Skip to main contentTwo weeks ago I spent a gorgeous summer afternoon in a small Northeast Portland office, where two women took turns prodding my index finger with a thin metal rod. A machine on the desk beside me put out a high-pitched whine that grew louder the harder the women pushed. They seemed determined to make it scream.
The $295 procedure, called electrodermal testing, was touted by Pacific Health Center as an "electronic interview" with my body. After an hour of poking that left a bruise on my finger, the verdict came.
Health Center manager Shirley Iverson said I had "a little bit of Candida bacteria [and] some viruses of some kind." I also had imbalances in my adrenal and lymphatic systems, and trouble in my colon lining from too much "bad bacteria."
This is the business of the Pacific Health Center in Portland: analyzing a person's health by reading their body's electrical field. In its brochure, Pacific Health Center's owner, Monte Kline, compares it to "the electronic medicine practiced by Dr. McCoy in Star Trek."
Most medical doctors say it's more like modern-day snake oil. The electrodermal testing device isn't approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for medical use. An Oregon Health & Science University researcher concluded there's no scientific basis for Kline's claims. And Dr. Stephen Barrett, who runs the website quackwatch.org, says the only thing the device tests is how hard the rod is pushed into the patient's skin.
Washington state shut down Kline, 57, last year for practicing medicine without a license. But in Oregon, he's still in business, with clinics in Portland and Sisters. There are several other clinics around the city that also offer electrodermal testing.
In fact, Portland is home to a number of clinics using questionable medical devices on sick people. Last month I visited three such businesses as a customer, without saying I was a reporter.
I was poked and prodded at Kline's clinic, soaked in a detoxifying "ionic foot bath" at a small health spa in Gresham, and scanned with an infrared sensor that purportedly reads back problems at a chiropractor's office in Southeast Portland.
These devices have two things in common. All are high-tech gadgets that offer quick solutions to complex problems. The other commonality is that it's unclear whether they actually help patients, a fact that sets traditional medical doctors on edge.
"What they're doing is not approved, and it doesn't work," says Lake Oswego's Dr. Anthony Cortese, a former member of the state Board of Medical Examiners.
Dr. Jim Potchen, an expert in nuclear medicine and head of radiology at Michigan State University, says all three devices "run against what we know of science." Yet Potchen says he's not surprised the devices have found adherents. "You can always sell hope," he says. "It's not always meritorious, but you can sell it."
None of the people who treated us with these devices was a medical doctor. The visits were not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, nor by any of the major insurance companies or HMOs.
Thousands of Oregonians continue to put their trust in these devices. Yet as more Americans become disenchanted with mainstream medicine—or simply get priced out of the market—it will become increasingly important to ensure all alternatives are safe and reliable.
Portland has embraced alternative medicine to an extent few other cities have. The city is home to the oldest and most reputable naturopathic college in the nation, the National College of Natural Medicine in Southwest Portland.
And state law allows Oregon's 725 licensed naturopaths more freedom than anywhere else in the country, from prescribing opiates to performing minor surgery.
At the same time, most naturopaths are quick to distance themselves from rogue medicine.
"We've got more alternative care than anywhere else in the country," says Dr. Rita Bettenburg, dean of naturopathic medicine at the natural medicine college. "So a lot of it comes here, and we [naturopaths] get blamed for a lot of this really weird stuff that goes on."
Yet she says about a dozen naturopaths in Portland perform electrodermal testing. They include Dr. David Greenspan of Tigard, who says it's a legitimate way to gain information on patients, but only if used in conjunction with other tests.
Greenspan says he shares little with Pacific Health Center and Kline.
"I don't want to be in the same sentence," Greenspan says. "He is an unlicensed medical practitioner, and the patients I have seen in common with him have a large list of things he's prescribed based on the testing."
In a WW interview, Kline vehemently denied that he preys on customers, pointing out he offers a money-back guarantee.
"How could that be construed as preying on someone, if you're offering a results guarantee?" he asked. "We put our money where our mouth is."
The Pacific Health clinic is on the second floor of the two-story Halsey Center, an office building at 11300 NE Halsey St. Kline, who lives in a home in Sisters valued at $783,000, runs the Sisters clinic and also has a third in Boise. He stops by the Portland clinic every few weeks, though he wasn't there for my appointment.
