Quackery & Murder

In an unprecedented attack on cancer quackery, a Los Angeles judge last week imposed the maximum sentence for second-degree murder on a practitioner who took a fat fee on the false promise that he could cure a patient.

The patient was Linda Epping, 8, a victim of a congenital cancer of the left eye. Linda entered a Los Angeles hospital and was awaiting removal of the eye--an operation that sometimes saves a life and almost invariably prolongs it. But Chiropractor Marvin Phillips, 35, persuaded Linda's immigrant German parents that he could cure the child's cancer without an operation. He wanted $500, plus the cost of medicines (which came to $239 for vitamins, food supplements and a solution of iodine and water). Linda's parents paid. Linda died.

Under California law, any death that occurs during the commission of a grand theft is murder in the second degree. The state charged, and the jury agreed, that Chiropractor Phillips committed grand theft when he falsely represented that he could cure the child. Superior Court Judge Marcus Brandler sentenced Phillips to imprisonment for five years to life.

Phillips' lawyers immediately filed notice of appeal. But whatever the final outcome, Prosecutor John W. Miner is confident that the case will help to protect cancer patients whose disease can be cured, or at least alleviated, by standard medical treatment--if quacks do not talk them out of it.

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