A Question of Accountability (my ordeal as a patient of Dr. Christiane Northrup MD)

          Update!  October 21, 2007 - I received another email from another former patient's mother.


Update!  March, 10, 2000 - I just received two emails from another former patient telling of her experience with Dr. N.

By Mary L. Cupp (email me!)

  • Through the Speculum
  • Will the Real Vitamin A Please Stand Up?
  • What Women Do To Women
  • Women's Whoppers, Women's' Wiles
  • The Maine State Medical Board
  • Serving Two Masters
  • Questions of Accountability
  • If it looks like a duck....it might be a DECOY
  • The Ultimate Rape - (HERS Conference in Boston)
  • Bibliography


    • Through the Speculum

    This has not been an easy web page for me to write.  For one thing, the story it tells is deeply personal and painful.  In addition to that, writing an article critical of Dr. Northrup requires that I take extreme care for legal reasons.  I have worked hard to fully document my claims and give sufficient detail to show the logic of the problem at hand.  It has been difficult to know what to put in or leave out.  How much do I need to spell out for my reader's comprehension?  How long are their attention spans?  I have struggled with these questions during my writing and editing.  And I don't have any definitive answers.  The following is the best I can do to tell my experience.  That experience goes directly counter to the marketed media image that Dr. Northrup has promoted of herself.  I want women to be aware of the medical and legal realities behind the slick promoted image and I want to warn them about a medical system that does not serve their interests.

    I became aware of Dr. Northrup in 1982 when I was living in Portland, ME and consulted with a
    nutritionist named Phyllis concerning my endometriosis and other gynecological problems.  The arrangement was by barter, as I had little money at the time.  I agreed to do a vegetable poster for her to use when doing presentations in exchange for advice.  We met at a macrobiotic restaurant, run by a mutual friend who was an excellent cook.  “This is the place to go.”, she exclaimed.   She made some suggestions for supplements, recommended that I look into the macrobiotic diet, and mentioned Dr. Northrup as a nutritionally oriented physician.  She commented, “I know Dr. Northrup would take you off all dairy products.  I don't totally agree, but do limit them.”   The following year I read an interview in "East/West Journal" in which Dr. Northrup spoke of treating endometriosis, fibroid tumors, and heavy periods etc. (all conditions that I was suffering from) with diet and vitamins.  In the article she recommended a lowfat, vegetarian diet.  I had been lacto-ovo vegetarian for years, yet she recommended avoiding dairy products.   The article included two case histories of women who avoided hysterectomies through diet.  One of them was titled "Escape from Hysterectomy".

    I had attended a number of meetings of the Endometriosis Association and had listened to women tell their horror stories, describing their "side effects" (read primary effects) from medications and multiple surgeries.  I had already had one surgery and didn't want another.  None of the women reported getting well from these treatments.  I wanted to try a more holistic approach but I didn't know much about holistic medicine or treatments.  I wanted guidance through the maze of alternative health modalities that is sometimes very daunting for the uninitiated.  I was somewhat afraid to strike out into the world of alternative medicine, not knowing who the good people were and who were the “quacks”, and not knowing what the different treatments were about.

    When I heard that Dr. Northrup had opened a holistic clinic called "Women to Women" I decided to try it.  I arranged a consultation in June of 1986.  She recommended a strict vegetarian diet, eliminating all (she underlined “all”on the prescription pad) dairy foods and eggs, and substituting soy milk for dairy milk in recipes.   I commenced the diet.  I remember thinking to myself, "Well, you can't hurt anyone with a good diet."  Little did I know.

    Initially, the diet did help to alleviate my pain and I felt better for awhile.  But after a few weeks I felt less and less healthy and I found it difficult to stay away from dairy food.   I thereupon sought out a nutritionist named Vicki.  Vicki approved of the recommended diet, but permitted butter and low fat yogurt.  Additionally, she gave me long lists of supplements to take.  Taking so many pills, I felt like a force-fed chicken being stuffed with pellets.  Although I added dairy food back into my diet, I was not eating nearly as much as before.  At the end of two years my health had deteriorated markedly until I had severe abdominal pain and abnormal bleeding between periods.  I went back to my regular gynecologist and was put on Provera™, a progesterone drug.

    When I went back to see Vicki but she didn't have a clue as to what the problem was, so she simply gave me a general list of supplements.  This was the only time she included vitamin A in her list.  She had previously counseled me to get vitamin A from carrots and other vegetables.

    By this point the bleeding had stopped but I was still in a great deal of pain.  I went back to  “Women to Women” hoping that Dr. Northrup would trouble shoot the diet and find out what was causing my problems.  After an intake visit with the nurse practitioner, I was sent to an iridologist/nutritionist named Ellen.  She suggested that I use concentrated food supplements, such as bee pollen and chlorella, rather than vitamin pills.  I had stopped taking all pills except for B vitamins, vitamin C and a daily multivitamin pill.  Over the following year I developed severe anemia.  When I saw Dr. Northrup some time afterwards I had just been put on heavy iron supplementation by my chiropractor.

    The iron caused my blood to rebound and I was feeling much better but as soon as I got my period I started to hemorrhage badly and was placed on Norlutate™, another progesterone drug.  Once started the bleeding would not stop.  I had taken iron before in the past and had noticed that it caused me to bleed more heavily but I didn't know why and it had never been this severe or long lasting.  This bleeding just wouldn't stop.  I had to take two or more pills daily or my life would be put at risk.  I could not stop the drug for even a couple of days without it resulting in a hemorrhage.  Yet I desperately wanted to keep my uterus.

    None the less, Dr. Northrup's initial recommendation was a hysterectomy, the very surgery I had come to her to avoid.  I refused.  I had come for the holistic healing that she claimed to do, and if she didn't know how to help me, I would go to other holistic healers.  However, I did continue to see Dr. Northrup to get my prescription.  I was totally chained to the drug.  I do not believe in taking drugs, but in this situation I was forced to go against every instinct regarding them.

    I somehow held together enough so that when the bleeding settled down I was able to go on a pilgrimage searching for alternative cures.  I felt strongly that any conventional doctor would have little to offer at this point but surgery.  Yet I profoundly felt that surgery was wrong, and that there had to be a reason for the bleeding and I wanted to correct the cause.  I knew next to nothing about holistic medicine, but slowly I started working my way up the learning curve.  I read, took classes, went to workshops and followed leads given by other healers.