The office is managed by Iverson, a cheerful middle-aged woman whose card identifies her as a "clinical nutritionist." But Iverson holds only a high-school diploma, and the title means nothing. "Anybody in the state is allowed to say that without any regulation," says Douglas Van Fleet, executive secretary of the state Board of Examiners of Licensed Dietitians. The Pacific Health website also identifies Kline as a clinical nutritionist.
Iverson sports makeup as thick as that of the late televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. And like Bakker, Kline's Pacific Health Center is overtly Christian. A Bible-study book sits in the waiting room. Besides the usual info about medical history, a questionnaire asks each new patient their religion ("Jewish, Christian or other") and how big a role faith plays in their everyday life. Kline is the author of Body, Mind & Health: A Biblical Approach to Wholeness, and he co-wrote Eat, Drink and Be Ready, which the Oregon Department of Justice called "essentially a survival guide for the apocalypse."
After filling out the questionnaire, I was ushered into a back room, where an assistant prodded my finger. Every poke, the assistant said, tested me for a different food or allergen, from navy beans to insect bites—and for metals, toxins and the Epstein-Barr virus. One hundred twenty-seven pokes in all.
Iverson told me the solution to my troubles was to jump up and down to drain my lymphs, plus take the six bottles of supplements and homeopathic remedies she offered to sell me. The testing normally costs $395, and the remedies run about $150 a month.
I took advantage of a limited-time $295 offer by Kline, with testing plus $100 in supplements. The clinic's bubbly receptionist assured me this was "a really good deal."
By the time the state of Washington shut Kline down last fall, the state attorney general estimated Kline had at least 5,000 customers. He volunteered to WW that his Portland clinic has had several thousand since it opened in 1990.
Yet Kline has run into problems with the Oregon Department of Justice.
When the state board's Cortese complained about claims Kline was making on local radio in 2001, the DOJ investigated and said Kline had misled the public for years about electrodermal testing.
Kline's staff claims his machine can determine sensitivity to foods and allergens, sense the presence of bacteria and viruses, and even tell which parts of the body are weak or infected. They use that information to recommend dietary changes, supplements and homeopathic remedies, which his staff then offers to sell to patients.
Kline sent WW three studies from alternative-medicine journals that say electrodermal testing works. But Dr. Bart Duell, a researcher at OHSU, investigated on behalf of the DOJ and determined there was no scientific basis for Kline's claims.
In 2001, the DOJ filed a lawsuit against Kline alleging he was scamming customers and misrepresenting his credentials, calling himself a Ph.D. when his degree was from Columbia Pacific University, an unaccredited California diploma mill. Kline settled with the DOJ in January 2002, agreeing not to use the title Ph.D., to offer refunds to past customers and disclaimers to future ones, and to pay a $15,000 penalty.
In a news release announcing the settlement, Attorney General Hardy Myers said the resolution protected the public from "ineffective and possibly dangerous" quackery.
Yet Kline continues to advertise electrodermal testing on his half-hour show twice a month on Portland's KPDQ FM Christian radio. (Station officials did not return phone calls for comment.) And his staff gave WW the disclaimer just minutes before our testing, not when we scheduled the appointment.
How can Kline continue to operate in Oregon when he's been shut down in Washington for practicing without a license? The two states' laws on the matter are nearly identical. But Kline says Washington has aggressively pursued him and other alternative practitioners, calling that state "ground zero in the war right now."
Kline views the dispute over electrodermal testing as a battle between the rising force of alternative medicine and traditional doctors who are jealous of its success. Kline calls them his "enemies." And his clinic has its supporters, including Venita Taennler, a 67-year-old retired florist from Tigard.
Suffering from "an overall feeling of being sick," she got no help from a series of traditional doctors. Then she went to Kline's Portland clinic in the spring of 2004. They told her the problem was that her body wasn't absorbing minerals.
After taking the various supplements they gave her, she felt better. "Until I found the electrodermal testing," she says, "every test came back that I was perfectly healthy. Nobody was able to really tell me what was going on. So I firmly believe in it."
Nina Griggs is also a true believer.
