Killing Us Softly (21 page)

Bookman pleads for his life. “But I have some unfinished business,” he says. “Between you and me, I've never made a
truly big pitch, enough for the skies to open up. You know, a pitch for the angels.” The angel relents, allowing Bookman one last pitch. But Bookman has no intention of keeping his promise. When the angel realizes that Bookman has conned him, he selects an alternate.

On the street in front of Bookman's apartment, the sound of screeching tires is followed by screams. Maggie, unconscious, is lying on the ground. Seeing the consequences of his actions, Bookman recants. “Take me!” he pleads. “She's just a little girl. She's only eight years old.” But it's too late. The angel of death tells Bookman he'll be back at midnight to claim her.

Fifteen minutes before midnight, the angel arrives at the stoop of Maggie's apartment. Bookman, who has been waiting for him, opens his suitcase and takes out an ugly cotton tie. “Take this lovely tie here, for instance,” he says. “What does this look like to you?” “It looks like a tie,” the angel deadpans. “Ladies and gentlemen,” expounds Bookman. “If you will feast your eyes on probably the most exciting invention since atomic energy. A simulated silk so fabulously conceived as to mystify even the ancient Chinese silk manufacturers—an almost unbelievable attention to detail. A piquant intervening of gossamer softness.” Riveted, the angel buys the tie.

Next, Bookman holds up an ordinary spool of thread. “This fantastic thread is not available in stores,” he says. “It is smuggled in by Oriental birds specially trained for ocean travel, each carrying a tiny thread in a small satchel underneath their ruby throats. It takes 832 crossings to supply enough thread to go around one spool.” The angel can't reach for his wallet fast enough. “I'll take all you have,” he says.

Bookman continues: “Sewing needles, marvelous plastic
shoelaces, genuine static eradicator, suntan oil, eczema powder, razors, athlete's foot destroyer. How about some simulated cashmere socks?” The angel is sweating, obsessed: “All right, all right. I'll take it all!”

The clock strikes midnight—too late for the angel to claim Maggie. The angel realizes he's been had. “One minute past twelve, Mr. Bookman,” he says. “And you made me miss my appointment.” “Yes,” replies Bookman. “It was quite a pitch—very effective. The best I've ever done. A pitch so big, the sky would open up.”

When Louis Bookman was at the height of his sales pitch—knowing he had to distract the angel of death if Maggie were to survive—he talked in a rapid-fire, high-pitched, nasal voice, like a duck. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch had a name for this:
kwakzalver,
meaning one who quacks like a duck while promoting salves and ointments. This became the English word
quacksalver,
later shortened to
quack
, meaning anyone who proffers false cures. For some, the term also implies intent—that quacks are knowingly fraudulent in their pursuit of fortune. But this isn't always the case.

In many ways, Bookman was a classic quack. He was an
impassioned salesman who clearly loved children and wanted to protect them. He was convincing, in large part, because he was convinced. When Bookman claimed that 832 Oriental birds were required to make one spool of thread, he believed—at least for the moment—in what he was saying, even though it was pure fantasy. And his cures for eczema and athlete's foot were offered well before treatments like topical steroids and antifungal creams were widely available. Bookman's false promises weren't unusual. In the 1800s, quacks offered Dill's Diabetic Mixture before the discovery of insulin; Peebles' Epilepsy Treatment before anti-seizure drugs; Dr. Shoop's Diphtheria Remedy before diphtheria antiserum; Detchon's Rheumatism Cure before anti-inflammatory drugs; Az-Ma-Syde before bronchodilators; William Radam's Microbe Killer before antibiotics; and Cancerine before chemotherapy.

Quacks offered potions that made you smarter (Harper's Brain Food), younger (Blush of Youth), less anxious (Dr. Kline's Great Nerve Restorer), more successful (Wendell's Ambition Pills), less freckled (Dr. Berry's Freckle Ointment), more potent (Las-I-Go for Superb Manhood), and more fertile (Becket's Sovereign Restorative Drops for Barrenness). Patent medicines had such wonderful, colorful names, you couldn't help but buy them: medicines like Admirable Essence of Life, Squire's Grand Elixir, Hamlin's Wizard Oil, and Kickapoo Indian Sagwa (satirized in the cartoon
Li'l Abner
as Kickapoo Joy Juice). And it wasn't only the public that believed these claims; celebrities did, too. Devices like the Radio X pad made Al Jolson a better singer, and “nuxated” iron made Jack Dempsey a better fighter and Ty Cobb a better hitter. At least according to them.

We look back warmly on these salesmen and their funny medicines—a whimsical, bygone era made obsolete by the relentless advances of science. But there's no need for nostalgia—hucksters and their wondrous elixirs haven't gone anywhere. One works in a small town just outside Charlotte, North Carolina. In fact, people travel from all over the world to see him—and to buy the two magical potions he invented.

R
ashid Buttar graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in biology and theology before attending the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery, in Des Moines, Iowa, where he specialized in emergency medicine. He's enormously popular, attracting patients from thirty-six states and forty-two countries.

Buttar has also written a book—
The 9 Steps to Keep the Doctor Away
—and produced a series of instructional videos such as
Heavy Metal Toxicity: The Hidden Killer
;
Autism: The Misdiagnosis of Our Future Generations
; and
Cancer: The Untold Truth
. Both as a writer and as a speaker, Buttar delivers his message passionately, clearly, and compellingly. He has been quoted in the
Wall Street Journal
,
US News & World Report
, and the
New York Times
and appeared on ABC's
20/20
, PBS's
Frontline
, and CBS's
World News Roundup
. In May 2004, Buttar testified before a congressional committee investigating new treatments for autism.

Buttar's message is simple: environmental toxins such as mercury and lead cause chronic illnesses, which should be treated with chelation medicines. (Chelation, from the Greek
chele
, meaning “claw,” binds heavy metals and rids them from
the body.) Rashid Buttar knows what scares people. From Rachel Carson's 1962 book
Silent Spring
—warning of the dangers of DDT—to concerns about environmental toxins today, it's easy to appeal to the notion that we're poisoning ourselves. And the need to keep the body pure is centuries old, reflected in the text of every major religion. In
9 Steps
, Buttar writes, “If it's in the form God created, it's good. If it's not, leave it alone. God given = Good. Man-made = Madness.” To rid themselves of unseen toxins, hundreds of thousands of Americans receive chelation drugs every year, usually intravenously.

Although popular, the fear that man-made poisons are causing chronic illnesses is largely unfounded. Studies haven't supported the concern that certain environmental contaminants such as dioxin, radon, bisphenol A, hexavalent chromium (the villain in
Erin Brockovich
), trichloroethylene (the basis of the book and movie
A Civil Action
), and even DDT cause the diseases claimed. And while chelation therapy is valuable, it's not a panacea—it's required only for people exposed to large quantities of heavy metals, such as lead paint in old houses or methylmercury in contaminated fish.

R
ashid Buttar doesn't see it that way. When patients come to him with cancer, he often chelates them. The same is true if they have arthritis, autism, diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, or hormonal problems. During a licensing hearing in April 2008, Dr. Art McCulloch, an anesthesiologist from Charlotte, asked Buttar's nurse practitioner, Jane Garcia, whether it seemed odd that every single one of their patients had been poisoned by heavy metals:

M
C
C
ULLOCH
: Does it seem unusual to you that 100 percent of the patients that come through your door would have one particular condition?

G
ARCIA
: Well, when we look at what we are doing in our environment; what we are doing with toxic waste; what we are doing with pollutants—where is that going? It goes in our water supply. It goes in food we eat. And what do we do? We ingest that.

M
C
C
ULLOCH
: So it does not seem unusual?

G
ARCIA
: It doesn't.

At the beginning of his career, Rashid Buttar didn't treat many children. Then something happened. “In January of 1999, my son, Abie, was born,” said Buttar, fighting back tears. “At ten months old, he started to speak. He had a ten-, twelve-word vocabulary.” But at fourteen months of age, Abie regressed and could no longer speak. The first word he'd lost was the first word he'd learned:
abu
, meaning “father” in Arabic.

Buttar soon realized that his son had autism and that God was asking him to do something about it. “Looking back, it's clear that God had a specific plan for me; but I was moving away from the right path,” recalled Buttar. “My name in Arabic means ‘one who stays on the right path of life.' Now I realize that this experience was nothing more than God upping the ante, sending me a clear message: ‘You are going to do what you were meant to do, what you were created to do!'”

Buttar had seen his destiny. He would find a cure for autism. “I subsequently spent thousands of hours—many if not most of them late at night, sometimes all night—studying, researching, learning, crying, and praying that my son would be returned
to me,” wrote Buttar. “I pleaded, begged, and threatened God. I bartered with the Creator, negotiating my arms and legs in exchange for the return of my son.”

Within a few years Buttar had developed a novel chelation therapy, one that didn't have to be injected or ingested, as all FDA-approved drugs for the treatment of true heavy-metal poisoning require. Rather, Buttar's chelation, called TD-DMPS (for transdermal dimercaptopropanesulfonic acid), could simply be rubbed onto the skin. The results, according to Buttar, were phenomenal. “Five months after I began his detoxification,” wrote Buttar, “Abie went from no language to a vocabulary of five hundred–plus words. [Today] he's extraordinary—ahead of his peers in school in all subjects and two to three grade levels ahead in math and English, an incredible athlete in every sport he tries.”

By April 2006 Buttar had treated more than 250 autistic children with his wondrous anti-autism cream. To determine whether his medicine was working, he tested children's urine, finding large quantities of mercury and lead. As toxins poured out, autistic children recovered, some dramatically. To many parents, Rashid Buttar was a hero, his drug a miracle. Unfortunately, Rashid Buttar, his therapies, and his diagnostic tests aren't quite as advertised. His inconsistencies came to light in a story that swept the nation and went viral on YouTube. It involved an NFL cheerleader with a terrible problem.

O
n August 23, 2009, a twenty-five-year-old cheerleading ambassador for the Washington Redskins named Desiree Jennings got a flu shot. Two weeks later, she developed a
bizarre series of symptoms. She couldn't walk without flailing her arms and legs, and her speech was halting and robotic. Although Desiree couldn't walk, she could run, competing in an eight-kilometer race. She could also walk sideways and backwards. She just couldn't walk forward. Desiree claimed that if she listened to startling sounds like a telephone ringing or hip-hop or techno music, her symptoms worsened. However, if she listened to the English alternative rock band Coldplay, her symptoms improved. She also developed a British accent, even though she was born and raised in Ohio.

Desiree was taken to hospitals in Leesburg and Fairfax, Virginia, before ending up at Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore. There, she was examined by internists, physical therapists, speech therapists, neurologists, neuropsychologists, and psychiatrists who subjected her to a dizzying array of blood tests, scans, and metabolic screenings. Despite extensive testing, no one could find anything wrong with her. Finally, a physical therapist offhandedly provided Desiree with the name of a disease she could embrace: dystonia, a movement disorder.

On October 13, 2009, WTTG-5, a Fox network affiliate in Washington, D.C., picked up the story. Three days later,
Inside Edition
jumped in, opening its segment with “She's the beautiful cheerleader whose heartbreaking story is shocking the nation!” Footage from
Inside Edition
made it to YouTube. Soon hundreds of thousands of people had learned that the flu vaccine caused a horrible, disabling disease.

Anti-vaccine activists rushed to Desiree's aid. Jenny McCarthy and then-boyfriend Jim Carrey, working with Generation Rescue—a group dedicated to the notion that a mercury-containing preservative in vaccines caused autism—directed
Desiree to the popular physician in North Carolina who they knew could cure her. In November 2009, Buttar examined Desiree at his clinic. His diagnosis was predictable: “mercury toxicity” from the flu shot. Buttar began intravenous chelation. “We took the toxins out of her system,” declared Buttar, who confidently predicted that Desiree would fully recover. Within a few hours Desiree was feeling better. Amazing. So amazing that a film crew from ABC's
20/20
traveled to North Carolina to document what had happened. Unfortunately, with the cameras rolling, Desiree regressed. No longer able to walk, she had to be taken out of Buttar's clinic in a wheelchair.