    For the next four years (1989 - 1993) I lived through a hell in which I battled against abnormal bleeding while dependent on the prescription that Dr. Northrup dispensed.  My life was caught up in a struggle to keep my blood count out of danger and to seek out alternative cures.  Because the drug beat back the symptom, I was having trouble reading my own body in order to know whether the holistic treatment that I was pursuing was helping or not.

    The more Dr. Northrup pushed for a hysterectomy, the more I refused.  She did however permit me to try holistic remedies and encouraged a number of them.  But I was troubled by the fact that she didn't take the lead in the holistic aspects of treatment.  She was so noncommittal.  During this time she was  President of the American Holistic Medical Association and I felt that I should be getting more help, but instead she was very non directive.  I began to wonder if that was just a purely administrative position that did not include her knowing anything about holistic care.  I was trying to make sense of her behavior.  I told her that, for me, surgery would be a "violation" and I insisted on being able to look for holistic cures.

    Although if I asked about some therapy (say herbs) she would agree to my pursuing it and perhaps give a referral, she never did any holistic treatment herself or did any nutritional checking.  Some of the things she encouraged  were macrobiotic diet, castor oil packs, aura healing, cranial massage, herbs, acupuncture, homeopathy,  psychic kinesiology (I call it this because I don't have a better term for it), and (what else) psychotherapy.   But she did not initiate any of these treatments.  At one point she oversaw injections of vitamins C, B complex, Calcium, and Magnesium, at the direction of a naturopath.

    Something didn't feel right.  If  I would ask her about her experience with the macrobiotic diet and other women, she would simply reply that every case was different and that she had never seen a case like mine.  And she continued to urge a hysterectomy.  And I continued to refuse.  I consulted with over 30 healers of various kinds, and tried all sorts of nutritional supplements and holistic treatments.  To make a very long story short, nothing helped.  During this time I was completely dependent on the drug Norlutate™ to keep body and soul together, and upon Dr. Northrup to dispense it.  I simply could not walk away from the situation.

    Many people have asked me why I didn't simply go to another doctor.  The reason is that I didn't feel that a conventional doctor would have anything to offer at this point but drugs and surgery and I wanted a holistic solution. I wanted to find and correct the cause of the problem, not merely turn off the symptom.  Still I needed the prescription drug in order to hang together and buy the time to search.  My options really were narrowed by my dependence on the drug.

    At one point Dr. Northrup put me on a drug called Synarel™ which was intended to stop the bodies production of estrogen in order to stop the bleeding.  However, instead of causing the bleeding to stop, it set off a wild hemorrhage that I barely made it through.  What Dr. Northrup had failed to warn was that, initially, instead of suppressing the estrogen, the drug causes it to surge.  Although I called in three times in distress, I was given third party messages each time.  It was a total fiasco.  In the medical records she claimed that she had "underestimated the estrogen surge" and failed to adequately respond as they "had some new staffing people".  (i.e. blame the new girl)

    Something else that bothered me was Dr. Northrup's reaction when I went to see Dr. Virginia (Ginny) Shapiro who did nutritional muscle testing.  She reacted with panic and almost broke off relations.  When I mentioned Ginny, the pupils of her eyes suddenly dilated and she exclaimed, "Ginny!  I feel fear!".  I was confused and unnerved by her reaction.  I had been truly delighted to find someone interested in doing nutritional and metabolic testing, as Dr. Northrup had not done any.  I mentioned that Ginny had found high levels of mercury in my body, clearly not a psychological (i.e. mind-body) problem.  Her response was, "But it's really the same thing, you know quantum physics."

    After about four years of this ordeal the company that made the Norlutate™ discontinued it.  I had been given a different prescription, Methergine™ to help in cases of heavy bleeding.  (I later discovered that this drug is chemically related to LSD. It is customarily used to contract the uterus after childbirth so I have questions about it's use for this kind of bleeding.)  By June (1993) I had little Norlutate™ left, so I decided to try it.  However I got  into trouble and almost bled to death.

    I went to the emergency room with a blood count of 5.3 (normal is 11-15).  I could barely stand up.  Dr. Northrup was called.  She said, "That's it, that's it, you're having a hysterectomy first thing tomorrow morning!  I'm going to do as I was taught (i.e. in medical school).  This time I'm taking charge!"  She told me that she would no longer be my doctor if I refused to submit to the surgery.  Although I was given four units of blood (which for me added fear to the trauma), I was not given anything to stop the bleeding.  Under these conditions I saw no way out and I was too exhausted and vulnerable to fight back, so, under duress, I signed the release.  Yet even then, I was still literally begging Christiane to leave my uterus in and remove only the fibroid tumors.  (the medical records note that I was "reluctant to go to surgery")  I  recall her saying, "Well, you know you've tried everything."  Everything?!?
     
     

    Will the Real Vitamin A Please Stand Up?


    "The essence of psychological warfare is to confuse the meaning of words
    and to infiltrate the mind with conflicting concepts."-
    Steven Jacobson
    About six months after the surgery (Dec., 1993), I came upon a newsletter called "Second Opinion" by Dr. William Campbell Douglass M.D., which carried a column on alternative treatments.  It discussed menorrhagia and cited a study in the 1977 South African Medical Journal using vitamin A in its treatment.  It cited a 92.5% cure rate.  It also mentioned that this treatment is used at Johannesburg General Hospital in South Africa and has a documented 92% cure rate over a ten-year period.  I had the vitamin muscle tested and I have never gotten such a positive response.  I subsequently took vitamin A in very high doses (100,000 IU per day) for about two months.  This produced a dramatic improvement in my general health and reversed a number of long-standing secondary symptoms.  My gastrointestinal problems cleared and I also lost my abnormal cravings for ice.  Also my fingernails improved and the skin on my lips, which had been cracked and dry to the point of bleeding, became soft and healthy looking again.

    I was puzzled by this as I had been taking a number of multiple vitamin preparations, eating lots of  green and yellow vegetables and drinking carrot juice.  I had seen numerous nutritional professionals. Yet not one of them picked up on the fact that I needed vitamin A!   I  researched the vitamin, piecing together information from different sources and was able to uncover the underlying problem.  Suddenly the mystery of my illness became simple and transparent!

