FLASHBACK 1994: Orrin Hatch, the penny-stock solution, and medical intrigue. | City Weekly REWIND | Salt Lake City Weekly

FLASHBACK 1994: Orrin Hatch, the penny-stock solution, and medical intrigue. 

The Senator and the Strange Cure

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In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.

Title: The Senator and the Strange Cure
Author: Lynn Packer
Date: Jun. 8, 1994

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This past spring, Orrin G. Hatch paid several visits to a doctor's office in the Holladay area of Salt Lake County. "It's so secretive that when Hatch was here, the place was surrounded with his people," said one individual who knew about the clandestine office calls. "He came in different clothing, after hours."

A physician would insert a needle into the senator's arm at the clinic, and then, for about two hours a solution would drip from an IV bag, down a tube, into his bloodstream. Exactly what solution was dispensed is a matter of dispute and the senator refuses to talk about it.

The physician—Dr. Robert E. Morrow, 64—says "I have given the senator some intravenous vitamins and that's all." Homeopathic physician Floyd Weston, the man who referred Hatch to Morrow, says the IV contained the controversial chelation drug EDTA. But another source says the treatments involved Dr. Morrow's own discovery, the miracle anti-viral drug MDI-P.

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Hatch's press secretary, after consulting the senator, declined comment, except to throw out a red herring: "I know the senator has had a bad back for a long time and maybe he's getting some help there," said Paul Smith.

The therapy Hatch was actually getting dramatizes his tie to Utah's burgeoning "alternative medicine" industry and its various homeopathic and vitamin supplement cures. It also underscores his connection to the state's lingering, fraud-riddled penny-stock industry, the industry Hatch served and defended as an attorney before elected to office in 1976.

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Dr. Morrow, an orthopedic surgeon, claims to have invented a solution that might cure AIDS and other viral diseases, including the common cold. In order to test and market his experimental drug, Morrow formed Medical Discoveries, Inc., (MDI). In order to profit before the drug is approved for sale, Morrow's backers took MDI public on the penny-stock market. MDI is about to seek Food and Drug Administration approval to test the drug on humans in the United States. Clinics that use his treatment, in Mexico and in the Caribbean, have already been treating AIDS patients experimentally.

Morrow said Hatch has looked into his new process (MDI-P) and has been "very supportive" and "has been willing to help us get in touch with some of the proper authorities in Washington."

"I want to make it perfectly clear he does not have any infectious-disease problems of any sort," Morrow said of his patient, Orrin Hatch. "What he's been doing here medically is, of course, confidential medical information." Nevertheless the doctor added, "It's more in line for his back pain only. I have discussed his back problem with him, but I have never given him any [MDI-P] treatment like we're talking about."

Morrow not only denies treating Hatch with his drug, he also denies treating anyone in Utah. Private Eye Weekly, though, has talked with numerous people who say he treated them or claim to have seen Morrow administering his anti-viral treatments in Utah.

An investor said Morrow has been secretive about treating patients in the United States because it's not yet permitted by the FDA. Nevertheless, he believes Hatch had the "guts" to take the treatment "in the USA where it wasn't legal."

Floyd Weston, who set up Hatch's initial visit, said "I took him there and I regret that I did, because Bob [Morrow] started using [Hatch's] name all over the streets." Weston, who has the reputation of being a health counselor to several LDS Church presidents, said Hatch received about 10 or 12 chelation therapy treatments with the drug EDTA. Such chelation therapy is administered to cleanse the arterial system. (See sidebar.) "It liquefies the plaque that all of us have on our artery walls and you urinate that liquefaction out," Weston said. "It had nothing to do with that other crud [MDI-P] at all. Not at all."

"Floyd doesn't know," Morrow said. The doctor also claims Weston did not accompany Hatch on all visits and is not in a position to know first-hand about all treatments. Apparently the only two people who know exactly what was administered to Senator Hatch during each visit are the doctor and patient, and neither is willing to answer questions about it.

