Hulda Clark · The Patients · 1993–2009
The Cure for All Cancers — Except Theirs
Hulda Clark's book promised that every cancer was caused by one parasite and could be cured once it was killed. This page is about the people who believed her, and the people who were told they were sick by her machine when they weren't — and about how long it took anyone in authority to act.
The patients
The best-known case — Patricia Chavez's account of her mother, whose bone tumour grew to two and a half times its size while Clark's clinic told the family it was dead — is told on the main Clark page. These are the others on the record.
Hanne
Hanne was 42 and single, and her animals were most of her life: five dogs, four cats and birds. After a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation she went to a Danish practitioner who used Clark's protocols. He told her he could certainly cure her. He also told her that her pets might be the source of the parasite, so she gave away all but two dogs — which were zapped too — and stopped visiting friends who had animals in case she was “re-infected”. Her mother had to give up bringing her own dogs.
She spent at least $800 on capsules, tinctures and a zapper, changed her food and her soap, and followed the protocol to the letter. The herbs made her vomit and took her appetite. Within about a year the cancer was back in her lungs and liver. The practitioner promised a stronger cure. When she declined the last chemotherapy her hospital could offer, about a week before she died, he told her he was glad, because it would give his treatment a chance. A friend visiting her in hospital found her zapping herself and her dogs. She had an appointment with the practitioner a few days later. She did not live to keep it.
Her friend Pia Johansen sent this account to the site after Hanne's death. What she found hardest to forgive was not the money but the isolation: a dying woman cut off from her animals and her friends on the strength of a theory no parasitologist accepts.
The investigator who was told he had HIV
After a former patient complained to the Indiana attorney general, an investigator went to Clark's office posing as a patient. According to the probable-cause affidavit, she told him he had HIV, and that she could cure it in a matter of minutes. He did not have HIV. When Clark learned of the investigation she called her statements a mistake and left the premises two days before an arrest warrant could be served.
A child with spinal muscular atrophy
The San Diego Union-Tribune's 2002 series on the Tijuana clinics reported a child with spinal muscular atrophy, an inherited nerve disease, treated under Clark's program for ten months at a cost of about $30,000. There was no improvement. Spinal muscular atrophy has nothing to do with parasites.
A man with a pacemaker
In 2004 the New England Journal of Medicine published the case of a patient whose cardiac pacemaker was disrupted by a Clark zapper, causing heart-rhythm disturbances. A device sold as harmless electricity turned out to interfere with the one electrical device keeping him well. Nothing in the zapper's marketing warned pacemaker users.
What the authorities did, and when
- 1993 — Indiana
The Brown County investigation and the HIV visit above. Clark left the state before the warrant was served. - September 1999 — San Diego
Arrested on the Indiana fugitive warrant and returned to Indiana to face a charge of practising medicine without a licence. - April 2000 — Indiana
The charge was dismissed because she had not been brought to trial quickly enough. No court ever ruled on whether she had done what the affidavit described. (Herald-Times, 5 April 2000 · 19 April 2000) - 2001 — Tijuana
Mexican authorities closed her Tijuana clinic because it was operating without a licence, during a wider Baja California crackdown on alternative cancer clinics. Later accounts report a fine and an order that the clinic offer no alternative treatment. - February 2002 — still operating
The San Diego Union-Tribune found Clark's operation working in defiance of the shutdown, with patients shuttled across the border from an office in Chula Vista, and noted that her zappers were being made and sold from Canada. - January 2003 — U.S. Federal Trade Commission
The FTC sued the Dr. Clark Research Association and its operators, including David Amrein of Switzerland, over claims for the Syncrometer, the Super-Zapper and a “21 Day Program for Advanced Cancers”. - November 2004 — FTC judgment
A stipulated judgment required refunds to device buyers and barred the claims. As the Bad Devices page records, the refunds stopped at the border; Canadian buyers had no equivalent remedy. - 3 September 2009
Clark died at home in Chula Vista, aged 80. Her books, her protocol and zappers built to her design are still sold online.
The death certificate
The certificate registered with San Diego County records what killed her. The immediate cause of death is given as anemia, due to hypercalcemia, with multiple myeloma listed as another significant condition contributing to death. Anemia and a high blood calcium are two of the commonest complications of multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow. No autopsy was performed. Her occupation is recorded as “research project leader” in “physiology – medical”. Her ashes were scattered at sea.
The woman whose best-known book was The Cure for All Cancers died with a cancer listed on her death certificate.
Why this is a Canadian story
Clark was born and educated in Saskatchewan. Zappers were made and sold from Canada. Toronto's Total Health show billed her as a speaker. Canadian patients made the trip to Tijuana. Yet every enforcement action on this page was taken by an American state, the U.S. federal government, or Mexico. No Canadian regulator, prosecutor or court ever took action over her devices or her claims.
Related on QuackeryWatch
Sources
- Pia Johansen. Account of her friend Hanne's treatment and death, submitted to and first published on this site.
- State of Indiana v. Hulda Clark, probable-cause affidavit, filed 16 August 1993 (reproduced at Quackwatch).
- Steve Hinnefeld. “Woman who claims healing knowledge faces charges” and “Clark won't face charges.” Herald-Times (Bloomington, Ind.), 5 and 19 April 2000. Archived on HealthWatcher.net.
- Penni Crabtree and Sandra Dibble. “Borderline medicine” series, including the report on Clark's operation and “The 95 percent promise?” San Diego Union-Tribune, 24–25 February 2002.
- Associated Press. “Late-stage cancer patients flock to Mexico” (via NBC News): Mexico closed Clark's Tijuana clinic in 2001 for operating without a licence.
- Furrer M. et al. “Hazards of an alternative medicine device in a patient with a pacemaker.” New England Journal of Medicine, 2004.
- U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Press release on the Dr. Clark Research Association, January 2003; Stipulated Final Judgment, Civ. No. 1:03CV0054 (N.D. Ohio), 18 November 2004.
- Joe Schwarcz. “Cure all cancers? Maybe not.” McGill Office for Science and Society, 30 November 2017.
- Obituary, San Diego Union-Tribune, 17 September 2009.
- State of California, Certificate of Death, Hulda Regehr Clark, County of San Diego; informational certified copy issued 12 October 2009. QuackeryWatch archive.
The practitioner in Hanne's story is not named here: the account is a friend's, and this page relies on it for what happened to Hanne, not for findings about him. Patient names are used only where they were already public or given by the family. Corrections are welcome and are recorded on the page.