    What I found out was that there are two forms of vitamin A.  One of these, beta carotene, found in vegetables, is not true vitamin A but a precursor which must be converted by an enzyme in the presence of thyroxin, the thyroid hormone, if it is to be utilized as vitamin A by the body.  I had been somewhat aware of the two forms, however most writing on nutrition, and the nutritionists with whom I had consulted, all recommended carotene as the preferred form in which to take the vitamin.  What was emphasized is the fact that carotene can never be toxic in any amount, therefore it is considered safer.

    Additionally, the two forms are often treated as if they were interchangeable.  Most multiple vitamin supplements currently on the market substitute beta carotene, unit for unit, for vitamin A and many do not label clearly that the switch has been made.  .  I had taken a number of supplements where this was the case.  In fact, such misleading labeling on the part of vitamin manufacturers is one of the reasons I didn't catch onto the problem.  For example, one of the supplements I took noted vitamin A 10,000 IU..........RDA 200%.  However if you look at the fine print on the side of the label it states "vitamin A carrot concentrate".  Another supplement said, Vitamin A......5,000 IU, but at the bottom of the label it said, "vegetarian formula".  Now "carrot concentrate" or "vegetarian formula" means that the supplement uses beta carotene in place of vitamin A, therefore, in order to derive vitamin A, one must convert it in the body.   If we assume the currently believed optimal conversion rate of about one sixth then 10,000 IU of carotene equals 1,666 IU of vitamin A. (As the saying goes, the devil is in the detail.)  This is only equal to only 33% of the daily RDA of 5000 IU instead of the 200% stated on the label.   This small detail is entirely omitted from the labeling.   This sleight of hand is tantamount to using fraudulent weights and measures.  It is as dishonest as when a person who pulls up to the pump is charged for 10 gallons of gas when in fact only 1.666 gallons went into the tank.  Yet searching the shelves at the health food store, I found this practice to be almost universal.  In fact, I later learned that the FDA allows food manufacturers to label units of beta carotene as vitamin A

    Another small detail which is omitted from the vitamin label is that certain medical conditions such as diabetes and low thyroid in particular, may block conversion altogether.  Thus a seemingly healthy vegetarian diet may be dangerously low in vitamin A for persons in these categories because of their inability to utilize carotene sources of the vitamin.  Serious malnutrition may result if pre formed vitamin A is not taken.  The deficiency of vitamin A is extremely hard on the thyroid and the pituitary - organs central to women's health.  Low thyroid, which is often sub clinical, (Meaning that the thyroid tests are not sensitive to pick it up.)  is extremely common in women with gynecological problems, especially dysfunctional uterine bleeding.  Although my test results were normal, my symptoms showed a classic profile for a low thyroid.)  Dysfunctional bleeding is a leading (if not the leading) cause of hysterectomies.   I came to realize that, as a vegetarian, I had depleted my body level of vitamin A by not understanding this problem.

    In addition to this I noted that certain foods frequently used by vegetarians fall into a category called goitrogens (from goiter) which tend to suppress thyroid activity further.  This group includes otherwise good foods such as broccoli, kale, millet, and most notably soy. (Recall that Dr. Northrup recommended soy milk to replace dairy.)  I discovered that infants on soy formula and adults consuming soy isoflavones often develop goiter and hypothyroidism.  In one study, women consuming soy isoflavones developed disruptions of the menstrual cycle for up to three months after the soy was discontinued.  Closer to home, one of my girlfriends told me that she had developed menstrual problems when she started eating a lot of tofu.
     

    ( Note: Northrup is currently promoting the Revival soy drink that contains
    160 mg isoflavones per serving!  (45 mg per day caused endocrine disruption
    in American women after just one month)
    I also came to understand that taking iron for anemia, without taking vitamin A concurrently, could trigger hemorrhaging.  This is because iron and vitamin A work synergistically in building blood.  Taking iron alone lowers vitamin A levels if vitamin A is not supplemented at the same time.  This is exactly the sequence that triggered my hemorrhage.  (When I checked a the local health food store I could not find one blood building supplement for women which contained vitamin A, although many contained other synergistic nutrients such as vitamin B 12.)  What is necessary, when this happens, is to take pre formed vitamin A in very high doses - just the opposite of what I had been taught.  High does are indicated and therapeutic in these circumstances because the bodily stores of the vitamin have become depleted, requiring large doses to return the body to a state of health.

    From this research it became clear to me that the vegetarian diet that Dr. Northrup had recommended could be extremely dangerous for some women (especially those with low thyroid) if not adequately supplemented with pre formed vitamin A.  I realized that over time it could deplete the body stores of the fat soluble vitamins, leading to severe malnutrition.  I came to strongly suspected that it may have been a significant contributing factor in my bleeding.  What was especially tragic about this is that this problem is so easy and inexpensive to correct with proper supplements.  I realized that each of the nutritionists that I had seen had fallen into the trap of confusing carotene with vitamin A, thus passing on the confusion to their clients.

    To make matters worse, by reviewing Dr. Northrup's past writings, I became aware that she was one of the major sources through which these dietary ideas (vegetarian, macrobiotic type of diet for women's health problems and bleeding) had been placed into public circulation.   Her high profile as a doctor and her sterling credentials, gave her the aura of credibility that would bring her ideas to be uncritically accepted, not only by members of the public, but also by many nutritional professionals across the nation.  I suspected that this might be one reason that no matter where else I turned among holistic healers I was given the same (wrong) nutritional advice.

    I therefore felt that Christiane needed to be advised of this potential danger inherent in her dietary recommendations.   In February of that year (1994) I wrote her a letter notifying her that I had found the nutritional basis for my illness and asking her for a meeting to share the information.  Her response was to write a (Dear John) letter terminating her relationship with me.

    What Women Do To Women

    I was deeply hurt and confused by this response on her part.   I had expected her to be interested in what I had found, given her stated interest in nutrition.  I couldn't understand why she would refuse a chance to learn something that might help other patients avoid the trauma that I had been through.  I wrote two conciliatory letters attempting to re-establish communication, telling her that I had not intended to blame her but merely wanted to share information.  Soon after, in April, I was sent an official termination letter from “Women to Women”.  In the letter I was told that I could get a list of physicians from Maine Medical Center.  I was not so much as given the courtesy of a referral.   Her reaction struck me as very strange, and I felt an increasing sense of confusion and foreboding.  It was as if someone had socked me in the solar plexus.  I never did get the chance to share the information that I had found.