The Origins of MDI-P
Morrow claims to have invented his anti-viral drug about eight years ago out of a concern for the growing AIDS epidemic. "He feared that the HIV virus might be transmitted from one patient to the next through contaminated surgical instruments," says a document filed with the SEC. By passing an electric current through a salt water solution, the doctor discovered an "electrolyzed saline solution" (MDI-P) that could possibly not only eradicate viruses—such as HIV—from instruments but also from the human body as well.

"I was dying [of cardiomyopathy]; I was given just a matter of weeks," said his first Utah patient. "I begged the guy; I had nothing to lose." He said Morrow first refused to administer the treatment, but after trying it on himself, the physician reconsidered. Morrow's first patient claims he was not only cured of the heart disease, but also of herpes cold-sore and topical skin cancer as well.

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Another Utah inventor, though, sees another genesis of Morrow's counter-top electrolyzer. Tim Themy-Kotronakis says he, not Morrow, invented a device called the Ster-o-lizer. "They are a fraud," Themy-Kotronakis said. "I'm the inventor and I taught him the business."

According to his version, Themy-Kotronakis first had the notion that the solution for cleaning instruments might be used intravenously and he and Morrow decided to experiment. "He said, 'Look, I know it's not approved, I might get hurt and I might lose my license, but it's worth taking the risk,'" Themy-Kotronakis said. He said he first started out by drinking the solution. "It tastes a little like swimming-pool water."

"I was his first guinea pig," said Themy-Kotronakis, "because I wanted to take it to prove to him that my process is safe. I was going to him twice-a-day injecting it in my veins. He was monitoring. He would call my office every 10 minutes, every 15 minutes. 'How are you doing? Are you still alive, are you still okay?' he said. 'I'm worrying about you and I don't want to go to jail killing you.'"

Themy-Kotronakis said he and the doctor began treating an AIDS patient from Arizona about six years ago. Themy-Kotronakis was there to prepare the solution that, they say, has to be used within seconds or it loses its potency. He said the Arizona patient got some injections in the left arm, others in the right arm, and finally, some in the neck. "I was surprised, a couple of injections in the back of the neck. That was probably too strong and, in fact, between you and me, I thought that might have killed him." The patient did die, but was in the advanced stages of AIDS.

Not only had the device not been approved for use on people, the FDA had also moved in 1986 to block its use on instruments. In 1989, the federal court entered an injunction against the Ster-o-lizer.

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Since then, Themy-Kotronakis modified his device and reintroduced it on the market as the AIDS Treating Machine. It produces something called "treated Solution A," which is administered orally, topically, intravenously and by enema. The U.S. Attorney's office in Utah, on behalf of the FDA, has asked the courts to reconsider its injunction against the Ster-o-lizer and include the AIDS Treating Machine in the ban. Court documents say that, in one study, mice injected with Solution A died. The government quotes an AIDS research expert who said health claims by the company are "purely fraudulent."

Themy-Kotronakis said he uses only salt water in his machines. He added that Morrow "puts all kinds of junk" in his. "He mentioned the names of drugs, but I don't recall what," he said. Morrow would not discuss the makeup of his solution. A May 8 article in the St. Petersburg Times quotes a letter from Morrow that says "MDI-P also contains vitamin C and colchicine, a common gout medicine." But papers filed with the government mention only the electrolyzed saline solution.

MLSC: Over-the-Counter
Medical Discoveries, Inc. (to be renamed Viral Control, Inc. after a shareholders' meeting in June) was formed three years ago. In order to "go public," that is, to raise money on the stock market, MDI merged with WPI Pharmaceutical in August 1992. The attorney for MDI says WPI Pharmaceutical once supplied prepackaged prescriptions to medical and dental practitioners. According to documents the attorney prepared, WPI ceased operations after proposed legislation hampered the concept.

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Going public in MDI's case meant offering its stock for sale on Utah's notorious penny-stock market, stock that is traded "over the counter" and listed in the so-called pink sheets. In May, the company was trading for about $4.25 a share under the symbol MLSC.

About 16 million shares of MDI stock are now circulating. Morrow reportedly owns about 5 million shares himself, which amounts to more than $20 million worth of stock in a company that does not yet have an approved product for sale. MDI has sold some franchises and collects royalties from two companies that are making and testing the drug outside the U.S. Nevertheless, the company reports an operating deficit.