Griggs, who suffers from diabetes and arthritis, lives mainly on disability checks. But when she manages to scrape together extra money from her job as a daycare worker, she spends it on ionic foot baths, a device offered at two clinics in Gresham.
For $30, customers can soak their feet in warm salt water "ionized" by a mild electric charge. As they do so, the water turns colors—first orange, then deep brown or even black. Sometimes dark chunks or a cheesy foam float on top. Clients are told those are toxins and parasites that have been sucked from their body through the soles of the feet.
Both Gresham businesses—Dees Place at 829 SE 182nd Ave. and Healthy Alternatives at 328 N Main Ave.—claim in their promotional material that the baths have detoxifying health benefits. Griggs is a regular at Dees Place, at least when she has the money.
"She told me it would help me with my diabetes and my circulation problems, and it really does," says Griggs, 51.
I walked into Dees Place, actually a small converted apartment, on a recent Thursday afternoon. Owner Dona Shook sat me down in a green velour chair and placed a heating pad over my shoulders. With New Age music in the background, Shook filled a $300 Viatek foot bath with water and set the timer for 40 minutes.
Immediately the water started turning orange. Shook served iced tea and said she'd been in business about a year and a half. Her clients include chronically ill people and nursing-home patients who believe the treatment can help. "We're put in life to help people," she said.
The orange color of the water, she told me, indicates problems with my joints. Her brochures claim the bath helps pain, fatigue and circulation by pulling out toxins. She told me it also removes parasites.
Brenda Gorton, owner of Healthy Alternatives in downtown Gresham, claims the bath gets rid of toxins, helps weight loss, strengthens joints, aids sleep, boosts the cardiovascular system and even improves moods. "The proof is in my clientele," she says, adding she has several hundred customers.
If those claims seem ridiculous, it's because they are, says Dr. Benjamin Wilson, a surgeon in Salem who also has two degrees in engineering. "It's like hypothesizing that you're going to release good fairies," he says. "It's a little bit hard to comment on, it's so outlandish."
Barrett, a retired psychiatrist from Chapel Hill, N.C., has devoted years to debunking bad medical practices through his website quackwatch.org. On the site, he calls the foot baths "medically worthless," saying the skin can't excrete toxins.
Barrett suggested WW should run a foot bath without the feet. If the water changed color anyway, it would suggest the discoloration isn't really from toxins drawn out of the body. When I asked Shook to do so, she was happy to oblige. And the water did not change color—making me wonder for a moment if the bath might really work.
Last year, on its yearly sweep for scam-artist vendors at the Oregon State Fair, the state DOJ kicked out two vendors from California for selling the foot baths. The vendors made similar claims about its health benefits. But the DOJ said there's no science to back them up.
Gorton and Shook may not be in business much longer. Jan Margosian, a DOJ spokeswoman, said if people are marketing ionic foot baths based on the same claims as the salesmen busted at the State Fair, "we will shut them down."
Bettenburg, the naturopathic medicine dean at Portland's National College of Natural Medicine, says ionic baths aren't used by any naturopaths she knows of in Portland. "I have to say, I have a few issues with anybody who claims a machine draws out toxins," she says.
But foot baths were a featured item at the Northwest Naturopathic Physicians Convention, held April 20-22 at the waterfront Marriott downtown. The convention has no official connection with the college, though it was organized by one of its employees, Dr. Kate Wiggin. Ionic foot baths were sold in the conventions's trade expo, and Dr. Donese Worden, a naturopath from Mesa, Ariz., gave a half-hour talk on their health benefits.
Worden said the foot baths help gout, pain, arthritis, wound healing, fatigue and muscle soreness. She urged the naturopaths in attendance to install them in their offices, saying she charges $60 per session. "I think we could get more, honestly," she told them.
The parking lot is usually full at Dr. David Day's chiropractic office at 3758 SE 122nd Ave. The waiting room is packed by 9 am. Inside are signs of the Christian faith that Day says drives his practice. One says, "The Son shines on the just and the adjusted."
As part of each new patient's initial exam, Day uses a device whose use is not taught at Portland's Western States Chiropractic College, one of the most respected such schools in the nation and Day's own alma mater.