    That summer (1994), Dr. Northrup's book, Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, was published.  However, before I took a look at it, I ran across another book, Dr. Wright's Guide to Healing With Nutrition, (©1984) by Dr. Jonathan Wright.  When I opened it, my knees went weak.  I was shocked to find that Dr. Wright had an entire chapter on the use of vitamin A for menorrhagia and claimed to get a better than 90% success rate, mirroring the success rate reported in South Africa.  He emphasized that, "Most of the talk of vitamin A toxicity is overdone, more propaganda than accurate information.".  And he cited the study in the South African Medical Journal to support his recommendations.  I knew that Dr. Northrup was a close colleague of Dr. Wright and was quite aware of the therapies that he used.  If Dr. Wright had this information, there was no way she could not have been familiar with it.  Why didn't she mention it to me.  At least I should have had a chance to try it.  At this point I knew I'd better take a look at her book.

    When I opened the book, my fears were confirmed.  Dr. Northrup specifically recommended up to 100,000 IU per day of vitamin A for up to three months in her section on menorrhagia (p.141- 143 - first edition), citing the reference in the 1977 South African Medical Journal.  She was also aware of the thyroid connection to bleeding (from medical school) and claimed to do prolactin hormone testing in cases of bleeding.  Yet she had never even mentioned any of these connections to me during the entire four years that I was bleeding!  (Recall that she did recommend other, unrelated treatments, and supervised the injection of other vitamins -C, B, Calcium and Magnesium.  Yet she specifically omitted vitamin A in every case!)  Not only that, but  she also mentioned (p. 456, 1st ed.) the importance of vitamin A for the health of the intestinal tract, although in this instance she claims “beta carotene is converted in the body into vitamin A”. ( My second most debilitating symptom involved the lining of the intestinal track and this symptom cleared dramatically on vitamin A.)  However, she had never mentioned vitamin A to me in any form.  I was devastated.  And from that point of devastation I watched as she rose to national fame with all of the media attention the book received.
     
     

    Women's Whoppers, Women's Wiles

    External actions show internal secrets - Legal Maxim, Bouvier's Law Dictionary

    I went back and reviewed the medical records and questions began to form in my mind at every turn.  Why, for example, did she repeatedly fail to pick up on numerous clues scattered throughout the records that I needed vitamin A?  And why did she encourage me to look in every other conceivable direction?  (I got quite a tour of holistic medicine!)

    For example, when under the care of nutritionist Vicki, I started to bleed the first time, I was given vitamin A inadvertently (along with a laundry list of other supplements ).  The bleeding stopped shortly after.  I did not draw the connection at that time because there were so many other variables and I was still confused about vitamin A/beta carotene.  However, this sequence of events was recorded in my medical records at the outset.  Why didn't Dr. Northrup draw the connection that was written right under her nose?  And why did she go so far as to as to supervise injections of other vitamins (but omit vitamin A)?  When I started to hemorrhage for the second time, although normally vegetarian, I began to eat liver (the richest food source of vitamin A).  She mentioned the importance of iron, but not vitamin A.  She then oversaw my going to the Kushi Institute for a strict (healing mode as opposed to standard) macrobiotic diet (no more liver!).   At one point in my treatment I started to take small amounts of cod liver oil in tablet form for vitamin D.  I noted that I seemed to be doing better. Dr. Northrup noted that in the medical records but failed to point out to me that it might be the vitamin A that was helping.  (Note that I was taking far too low a dose to get a truly therapeutic response.  I had been warned not to take large doses of vitamin A because of the danger of “toxicity”, so it never would have occurred to me to take a large dose.  None-the-less, I was able to lower the dose of my medication after an extended period of time.)  Additionally, she greatly encouraged unrelated treatments such as cranial massage (what does that have to do with the price of eggs?), that was recommended by another healer, but failed to do any further nutritional or endocrine testing.

    When, on my own initiative, I went to see Dr. Virginia Shapiro (who did nutritional muscle testing)  Dr. Northrup reacted with shock and almost broke off relations.  Why?  What was she afraid of?  (Unfortunately Ginny tested me on beta carotene rather than vitamin A, and missed the connection.  She did, however, discover that soy was causing a problem for me.  Her colleague, Dr. Vreeland, in Vermont, also made the same mistake when he tested me on beta carotene instead of vitamin A.   However, both Ginny and Dr. Vreeland did pick up on the thyroid problem by using muscle testing.)

    There were other disturbing anomalies throughout.  I now realized, from the information that I had amassed, that the extreme vegetarian diet recommended by Dr. Northrup could lead to serious malnutrition in susceptible (i.e. low thyroid) patients.  You almost couldn't design a diet more likely to cause problems in this group.  These, as a group, were the very patients who were most susceptible to unneeded surgery on the reproductive organs.  This raised the question of why had Dr. Northrup failed to respond more appropriately.  The medical records even notes "question of nutrient lack, but follows a good diet."  Why didn't she do some more checking, especially concerning the nutrient most indicated? Why didn't she do a lab test for vitamin A levels?  It was clear that she knew about the vitamin A connection from the South African study.  So did she understand the pitfalls of the diet that she had recommended?

    Although I did not know the answer to this, it occurred to me that the knowledge of both medicine and nutrition is a powerful combination.  Not only could it confer to one who masters it tremendous power to heal but also tremendous power to harm.  Harm that crossed over the boundaries of mainstream, standard medical care, into holistic/nutritional care, could slip by those charged with oversight because it went beyond the medical paradigms, training and beliefs held by such persons.  I had also come to realize that nutritional advice that might seem very reasonable to those of lesser sophistication might be recognized as potentially harmful by those of greater sophistication and knowledge.  In short, nutritional medicine is not totally benign.

    As to how much Dr. Northrup had known at the time, I was unsure, but troubled by the question. What did she know?  And when did she know it?  Therefore I endeavored to investigate what sources of information she might have been familiar with.  I started by looking to Dr. Wright’s book because I knew she was familiar with Dr. Wright. I found that under his chapter on the thyroid he recommends the work of Dr. Stephen Langer and Dr. Broda Barnes along with a warning about the inadequacy of standard thyroid test.  I looked up these two doctors.