One shareholder has already pocketed several hundred thousand dollars from selling off some of his holdings. Even while he was being interviewed, he was interrupted by a call from his broker. "I'm selling some to Australia just to pick up a couple of hundred thousand dollars the first of the week," he said.

Although a company raising capital via penny-stock sales is no indication of fraud, critics of such companies say it's a red flag, at the very least. In a report prepared for the U.S. House of Representatives by the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), the penny-stock industry was roundly pummeled. "Abuse of penny-stocks is not new and dates back at least to the 1940s and 1950s, a period when worthless shares in uranium mine stocks were bought and sold over the counter of a Salt Lake City coffee shop," the report says. The 1989 document said "Penny-stock swindles are now the No. 1 threat of fraud and abuse facing small investors in the United States."

A look at MDI's family tree, specifically at WPI Pharmaceutical, reveals a host of dealings that typify many in Utah's wild-and-woolly penny-stock market. The same genealogical research yields names from Orrin Hatch's wheeler-dealer past as one of the many securities attorneys who ran with the penny-stock crowd.

WPI Pharmaceutical was created after the 1984 merger between Euripedes Technology, Inc. and Westport Pharmaceutical, Inc. The deal involved Salt Lake City securities attorney Joseph H. Bottum. Bottum had created Westport Pharmaceutical, naming one of his temporary secretaries a director. Bottum—who died earlier this year—was then operating out of an Ogden office.

That same year, Bottum and two partners began raising money from investors for the purpose of buying a company through acquiring its stock, merging it with another company and selling the new entity. Salesmen told investors they could double their money with no risk. One of Bottum's partners was charged with fraud and brought to trial, with Bottum as his attorney. The state tried to have Bottum disqualified because of his involvement in the investment deal, but Bottum testified he had no knowledge of the transaction.

The Utah State Bar later charged Bottum with unprofessional conduct, alleging that he was involved in the transaction that related to the criminal charges against his client and that Bottum "misrepresented to the court that he had no knowledge of or involvement in the ... transactions." The action was still pending against him at the time of his death.

Now, Bottum's former law partner is questioning the method in which Western Pharmaceutical became merged with MDI. Richard Leedy says Bottum's widow suspects fraud was involved in one of her husband's companies, possibly one linked with the MDI merger. "There are about three files missing which she is very suspicious of," Leedy said. He said he will represent her and attempt to discover whether a stock certificate may have been forged.

Orrin Hatch and George Norman
Leedy also discussed the link between Bottum and Senator Hatch to one of Utah's most notorious penny-stock promoters: George Norman.

George I. Norman, Jr., made so much money off the Utah penny-stock market that he owned a $1 million dollar home in Holladay on Olympus Drive, and drove replica Stutz sports cars—one upholstered in mink—and Rolls Royces. One of the companies he was promoting in 1973 was called Newport Pharmaceutical. The company was based on a doctor's invention that "was very good at fighting viruses; in fact, it was being marketed in Mexico," says Leedy.

Norman, however, faced imprisonment related to a fraud conviction in Denver, Colorado, handed down before he moved to Utah. Leedy and Bottum represented Norman both criminally and on securities matters. Norman's appeals were running out and he was supposed to begin serving a two-year sentence.

Meanwhile, Leedy and Bottum were working with Hatch's law firm, Summerhays & Hatch—specifically with attorney Lowell Summerhays—on a stock deal. Hatch was aware of Norman's efforts to stay out of prison and volunteered to represent him with one last appeal.

On March 12, 1973, Norman and Hatch appeared in federal court in Denver, on the day Norman was to begin his sentence. "Orrin goes over there and gives a pitch," Leedy says, "and the judge says, 'I've heard this three or four times before. Go directly to jail.'" But the judge reportedly released Norman to Hatch's custody to take care of some last minute affairs before reporting to the U.S. Marshal. Norman was able to ditch Hatch, borrow a maroon Cadillac from a friend who was a state supreme court justice, and split. Norman has been a fugitive ever since.