At a $50 cost to patients, the device reads the heat given off by the skin around the spine using an infrared scan. WW took advantage of a summertime special, with a complete initial exam, including X-rays, for $25.
Day says the scans help locate the underlying cause of pain, especially when the hurt is in a different location from the source. But thermography, as the heat scans are called, is considered a developing technology at best—at worst, bunk science. Critics say the way skin gives off heat changes often, and a scan can't accurately measure what's underneath.
"It has limited to no scientific validity," says Michigan State's Potchen, who testified in a 1990 court case in which a Michigan judge ruled against two chiropractors suing an insurance company for refusing to cover thermographic scans.
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, an assistant in Day's office spent 30 seconds rolling a hand-held plastic scanner on wheels down my spine. Two days later, after Day had time to study the results, I came back to get his analysis.
The thermal test showed the temperature was higher in the middle of my back on my right side—at least at the moment the test was done. Day suggested a $45 adjustment to my back, focusing on my lower thoracic because of the scan results. "I tell people it's like flipping a switch," he said. I didn't accept.
Day, who like Kline advertises on Portland's KPDQ FM Christian radio, says he knows the technique is controversial. But he believes it gives him an edge in treating pain.
"When I look at a Bible and I see Jesus, one of the important parts of what he did was he healed people who are sick," Day says. "If I can figure out something that other [doctors] can't see because they don't have the equipment, bring it on."
Day's $10,000 device is a pocket toy compared with the $30,000 Meditherm scanner Karmen Lawson uses. Co-owner of Essential Body Imaging, a year-old company she formed with her sister, Lawson charges $175 to $375 per scan. The results are sent off to doctors who analyze the images and use them to help diagnose everything from breast cancer to fibromyalgia.
She works out of a rented room in the offices of Dr. Gerald Miller, an M.D. who practices in Beaverton. Miller refers his own clients to Lawson, especially for breast exams, despite the fact many doctors don't trust the thermography technique.
"I have a much more open mind to things not within mainstream medicine," Miller says. "There is this undercurrent in mainstream medicine that a thing you learned in medical school is the end-all truth. [But] things change."
On a recent visit, the cameralike device stood on a tripod in the middle of the room as I sat on a stool, bare to the waist. A mirror around the aperture flicked rapidly from side to side as the machine read my body heat in high resolution.
Though based on the same principle as Day's device, Lawson's machine is far more accurate. And a growing body of scientific studies points to thermal imaging as a promising new field. "We're just waiting for the insurance companies to get on board with us," Lawson says.
The patients I spoke with who use these devices said they had first tried traditional doctors and were unhappy with the results, especially their reliance on prescribing drugs.
Certainly the well-publicized failures of traditional medicine have driven many people to seek alternative remedies.
No one is being bankrupted by any of the devices in this story, all of which are cheaper to use than the cost of a trip to a traditional doctor. Some patients are no doubt helped by the placebo effect derived from a treatment they perceive as legitimate.
But skeptics maintain there's inherent danger in these devices—and in many of the practitioners who use them.
"Sick people go to them, and these guys don't really know how to diagnose disease," says Wilson. "Unfortunately, that's how people end up at places like that. Out of desperation." ?
Kline was shut down in Washington for practicing without a license, but the Washington state Court of Appeals ruled he did not violate the state Consumer Protection Act and ordered the attorney general there to pay his attorney fees.
In 2004, Venita Taennler's friend Jo Hinds called the state DOJ to report Taennler was being scammed by Kline with electrodermal testing. Taennler told the DOJ that Kline's staff had treated her courteously and she didn't feel she was cheated. The DOJ found Kline committed some minor technical violations of his 2001 court settlement, but otherwise the case went nowhere.
The Oregon DOJ requires Kline to give his patients a disclaimer saying there are no generally accepted clinical studies showing electrodermal testing works. Kline has altered the wording in the disclaimer to say that there are "many published studies" showing the testing is effective, but "it is the position of most medical doctors in the United States" that no adequate studies exist.
Until he was contacted by WW, Dr. Rick Marinelli, chairman of the Oregon Board of Naturopathic Examiners, said he thought the state had put Kline out of business. Now he says the board may investigate Kline for practicing medicine without a license.
WWeek 2015