    Dr. Langer’s book titled  Solved: the Riddle of Illness, turned out to be one of the best sources I have found to date concerning the question of carotene conversion and vitamin A.  He devotes an entire chapter on nutrition for thyroid illness which emphasizes the danger of extreme vegetarian diets and the problem of carotene conversion and vitamin A deficiency.

    Dr. Langer has this to say;

      "I see too many risks in the Spartan vegetarian diet.....carotene, the vitamin A precursor is not easily translated into vitamin A....In
    hypothyroids and diabetics, this ability is nearly completely
    blocked." (p.31)

    "Certain facts of life about nutrition and thyroid have been know
    for the past twenty or thirty years.   Yet the have never seen print in
    anything but medical publications..." (p.33)

    Looking up Dr. Barnes, I found that he emphasized the inadequacy of medical blood test for low thyroid and gave great emphasis to the problem of unnecessary surgeries on the reproductive organs resulting from uncorrected thyroid problems.

    Dr. Barnes says;

    "I want to emphasize, at the risk of seeming to be repetitious, that
    undetected and untreated thyroid deficiency can lead to needless
    surgery on the reproductive organs." (p.131)
    Dr. Northrup was very familiar with Dr. Wright's work.  In fact, Dr. Wright has served as a kind of mentor for her in the area of nutritional medicine.  Was she also familiar with these writers mentioned by Dr. Wright?  I could only guess.

    I went back to Dr. Northrup's earlier writings.  She had also had an article in EWJ that came out in Dec. of 1981.  I had not seen the article at the time it came out but I was able to get an old copy through interlibrary loan.  I was stunned at what I found. At the beginning of the article Dr. Northrup claimed that her father, a dentist, was a follower of Dr. Weston A. Price.  In this article she claimed familiarity with Dr. Prices’ work and seemed to use it as justification for what was to follow.  Although this detail would have meant nothing to me back in the early 1980's it now stuck out like a sore thumb.  I had since learned about the work of Dr. Price from my research.  I had learned about Dr. Prices’ meticulous, cross-cultural research into human dietary patterns and good health.  At the center of Dr. Prices’ findings was the importance of animal source, fat soluble vitamins in human nutrition.  If Dr. Northrup were truly familiar with the work of Dr. Price then she should have been well advised as to the danger that her recommended diet could deplete these nutrients.  Yet despite this fact, she promoted the same low-fat, vegetarian diet that she had promoted in the later article and to her patients.  And she specifically promoted this diet for the problem of excess bleeding.

    This information raised some very troubling questions.  Not only did she clearly know the vitamin A and thyroid connection to uterine bleeding, but she was very close to sources that could inform her as to why her recommended diet could deplete this very indicated nutrient in her most vulnerable patients.  Furthermore she clearly had the medical and nutritional background to interpret this information.

    Even if she had not understood the problems inherent in her diet, the most troubling question remained.  Why did she fail to give her patients the benefit of the advice she was about to publish concerning vitamin A as the nutritional treatment of choice for excess bleeding?  Why did she ignore the scientific evidence, with documented results, as well as numerous clues in the medical records?  Why did she fail to do appropriate nutritional testing?  And failing that, why did she encourage just about everything else so matter how irrelevant to the problem at hand?  It seemed quite ironic to me that the actual consequence of her recommendations was either to get me into more trouble or merely send me on a wild goose chase.  Considering that she went on to become a world famous holistic healer and a specialist in women's illnesses, all this raised serious and troublesome questions.

    At that point I realized that I needed to get a legal opinion.  Nonetheless, I was quite skeptical about the law when it came to issues concerning vitamins.  I spoke with several lawyers but, as I feared, I was told that there was no way that I could make a case in an American court based on vitamins and a South African Medical Study.  One lawyer specifically told me that although vitamin A might be routine in South Africa for cases of menorrhagia, it is not generally used in American mainstream medicine, therefore it would be impossible to base a case upon it. Furthermore, although the law does recognize the right of a patient to '"informed consent" of alternative treatments, the designation "alternative", in this context, refers to allopathic or conventional alternatives.  It does not cover holistic, non standard alternatives.

    This reading of the law has serious consequences.  When a doctor holds him/herself out as offering a holistic service, this advertisement attracts patients who desire to avoid allopathically indicated surgery.  The doctor, on the other hand,  has no legal obligation to inform the patient of holistic treatments which might truly prevent the surgery.  Needless to say, failure to prevent such surgeries may be lucrative for a doctor who is also a surgeon, creating for the doctor the temptation not to mention the holistic treatment.  In other words, the doctor can have it both ways and play both sides against the middle.

    A second lawyer stated:

    "I think your position is well taken with respect to Dr. Northrup's
    unusual status.  She holds herself out as a holistic healer and
    therefore probably should have exhausted all of the holistic
    remedies (including vitamin A therapy) before moving on to
    surgery.  However I think it would be virtually impossible to obtain
    a qualified expert testimony that it is more likely than not that you
    would have avoided your surgery had vitamin therapy been initiated."
    He told me that many cases of severe bleeding are refractory to any treatment but
    surgery.   I responded by asking if vitamin A had been tried in these cases.  He replied,
    "My understanding is that vitamin A therapy is not the standard care
    for this problem."
    Again I was up against circular logic.  If you haven't tried the treatment, how do you know it wouldn't work?  Further protecting the doctor were emergency surgery laws and a very short statute of limitations - three years in Maine.  (Note, in medicine the statute of limitation is not only a filing deadline but covers what evidence can be brought up.   My ordeal lasted over 6 years since my initial visit and one more year had elapsed before the book was published, which didn't leave anything but the last act.)  I was also told that the loss of a uterus in a woman my age (46) would not be considered sufficient harm to constitute damages in the view of the court (!) (Tell that to any woman who has had a hysterectomy! What a joke!).  The doctor had the benefit of every loophole.

    The only legal “hook”that the lawyer could come up with was “failure to treat” (i.e. from an allopathic perspective).  In my case the statute of limitations was far too short to capture even this, but even if it had been long enough I would not have been happy with this angle. To pursue a case based on the “failure to treat” would have made it appear to the public that yet another holistic healer was being raked through the coals for failing to follow standard protocols, when the real issue was the failure to prescribe vitamin A as therapy.  Truth would have been subject to distortion by the necessity of framing the issue in terms that the dominant medical paradigm and the courts could understand and process.  The confusion that resulted could have easily been exploited by the doctor who could have then posed as a martyr to the cause of holistic care.  In other words, as a result of the distortion resulting from having to operate across paradigms, the doctor could have it both ways.(!)

