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Bad MD Files · North Carolina · Reprimanded 2010

Dr. Rashid Buttar: “Every Patient That Comes Through Your Door Has Heavy Metal Toxicity?”

A Huntersville, North Carolina osteopath who sold a chelation cream of his own invention to the parents of autistic children and weeks of intravenous treatments to people with advanced cancer. A medical board panel found he exploited patients with exorbitant fees for therapies that did not work. He was reprimanded, kept practising, and in 2021 was named one of the twelve people behind most of the anti-vaccine content on social media.

By Terry Polevoy, MD · QuackeryWatch.com · October 2026

The cream

Buttar's signature product was a “transdermal” chelation cream, rubbed on the skin, that the board said he “developed and invented and sold directly” to his patients. It was meant to pull mercury and other heavy metals out of the body. He promoted it above all to the parents of autistic children, at the height of the belief that vaccines and mercury caused autism. The diagnosis that justified it usually came from a “challenge” or provoked urine test, in which a chelating drug is given first and the inflated result is then compared with ranges meant for ordinary urine. The American College of Medical Toxicology has said that post-challenge urine testing has not been scientifically validated; see provoked urine testing.

At the board hearing, panel member Dr. Art McCulloch put the obvious question to him: “Doesn't it strike you as a little strange that every patient that comes through your door has heavy metal toxicity?” Buttar's answer to the charge that his care fell below the standard: “It's not the standard of care. It's beyond the standard of care.”

Patient E

The hearing transcripts, later published, include the testimony of the mother of “Patient E”, an eight-year-old girl with severe autism. The family paid “right at $3,000” to start, plus laboratory tests sent to Michigan. According to her mother, the girl was seen mainly by a nurse practitioner, not by Buttar; the office advised stopping the anxiety medication her own pediatrician had prescribed; and when she got worse, with violent tantrums and time out of school, the family was told this was expected because she was “moving metal.” The board's lawyer called the treatment “arbitrary, one size fits all”, with no “basis or evidence of science.” Her mother testified that after leaving his care she was “much better.”

The cancer patients

The board's charges said Buttar “charged exorbitant fees for his ineffectual therapies”, put patients on a uniform protocol regardless of diagnosis, ordered tests with no clear connection to their cancers, and sought payment of thousands of dollars from the widows and survivors of patients who had died. Three of the patients were people with advanced cancer who received weeks of intravenous infusions.

In April 2008 a three-member hearing panel found his practice below accepted medical standards in North Carolina and that he had exploited patients by charging exorbitant fees for unproven therapies that did not work. It recommended that his licence be suspended indefinitely, with the suspension stayed, and that he be “prohibited from treating children or patients with cancer.” “There's no basis for what you're doing, in my opinion,” McCulloch told him. Buttar called it “a witch hunt.”

What the board actually did. The full board did not adopt the ban. In March 2010, after about a decade of scrutiny, Buttar signed a consent order and accepted a reprimand. He could go on treating children and cancer patients as long as they signed a board-approved form acknowledging that his treatments “have not been proven effective by traditional research studies or conventional clinical trials.” Critics called it a slap on the wrist. A second reprimand followed after he gave his skin drops to a Michigan child he had not yet taken on as a patient; the board ordered him to get signed consent from parents before treating any minor, and, according to later accounts, to take courses in ethics and record-keeping.

The FDA

In April 2010, the same spring as the reprimand, the FDA sent Buttar a warning letter over unapproved topical products marketed through his websites, videos and radio appearances. FDA inspectors also found his manufacturing company, V-SAB Medical Labs, out of compliance with good manufacturing practice.

COVID-19 and the “Disinformation Dozen”

When the pandemic came, Buttar moved to a larger audience. Videos of him attacking Anthony Fauci and falsely linking COVID-19 to 5G networks and “chemtrails” spread widely before YouTube removed them. In March 2021 the Center for Countering Digital Hate named him one of the “Disinformation Dozen”: twelve people it found responsible for up to 65 per cent of anti-vaccine content shared on Facebook and Twitter. He died in May 2023, aged 57, after telling followers he had been poisoned.

Why he is in the Bad MD Files

Buttar is here because a medical board found against him, twice. The case also shows the limits of that finding. A panel concluded he was exploiting children and dying people and should stop treating them; the board settled for a reprimand and a consent form, and he practised for another decade, reaching far more people online than he ever could in his clinic.

Related on QuackeryWatch

Dr. Roy Kerry and Abubakar Tariq NadamaThe child who died during chelation for autism. Provoked urine testingThe test that sold chelation to autism families. Mark and David GeierLupron and chelation for autistic children. AAPS and its journalWhere Harold Buttram, a colleague in the same movement, published.

Sources

  1. “Rashid Buttar.” Wikipedia, consulted 27 October 2026.
  2. “Huntersville doctor accepts reprimand, keeps unorthodox work.” WBTV / Charlotte Observer, 31 March 2010.
  3. “Rashid Buttar should ‘be prohibited’.” Left Brain Right Brain, 26 April 2008, quoting the Charlotte Observer and the board's charges.
  4. David Gorski. “Rashid Buttar's going down.” Respectful Insolence, 26 April 2008.
  5. “Major fail by medical regulators: Dr. Rashid Buttar given slap on the wrist.” Left Brain Right Brain, 21 April 2010.
  6. “Transcripts of the Rashid Buttar hearings.” Left Brain Right Brain, 4 May 2010.
  7. “Medical board reprimands Mecklenburg doctor of osteopathy.” WCNC.
  8. Stephen Barrett. Rashid Buttar case file, Quackwatch, including the board's charges.
  9. Center for Countering Digital Hate. The Disinformation Dozen. March 2021.

The 2008 findings are those of a hearing panel; the board's final action was the 2010 reprimand by consent order. Allegations in the board's charges are identified as charges. Corrections are welcome and are recorded on the page.