Fake Botox

[AGDLynn]

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news...fakebotox.html

Couple gravely ill from fake Botox
Two Florida victims in Atlanta for treatment

By JOHN PACENTI, JANE DAUGHERTY
jane_daugherty@pbpost.com
Published on: 01/09/05

WEST PALM BEACH — Bonnie Kaplan, like so many, thought she had found the modern equivalent of the Fountain of Youth in a syringe full of Botox. Instead, her trust in a doctor with a suspended license led her to be injected with a homemade cocktail of overstrength toxin.

Last week, the toll was readily apparent: The once-radiant private school principal, 53, suffering from paralysis, appeared catatonic as she was loaded onto a twin-prop Beechcraft for a trip to an Atlanta rehabilitation clinic. Not even a finger moved.
STEVE MITCHELL/AP
(ENLARGE)
Bonnie Kaplan is loaded onto a plane Thursday at Palm Beach International Airport.

STEVE MITCHELL/AP
(ENLARGE)
Eric Kaplan receives help walking to a plane that will take them to the Shepherd Center.

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The Shepherd Center may be her home for weeks, months — maybe even for the rest of her life. Her nerve endings essentially have been torched by the poisonous bacteria injected into her at a clinic by a doctor whose license had been suspended following the narcotic overdose deaths of five of his patients.

Her husband, Eric, 52, who also received an injection, was flown to the center in a separate plane. He seemed in better shape, able to shuffle from the ambulance to the aircraft. But Kaplan was a broken shadow of the prominent and photogenic chiropractor and consultant who taught other doctors how to "grow their wellness businesses" in lectures and a book he promoted.

The Kaplans' ordeal began Nov. 26, when they went to Advanced Integrated Medical Center, a Palm Beach-area clinic, to receive what the suspended doctor, Bach McComb, told them were Botox injections. What the Kaplans were given to iron out their wrinkles was in fact research-grade botulinum toxin — one of the most poisonous substances in the world. Though botulinum is the active ingredient in Botox, the solution the Kaplans received was far less diluted.

McComb, 47, and his girlfriend, medical assistant Alma "A.J." Hall, 34, may have administered the same drug to themselves around the same time. They are both paralyzed on ventilators at a New Jersey hospital.

As the Kaplans flew to Atlanta, the legal storm surrounding how they ever got the fake Botox intensified.

Federal prosecutors released documents showing how an Arizona company marketed the neurotoxin to doctors and clinics, including Advanced Integrated Medical Center. Tucson-based Toxin Research International told doctors that its botulinum was equivalent to Botox.

Botox is made by Allergan Inc. and is the only substance federally approved for temporarily paralyzing facial muscles that cause wrinkles.

A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order stopping sales by TRI, but the laboratory that actually cultured the botulinum used on the Kaplans remains in operation. List Biological Laboratories in Campbell, Calif., markets dangerous bacterium, including anthrax and cholera, for research.

"The point is, who is buying it. Who is out there in the market?" said Stuart Grossman, who has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Kaplans against List and TRI.

List executives did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

At the Shepherd Center, renowned for treating patients with brain and spinal injuries, a team of therapists will focus solely on the Kaplans. Because there is no precedent for the couple's treatment, their rehabilitation will be similar to that of multiple sclerosis patients.

"The tortoise is going to win this race. It will not be a fast recovery," said Dr. Brock Bowman, who will lead the team.

As for Hall, the medical assistant, there was a ray of hope for her family last week as she opened her eyes for the first time in six weeks.

Hall was with McComb, the doctor, visiting his family in New Jersey for the Thanksgiving holiday when both collapsed, unable to breathe.

Before going to work for McComb last year, Hall earned a college degree in health sciences in Columbus and later was certified in massage therapy and rehabilitative therapy, said her father, David Hall, a retired Auburn University professor.

"She really wanted to help people. Her whole approach to medicine was to keep people well. That's why this whole thing has been so unexpected and so painful for our family," he said.

"We can't even figure out why she would get a Botox injection herself. . . . We're still trying to figure out how this happened."

Hall is also trying to get a transfer to the Shepherd Center but the catastrophic care hospital wouldn't accept Medicaid, her father said.

Grossman, the Kaplans' attorney, said the public still doesn't know how much of the botulinum toxin is floating around doctors' offices in South Florida. He said he believes other clinics may have purchased the product to turn into fake Botox.

"We don't even know where the rest of the stuff McComb mixed up is," Grossman said. "You don't play hide and seek with botulism. Any physician who possesses it or any individual who has it needs to turn it in."

— The Miami Herald contributed to this article.


*****
Scary why someone would want to inject the stuff in their face in the first place.