    I realized that the law would not give me any means to hold the doctor accountable and I didn't know what to do.  Yet I was determined not to be a silent victim.  So I did all that I could see to do at that point.  I confronted the doctor in a letter.  Her response was to take out a restraining order.  To fast forward and make a long story short, she tried to take me to court to prevent me from attending her public talks.   However, instead of going to court, I was able, after several tries, to persuade her to come to mediation.

    The mediation took place on November 1, 1994.  (Witnessed by attorney Kim Matthews)  During the course of it I asked her why she had failed to follow her own book, and failing that, why had she encouraged just about everything else?  She answered that she had only cited the reference on vitamin A and the South African study to make her book complete.  She said that she knew that Dr. Wright used it, but that she "never found that it worked".   I also asked her why she hadn't just sent me to a good naturopathic physician at the outset.  (Note that when I first went to her I didn't even know what a naturopath was.)  Her answer was,“But there was none in town.”

    These answers presented a problem.  In her book she says vitamin A "often works well" (p. 143, first ed.).  Also she had referred me to a herbalist in PA, so why couldn't she have sent me to an out-of-town naturopath?  I found her answers to be quite underwhelming.  In spite of these explanations, she turned right around and repeated the same advice the following year (1995) when she launched a national health newsletter for women.  In a supplement titled "Heal Your Symptoms Naturally", under the heading "Heal Fibroids without Surgery"  she states,

    "Take 50,000 - 100,000 IU of vitamin A daily for three months. Studies have shown that this can decrease bleeding"
    I later went back to some of Christiane's earlier published interviews and discovered even more  troubling passages.  For example, in her December, 1981 interview in East/West Journal Magazine she says,
    "..There's a Western prejudice against information coming out of other countries.  This prejudice is particularly strong in American medicine; we don't accept anything that comes out of the South African Journal of whatever, because it's not American."
    This quote suggests that she was quite aware of the difficulty a patient might have using this study as evidence in an American court.  In this same article she also asserts,
     "Yes, I feel it's almost immoral to withhold this information, and
    this is a conflict I run into all the time.  What if a woman walks into my office with a problem that may be treatable with diet.  There's always a part of me that wants to say, "Mrs. Jones, before you take this medication, let me just tell you about this."
    Note the weasel wording of the above quote.   The words "there's always a part of me that wants to say...." implies that she doesn't actually reveal the information.

    Additionally, in an October, 1983 EWJ interview she says,

     "We talked about this at the Board of Trustees meeting of the
    American Holistic Medical Association. .....One of our members
    pointed out that the data for prevention and for the nutritional
    approach is actually all there in the medical literature, but if you
    haven't had the experience of healing through a "non- scientific"
    approach you probably won't believe it works.  I believe that what
    we call "unscientific" is actually scientific- we're just not
    sophisticated enough to study it at the right level."
    Note that her defense for failing to recommend vitamin A in the light of her recommendation of it in her book was that it "didn't work".

    In her book (p 151, 1st edition) she writes:

    "Even today, if a woman has a reproductive illness but wants to
    keep her uterus even though she has no interest in childbearing, her medical team often views her as overly emotional or sentimental, a bit superstitious, and not well educated about that organ.  The general patriarchal tone of this medical training is that if such a woman were more sophisticated, she would know that the uterus is useless to her except for childbearing."
    The irony of these statements was not lost on me. She claims that it is "almost immoral" to withhold nutritional information and she poses herself as a critic of the very medical system that was now letting her off the hook.  She laments the fact that nutritional studies, and studies in foreign medical journals, are not taken seriously.  Yet she escapes accountability at the hands of a patient for these very same reasons.

    Then to add insult to injury, she gave an interview in the July 1995 "Vegetarian Times" in which she made allusions to me, claiming that I had been "abusive" to her and the staff.

    "We came back and understood the way we were interacting with people that set us up first as rescuers and then as victims.  We began to weed out people who were abusive to us or our staff.  For example, we treated a woman for several years who had repeated episodes of very heavy uterine bleeding associated with fibroids.  Each time she called in or came in with heavy bleeding and anemia, she refused almost every treatment my colleagues or I offered her- especially if the treatment involved anything she considered conventional, such as drugs and surgery.  But when her herbal or dietary regimens didn't work, she'd accuse us of not knowing what we were doing and become very angry.

    Meanwhile her blood count remained dangerously low while my colleagues and I walked on eggshells trying to steer a course between her wishes and safe medical practice.  Her emergency phone calls at night and on weekends continued until we told her that we could no longer participate in her medical care."


    Notice how she blames the patient and exonerates herself.  She claims that herbal and dietary regimens “didn't work” and castigates the patient for refusing conventional treatment, while she fails to mention her own withholding of directly relevant nutritional information that she possessed during this time.  Furthermore, with regard to holistic vs. conventional care she regards as irrelevant the fact of her own self promotion as a holistic healer who treats women's health problems with diet and vitamins, a claim that had recruited the patient.   She fails to distinguish the fact that she only let the patient go after, not before, the surgery.

    To put the icing on the cake, the following September (1995), she was featured in an article in a holistic nutrition magazine, "Delicious", titled  "How to Avoid a Hysterectomy."

    The Maine State Medical Board

    I tried contacting the American Holistic Medical Association, of which she is a former president, and the American Board of Holistic Medicine.  In both cases, I was told that they offered no channels of complaint, nor any means to review the conduct of their members.  I was also told that if I did try to speak with anyone that I would not be under the protection of legal privilege and thus might be sued for anything that I said.  I was told to go to my state medical board.  I did not feel very hopeful about this but decided to try.  I wrote a detailed and carefully footnoted account of the medical and nutritional aspects of my case with references to entries in the medical records.  I collected medical and nutritional source material as well as published articles documenting her public statements.  This careful research took a great deal of time and money on my part as I also hired a lawyer to help me be more objective.

    Dr. Northrup's response was barely two pages long, with only about a half a page devoted to medical questions.  I was not permitted to have a copy.  However Assistant Director, Bill McPeck did meet with my attorney and me, and permitted us to read it.  During this meeting my attorney queried the assistant director saying, "She's promoting herself as an expert in the holistic treatment of women's illnesses.  Aren't there certain things that she is expected to know?"  To this McPeck responded, "But the Board doesn't know anything about nutrition."