Three years later, Hatch sought Utah's Republican senatorial nomination for the chance to unseat Democrat Frank Moss. Hatch was more than an underdog. In May, 1976, a KSL poll had Moss with 36.8 percent, former congressman Sherman Lloyd (the favored Republican challenger) with 34.2 percent and Orrin Hatch, among five other candidates, with 2 percent. Hatch won his party's nomination and passed Moss in the polls.

Moss' campaign decided to uncork what they hoped would be a campaign-crushing allegation against Hatch—but it was not his connection to Norman. Less than a week before the election, Moss' campaign manager revealed that Hatch had been named in a civil-fraud suit involving a company for which he helped prepare documents, Ameriland Properties, Inc. None other than former heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman had brought the suit, alleging he and other investors were cheated when they lost $5.3 million on the Utah-hatched deal.

The lawsuit revelation fizzled. The same day the suit story broke, Ronald Reagan appeared in Utah on Hatch's behalf. The pro-Democrat Salt Lake Tribune played the Ameriland suit on an inside page. Reagan told reporters he had been sued before. The future president's presence dominated media coverage, driving Moss deeper down the polls.

The last shot Moss had at rekindling the Ameriland suit story was during a Channel 2 televised debate. Moss brought up the Foreman suit "intimating that voters should think twice about supporting a man who was being sued for securities fraud," wrote Hatch biographer Richard Vetterli.

Vetterli says Hatch was prepared for the charge. The contender looked at Moss for several seconds, patted an envelope in his pocket that he'd been given just before the debate, and asked Moss, "Have you ever been sued for land fraud, Senator?" Hatch defused Moss' bomb while setting off one of his own. "The color drained from Moss' face," wrote Vetterli. The fraud allegation against Hatch died as an issue and he crushed Moss on election day.

Hatch: Anti-SEC, Anti-FDA
Hatch's involvement with Medical Discoveries, Inc. represents a double-whammy reflection of his political philosophy about government regulation. It's a company whose financial and medical basis runs afoul of both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FDA. Hatch opposes FDA efforts to further regulate vitamins and homeopathic remedies. The FDA has proposed new, tougher and controversial labeling requirements for vitamins, herbs and dietary supplements. And Hatch opposes the SEC restricting capital development.

On the FDA: Hatch has introduced legislation to block the FDA's attempt to restrict claims the natural-food industry can make about its products. The Salt Lake Tribune said, "Mr. Hatch argues that growing evidence suggests vitamins, minerals and herbs and supplements can alter and improve health, prevent diseases and have therapeutic value." Hatch, according to the Wall Street Journal, even leaned on the FDA commissioner, who is a former Hatch worker:

Senator Hatch, himself a supplements consumer, insists government is "over-regulating" the industry. According to a Hatch staffer, he felt so strongly about the issue that he summoned his former aide, FDA Commissioner David Kessler, to his office and complained that Dr. Kessler had been co-opted by FDA "bureaucrats."

The senator not only consumes vitamins, he also has a limited-partner stake (as much as $50,000 worth of stock) in the Utah vitamin company, Pharmics, Inc. A 1993 Los Angeles Times article questioned whether it was ethically proper for Hatch to fight stronger FDA regulation of the vitamin industry—aimed at curbing misleading health claims—while having a financial interest in a vitamin company.

On the SEC: After he was elected in 1976, Hatch gave Tribune business editor Robert Woody a list of his objectives. "He finds that the Securities and Exchange Commission has harmed as much as it has helped, in that it has been overly repressive when it comes to allowing enterprise to raise equity capital," Woody wrote.

In 1988, Hatch defended the decision of Judge David Sam (a former Hatch missionary companion and Hatch nominee to the federal court) to reduce a prison term for swindler Carvel R. Shaffer. Hatch was quoted as saying Shaffer was convicted in the "rotten, lousy area of security law. We need those cells for drug pushers and murderers and hardened criminals," Hatch said.


