It’s hard to say who humans hate extra: Quack doctors or con artists cloaked in faith. Dr. Christine Daniel became each. A former certified doctor, who additionally changed into a Pentecostal minister, she claimed she could perform miracles. Daniel stated she could remedy cancer and different illnesses with a mixture of prayer and her personal specifically formulated remedy and made thousands and thousands off desperate families looking to save their loved ones from the ravages of disease.
However, it was all a rip-off. Daniel’s “remedy” contained nothing more than non-pharmaceutical ingredients you could purchase at any comfort store. Tragically, by the point she was added to justice, many of her sufferers had succumbed to the very diseases that drove them to search for her out inside the first location.
A local of Nigeria, Christine Daniel was adopted by missionaries and received a diploma in medication from Temple University in Philadelphia, in step with the Los Angeles Daily News. She later became a Pentecostal minister in a Los Angeles location church near her scientific exercise and her domestic in Santa Clarita. She was an authorized physician and health care professional until 2012 and ran a hit circle of relatives scientific practice for extra than two decades before strolling afoul of the regulation.
In 2001, Daniel started out offering a natural treatment, which she claimed had a 60-eighty percent success price in curing cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s ailment, diabetes, and hepatitis, according to location periodical OC Weekly. She promoted it underneath a spread of names — most famously “C-Extract” — however also called it “the herbal remedy” and “the natural remedy,” in line with her indictment. She stated the gooey brown extract turned into composed of the greatest natural remedies from around the sector. The Food and Drug Administration might later decide that the potion become made from regular herbs, minerals, and nutrients, in conjunction with pork extract and suntan lotion, in step with CNN.
Daniel claimed C-Extract and other pill supplements have been the most effective part of her miracle therapy. The different part turned into prayer. In 2002, she took her message to the Christian Trinity Broadcasting Network performing on a popular Evangelical show, in step with her federal crook indictment. “We have seen the useless raised,” she proclaimed on air on Dec. Five, 2002, consistent with the indictment, calling her exercise “an Evangelical clinic” that blended “prayer and herbs.” She is known as her method “King Hezekiah alternative remedy,” alluding to the Bible story of a historic monarch who prayed to God and was granted a reprieve from his maladies.
Patients started out flocking to Daniel, drawn with the aid of her nonsecular message and determined for a cure to their debilitating and deadly illnesses. Treatment fee everywhere from $750 to up into the masses of hundreds of dollars, with Daniel providing one of a kind plans according to her patient’s budgets, unwilling to lose any potential sale.
“She had exclusive charge treatments,” cancer affected person Eugenia Vigilleti advised CNN. “$6,000 greenbacks, and, she says, ‘I also have a $1,000 one.’ I say, ‘Ooh, I cannot have the funds for the $6,000.’” Jean McKinney paid greater than $a hundred,000 dollars to Daniel to deal with her colon cancer, in keeping with Fox News. She could die in 2004.
Along with promoting bogus remedy and bilking the sick out of cash, Daniel lied to her sufferers about their circumstance and discouraged them from in search of treatment that could have simply helped. Kiva Burell became in her early 20s and had a treatable shape of lymphoma in her neck but died after Daniel told her to keep away from radiation or chemotherapy, consistent with the Orange County Registry. Paula Middlebrooks, meanwhile, paid Daniel nearly $60,000 greenbacks earlier than being instructed she was most cancers free, in line with Los Angeles CBS associate KCAL. In reality, the ailment had unfolded for the duration of her frame and she died within months.
Between 2001 and 2004, Daniel conned 55 families out of a combined $1.1 million bucks, in step with the Los Angeles Times. Her sufferers traveled from everywhere in the usa to acquire remedy at her Sunrise Medical Clinic, that is now closed, spending money they often didn’t have and going into debt for treatment plans that might closing months. Daniel preyed on the desperation on patients young and old, in a single case charging the own family of four-12 months-old Brianica Kirsch heaps of greenbacks before she succumbed to mind cancer, consistent with KCAL.
Forty-nine-year-antique Minna Shakespeare, of Hanover, Massachusetts, who turned into suffering from lung most cancers, sought remedy from Daniel after seeing her on tv. She was instructed to forestall her chemotherapy treatment and paid Daniel approximately $13,000 greenbacks for fake meds, consistent with Fox News. After Shakespeare’s demise in 2003, her husband sought money back from Daniel and pronounced her to a purchaser’s council, who forwarded his complaint to the California Medical Board. In 2004, Daniel was interviewed through investigators and denied any and all allegations in opposition to her, consistent with The Daily News.