    In her response Dr. Northrup gave lame excuses for her failure to follow her own forthcoming published recommendations.  Despite this, her strategy worked.  The Board dismissed my complaint at their initial screening meeting which I was not permitted to attend.  I was never given the opportunity to have a hearing.  In the minutes my complaint was put down as a simple "misunderstanding" despite the fact that, for me, my ordeal has been the most devastating physical, emotional, and financial crisis of my life!
     

    (The reason I don't cite more specifics of her response is that I still don't have a copy of the document.  When I requested a copy, the medical board refused to release it without Dr. Northrup's permission.  Of course she refused.  When I later inquired, I was told that the records would be kept in a private stash overseen by the Board.  Unlike the Archives of the State of Maine, this was a file that was not covered under the Freedom of Information Act and is discarded after five years so there is no permanent record of a complaint.  I was told that although the Attorney General had later made a ruling that a copy of  doctor's reply's must be given to complainants, my complaint had been filed before the ruling so I was not permitted to have a copy.  )
    My most basic complaint was a lack of truth in advertising and a failure to truly deliver the kind of medicine that she claims to deliver.   The evidence for this was her failure to follow the recommendations later set forth in her own book and newsletter and her failure to give bona fide holistic care as she understood it, evidenced by those publications, before resorting to surgery.  Unfortunately the board felt that she had adequately delivered on her claim to be a holistic doctor because she had recommended some forms of holistic care . They made no distinction between one holistic treatment and another.  (Would they consider all kinds of surgeries to be interchangeable?)  I suppose their decision was inevitable.  Even with the best will in the world (which I doubt they had) lacking an adequate paradigm to encompass holistic treatments, and an understanding of those treatments, the meaning of the treatments involved would be lost on them.  Being traditional allopathic doctors, they had no basis for evaluating a doctor's treatment from a holistic, or nutritional, perspective and more importantly no interest whatsoever in defending a patients right to honest holistic care.

    Serving Two Masters

    This outcome illustrates the essence of the problem.  It has become fashionable in medical circles today to refer to holistic medicine as "complementary" medicine.  This is a weasel word.  One must ask, Complementary to what?  Surgery?  Stated this way it is considered to be a nonessential or supplemental addition to standard medical care.  In this view, standard care remains the gold standard.  From this perspective a doctor might be considered holistic if he or she offers auxiliary holistic treatments.  When considering my situation, there was certainly nothing "wrong" with the treatments Dr. Northrup encouraged when they are viewed as merely supportive (and not specific) treatments.   The only problem was that all of them failed to address the underlying nutritional deficiency.  Pursuing them amounted to being sent on a wild goose chase.  Using this the definition of holistic care the doctor could meet the letter of the law defining a claim to be holistic, while assuring that the treatment would fail to heal and lead to inevitable and profitable (for the doctor) surgery.

    Yet true holistic care is not merely a matter of adding scattershot, nonspecific treatments to a menu of therapies.   And nutritional science may be rightfully or wrongfully applied.  When questions concerning the bona fide application of alternative treatment cannot be addressed through legal means from the (holistic) perspective in which they were offered, a doctor who understands how both forms of medicine work may play both sides against the middle.  They can have it both ways, ensuring greater profits for themselves at the patient's expense, while slipping through the legal system unscathed.

    Returning to my medical question, months after the medical board's decision, while surfing the Internet, I found the following entry of a Q&A with Dr. Northrup on the Powersurge Internet conference.  This exchange took place while I was awaiting an answer from the board.
     

    (From the Power Surge Conference, January 13, 1997.
    http://www.dearest.com/northrup.htm)

    "Mbarr227:   51, have fibroids, heavy periods every 2 weeks, don't want hysterectomy, anemic, no flashes. ...What to do?"

    "Northrup MD:   Try vitamin A 10,000 I.U. per day along with B complex 50 Mg. per day and vitamin E 200 I.U. per day. ga"
     

    Recall that in her response to the board Dr, Northrup excused her failure to use vitamin A for bleeding with fibroids, yet in this document it is her first choice of treatment for this condition.   The case was still pending when she posted this answer on the Internet.  By giving this online answer while her case was still pending, she in effect is thumbing her nose both at the board and the patient.  Clearly she was aware that the board would not take vitamins seriously.   I tried with this new information, to have the Board revisit the case but, predictably, my request was turned down.  Although the Board does have statutory jurisdiction over questions of truth in advertising, fraud and deceit, as well as purely medical questions, they view these issues from a purely allopathic perspective.  One might make a case of fraud when a doctor gives alternative treatments in lieu of standard ones.  One cannot make such a case when a doctor fails to give bona fide holistic care in lieu of standard care.

    From what I later heard, when the question of the inappropriateness of the doctor's course of holistic treatment was raised, the Board replied that the doctor was merely accommodating the patient's wishes. ( i.e. for holistic medicine)   In other words, the Board blamed the patient for the doctors lack of reasonable holistic care.  In doing so they totally disregarded the fact that the patient had gone to the doctor in the first place because of her public claim to be an expert in holistic medicine.

    Sometime later I spoke with Ruth McNiff, the Assistant Attorney General for the Board of Medicine and queried her about the decision.  The conversation was substantially as follows:
     

    Me,   "Considering the fact that your own Assistant Director, Bill McPeck and the Boards Investigator, Kevin Cookson, both feel that this case raises very serious issues that need to be addressed, why would not the Board move forward in looking into this case?"

    McNiff,    "But Bill and Kevin are not the doctors.  The doctors on the Board read your complaint and decided that there was no incompetence."

    Me,    "I never claimed incompetence.  I was raising issues related to the board's statutory jurisdiction over lack of truth in advertising, fraud and deceit.  I felt that because Dr. Northrup withheld key nutritional information and failed to follow her own later published advice for my condition, that she had failed to honor, in good faith, her clear and unambiguous public claim to be a holistic doctor who tries to avoid excess surgery."

     McNiff,  "But to the Board, "fraud" means medical (i.e. allopathic) fraud.  There is no standard of holistic care, therefore there can be no claim of fraud because there is no standard to base it upon.  It doesn't matter how the doctor presents him/herself in the media.  The only way that a patient could establish, for legal purposes, that a doctor failed to deliver, would be if the patient and the doctor had entered into a written contract before commencing treatment.  Then you might have some avenue through breach of contract."