Alternative Medicine
IVs That Clean Blood Vessels and Kill Viruses

Chelation Therapy
Chelation therapy involves the injection of an amino acid—ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA)—into the bloodstream. There it reportedly binds with various minerals, forming a compound that can be excreted in the urine.

The FDA has approved chelation for treating lead poisoning and oversupply of calcium. Proponents say chelation can also clean anyone's arteries of calcium, the main ingredient of artery-clogging plaque. But the FDA has not approved the therapy for treating heart disease.

Omni Magazine says chelation therapy has been opposed by the "medical-industrial complex" because "it provides a safe, effective, and inexpensive alternative to the drugs and surgery used to treat illnesses such as heart disease." The magazine says were it not for the opposition "chelation therapy could be offering treatment to millions of people suffering from strokes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's Disease, diabetes, and adverse reactions to environmental pollutants."

"No evidence shows that to be true," counters Consumer Reports Magazine. Under the heading "Chelation and Charlatanism," the consumer magazine said the drug's only legitimate use is to treat heavy-metal poisoning. "At best, chelation therapy for anything other than severe metal poisoning is an expensive waste of time; at worst, it can lead to calcium depletion or a dangerous allergic reaction."

Utah physician Paul Clayton, who heads the Utah Medical Association's Unproven Health Practices Committee, said chelation has not been proven to be effective for uses it's being used for these days, like arterial sclerosis. He said several Utah physicians use the therapy for non-FDA approved ailments. He said, though, that it's not uncommon for doctors to use drugs in ways the FDA has not given its okay.

One Utah proponent said the wife of LDS Church President Ezra Taft Benson was given chelation when she had a stroke in 1977. "On her 17th treatment, she was as normal as she had ever been," he said.

An FDA spokesman said chelation is viewed as "an unproven therapy often subject to fraud."

The Electrolyzed Saline Solution Treatment
Documents filed by Medical Discoveries, Inc. say the company's treatment involves a saline solution that is chemically changed by electrolysis and then injected into the body intravenously. "The electrical current causes the chemicals in the saline solution to alter, producing a variety of chemical compounds, such as ozone and hydrochloride." (The FDA suit against the Themy-Kotronakis AIDS Machine says, "When a saline solution is electrolyzed, sodium hydroxide [the chemical contained in lye] and sodium hypochlorite [commonly known as bleach] are produced." One man who investigated Morrow's process says the machine makes a "non-toxic form of chlorine." Another said, "After 45 seconds it loses its potency, so it's no good. If exposed to the air, it would probably become a poison, just like getting a shot of Chlorox."

Proponents believe the solution kills viruses in humans, the HIV virus in particular. Company literature says tests have been conducted in Mexico on five AIDS victims. "In preliminary tests on AIDS patients, the treatment has been shown to be effective in reducing or eliminating the HIV virus in the patient's body, without significant side effects." The documents make no mention of treatments conducted in Utah on patients with AIDS and other maladies.

A former MDI officer says the treatment not only cured one patient of AIDS—a Mormon who had been excommunicated—it also led him to abandon his homosexuality. "He is now married and was brought back into the church," he said.

"Dr. Morrow saved my life," says a Bountiful patient, Michelle Curtis, who says she was dying, suffering from the Epstein-Barr virus and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Curtis said she's had around 70 treatments the past year. "It's not drugs, it's all natural," says the Bountiful mother. She understands the solution contains vitamin supplements and anti-viral medicine.

Curtis says Morrow offered most of the treatments for free, but has charged a minimum cost of $22 per visit for about 10. "A normal treatment would cost $165. He took me under his wing; he felt sorry for me." She says she continues to get treated when she gets weak and needs strength. She said her insurance company refuses to cover the treatments. "If they realized that homeopathic means are just as good, if not better, if they could put modern medicine and natural means together, you'd really have good medicine," she says.

Floyd Weston, on the other hand, says he took in some "test" patients who were suffering chronic sinus infection. "For two weeks, it was just terrific and then, bang, it was right back," he said. Weston had a Florida doctor use one of the units but without success. Weston said the way to cure AIDS is by using a homeopathic dilution of the HIV virus "because like always heals like."

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