, herbs and diet supplements, they could find them as close as Minneapolis Children's Hospital, Plotnikoff said.

"They have access to the best care in the U.S. right here," he said, "in addition to the proven life-saving treatment unavailable in Mexico."

Looking for hope

This past week, Michelle Kirkland accompanied her husband, David, 34, to his second consultation at the Bio Medical Center, a clinic in a residential area of Tijuana just ten minutes from the U.S. border that has provided alternative cancer treatment for 26 years.

"The doctors who saw my husband in Phoenix removed a tumor from his brain. He took chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and they told him that his days were numbered. It was at that time we looked for an alternative, and we came to Tijuana this year in January," said Michelle, 33, who was born in Minnesota but now lives in Phoenix.

Now, after three months of treatment at the center, the tumor in David's brain has diminished as have the bad headaches, weariness and inability to walk, the Kirklands say.

The principal treatment in Bio Medical Center is a tonic of herbs and minerals. About 600 patients a year come there for treatment, with most coming from the United States and Canada, but others come from as far away as Cyprus. The clinic also provides psychological therapy to improve an individual's attitude, according to Elías Gutiérrez Oropeza, the main physician.

One of the oldest alternative cancer treatment centers is the Oasis Hospital located next to the Pacific Ocean. Since 1963, doctors there have provided a variety of therapies against cancer, based on medicines made from herbs and minerals. Four years ago they began to combine these alternative treatments with traditional radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

According to Dr. Francisco Ceceña, who is in charge of oncology for the Oasis Hospital, the doctors realized that traditional and alternative treatments could complement each other.

"The evidence from cases we saw allowed us to see that the traditional methods [chemotherapy and radiotherapy] mixed with alternative treatments could greatly improve the possibilities for our patients," he said.

Loretta Lush, a 64-year-old Kansas City, Mo., resident, said she has found hope in Tijuana for her battle against a malignant melanoma in her right leg.

"I came here looking for hope and I found it. I believe that everywhere there are good and bad hospitals," Lush said.

Another case study

Much like the Hauser case, Nicole Foland headed to the Oasis center for her 8-year-old son to receive treatment for bone cancer, despite the fact that Michigan authorities charged her with withholding medical treatment. The nurse and midwife said she paid $25,000 for treatment, which included supplements from Japanese mushrooms.

"It was an impressive 150-bed facility and it was just like being in a United States hospital," Foland said. "The physicians were U.S.-trained oncologists and the technology was just as good as here, and the doctors were even better because they were willing to look at other treatments."

Those treatments were ineffective in combatting Jared's bone cancer, she said, but he's now 12 and benefitted from another center in Mississippi. She has fond memories of their time in Tijuana.

"We were running against a clock that wouldn't stop," Foland said. "And it was pretty awesome to see all these patients coming back for checkups. We met at least 30 people whose cancer wasn't growing 10 or 12 years later."

Curt Brown • 612-673-4767

Special correspondent Omar Millan contributed to this report from Tijuana.