    McNiff went on to say that because holistic medicine is so new, there has not been time to do the necessary research to develop a set of standards.  Until that is done there can be no legal standard of care to hold a holistic doctor to.


    This argument might sound reasonable to some people, but I felt that lack of research wasn't the real issue.  It is true that there are many areas of holistic medicine that need more research (just as there are areas of allopathic medicine that need research).  Knowledge is ongoing.  But even today there already exists plenty of good research already and credible scientific studies in areas such as nutrition.  Much of it is published in medical journals.  Why not use the information we already have?

    In this regard, recall Dr. Northrup's comments in the October 1983 EWJ:

     "We talked about this at the Board of Trustees meeting of the American Holistic Medical Association. .....One of our members pointed out that the data for prevention and for the nutritional approach is actually all there in the medical literature, but if you haven't had the experience of healing through a "non- scientific" approach you probably won't believe it works."
    (Recall that the excuse she gave for her failure to recommend vitamin A was that it "didn't work".   How that  woman can talk out of two sides of her mouth!)

    Questions of Accountability

    Certainly, in my own case, the Board discounted or ignored all the scientific data and documentation that I provided.  So I don't believe that the need for research is the real problem.  In my view the real problem is philosophical and political.  The medical establishment will not credit data that goes against it's own perspective and vested interests.  Change isn't going to come from doctors but from patients.

    Lawsuits by patients might seem to be a way to raise these issues, but in order for malpractice law to evolve, cases must be able to get a toehold in court.  Yet this is the very process that is being stymied.  Because of the domination of the AMA over medical standards, lawyers are reluctant to take cases that challenge that system.  Therefore in order to get into court a patient must be willing to underwrite the whole shebang out of pocket.  Very few patients can do that.  I was told that it would cost me over $150,000 to bring a suit.  I know I don't have that kind of money to spare, especially after my medical expenses have drained my resources.   From there, once a suit is filed it may be difficult to get evidence admitted which goes contrary to the practices of mainstream medicine.  (The recent "Daubert" ruling concerning the admissibility of evidence further compounds this problem by setting an even more inflexible standard of evidence!)  If patients are unable to raise an issue through a public venue ( i.e. a court) their interests remain invisible.

     
    In fact, I even tried to get the local newspapers to report on the board's refusal to take my case, but to no avail.  The response I got was that they would not report anything unless it could get into court or be reviewed by the board.  The problem was like a snake biting its tail.  Due to the secrecy surrounding medical records, so long as patients cannot get a voice in the public arena in matters concerning a doctor's failure to deliver on holistic claims, patients who have common experiences cannot know about each other or about each others experiences.

    So the current reality is that a medical doctor can make any holistic claim to promote themselves and ingratiate themselves to the public, knowing that their only real accountability is to conventional, standard care just like any other.  To add to this problem, there is an inherent, structural conflict of interest involved when a doctor who is also a surgeon and stands to profit by doing surgery, claims to use holistic means to avoid surgery.  Without accountability for how they practice holistic care, the temptation is great for such doctors to act for their own benefit rather than that of the patient.

    To add even more insult to injury, most patients haven't got a clue as to where they really stand legally.  Their inevitable ignorance on this matter can be exploited.   Consider the following response by Dr. Northrup in her interview in the July 1995 "Vegetarian Times".

    Veggie Times, "But some doctors may be concerned that they'll be sued for malpractice.....Does using this approach (i.e. holistic) mean that in some cases a patient must actually say to the doctor that she absolves the doctor of any malpractice liability?

    "Northrup, "Yes.  Sometimes she has to have the courage to do this."

    Here Dr. Northrup suggests that a woman ought to be more concerned about her doctor's jeopardy than she is about her own.  In the light of my own experience, such talk reminds me of a slithering forked tongued reptile.

    If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck.........it might be a DECOY!

    So the question of accountability remains.  Since my experience Dr. Northrup has become a national celebrity who is promoted as an expert in women's health and is widely influential.   On her book jacket she claims that the clinic she founded, "Women to Women", is an "acclaimed holistic health center".  None the less as a patient I have been denied the means to hold her accountable to deliver.  And my experience has been all but silenced.  Yet under current malpractice arrangements, accountability under such circumstances is not possible.  I believe that the reason that it is not possible needs public examination.

    In order to function properly, an accountability system requires a consistent paradigm.  When a doctor crosses from one medical paradigm to another, many egregious actions can slip past the overseers.  One could draw an analogy here with the situation of the bank robber who crosses from one jurisdiction to another in order to avoid prosecution.  Likewise, a doctor who crosses from one medical paradigm to another may be able to get away with things that they could not get away with if they remained within the bounds of a single medical point of view.  Although questions of nutrition still remain within the paradigm of the scientific method, much of the science involved has not been given credence by mainstream medicine because it does not fit into the allopathic medical model and it is not profitable for the medical industry.  Yet the public is clamoring for change.  And medicine is in trouble if it cannot meet that pressure.

    For a doctor to pose to the public as a holistic doctor without the legal pressure to deliver preserves the current system.  I believe that this is the reason that Dr. Northrup has been so well rewarded and given unlimited access to the media.  Her role, in my view, is to divert the path of women who are waking up to the cold realities of the medical system and heading for the exits.  Posing as a holistic healer tends to confuse questions of vested interest and the legal realities of a medical system that is dangerous for women's health.

    I have been noticing lately an even greater tendency for doctors to encompass even more paradigm spanning combinations.  This brings us to the heart of the problem.  When you put such a diverse menagerie of treatment modes and perspectives such as standard medicine, holistic medicine, mind/body medicine, and psychic viewing (Dr. Northrup now shares a space with a "medical intuitive" -read psychic) all under the same roof, not to mention the same hat, you are going to have problems of boundaries.  Boundary problems are caused by the protean crossing back and forth across paradigms.  Like chameleons they change color to take advantage of any situation they find themselves in.  This results in an inability of accountability structures to handle issues raised by such crossovers.
     

    The Ultimate Rape

    This part is still under construction please check back.
     
     

    Bibliography

    Web sites


    Publications

     For a further discussion of the work of Dr. Price, the Price/Pottinger Foundation and vegetarian
    /macrobiotic diets and vitamin A see also: