L. A. minister arrested for peddling fake cancer cures

Dr. Christine Daniel, a family practioner and ordained Pentacostal minister, was arrested Thursday and charged with two counts each of wire and mail fraud for selling an alleged cure for cancer through herbal treatments. She will be arraigned Friday in a Los Angeles federal court and, if convicted, could face up to 80 years in prison. According to federal prosecutors, Daniel used her position as a minister to push her herb treatments on patients who were often terminally ill and desperate. In 2002 she even advertised on TV's Trinity Broadcasting Network that her herbal concoction had a 60% cure rate against cancer. Prosecutors allege that, between 2001 and 2004 alone, she received $1.1 million from the families of 55 cancer victims. More than 3 dozen have since succumbed to the disease; six of these, ranging in age from 4 to 69, died within seven months of seeing Daniel. “This is an example of a doctor who is preying upon the most vulnerable people in our society. These patients were told they were being cured, but they were being eaten alive by cancer.” said Assistant US Attorney Joseph Johns in a statement today.

 

Even other clergy were not off-limits to Dr. Daniel. George McKinney, founder of the St. Stephen's Cathedral Church of God in Christ in San Diego, paid her more than $100,000 for herbal and heat treatments of his wife's terminal colon cancer in late 2003. Jean McKinney died in June 2004.

 

Pentacostalism is a Christian renewal movement that places emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through baptism in the Holy Spirit and making use of "spiritual gifts" such as speaking in tongues. They are not directed by any central organization or church.

 

Photo Credit:

1) Speaking in tongues and laying on of hands (image from "Urantian Sojourn")

 

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