Doctor slammed for using unapproved, unproven cancer treatment treatments, even on a patient with no cancer

An Ontario doctor who was restricted in January from prescribing ivermectin and issuing COVID vaccine exemptions has now been slammed for using unapproved cancer treatments and diagnostic methods on 12 patients—including one who did not have cancer at all. Dr. Akbar Nauman Khan, a Toronto family physician who owns a clinic called Medicor Cancer Centres, was found guilty of incompetence and of failing to maintain the profession’s standard of practice in his care and treatment of 12 patients. The Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal also determined that Dr. Khan had fraudulently billed the province for palliative care for six patients that he did not provide. He is now awaiting a penalty hearing and is scheduled for a hearing in June for another case. Read: Doctor who failed to consider possible cancer diagnosis ordered to pay $125,000 in damages and cost The complaints against Dr. Khan focused in large part on his use of a treatment regimen for cancer called SAFE chemotherapy and of low-dose naltrexone and dicholoroacetate. According to the decision document, the discipline tribunal also called into question Dr. Khan’s use of unapproved investigations—specifically ONCOblot and circulating tumour cell detection —to diagnose, monitor and treat cancer in his patients. According to the decision document, in July 2013 Dr. Khan began offering SAFE chemotherapy, a regimen that uses both carboplatin and mesna. These conventional drugs are Health Canada-approved cancer treatments, but their combined use is not approved. The 12 patients who were the subject of the case against Dr. Khan each received anywhere from five to 24 cycles of this treatment, at a cost of US$4,200 per cycle. None of the 12 patients received adequate and objective information about their treatments to provide informed consent, according to the decision document. At the same time, Dr. Khan showed poor judgment in his assessments and treatment decisions. Read: Organ transplants from pigs: Medical miracle or pandemic in the making? For example, in the case of a 70-year-old woman who was diagnosed with stage-4 colon cancer and metastatic disease to the liver, Dr. Khan chose to use SAFE chemotherapy even after he was informed by the patient’s oncologist that her disease was likely platinum-resistant. This was unwise because carboplatin is a platinum-based chemotherapy, according to the decision document. Despite the patient’s deteriorating condition, Dr. Khan failed to recognize that the treatment he was providing was causing toxicity and even increased the dosage. When x-ray and ultrasound results showed disease progression–which Dr. Khan acknowledged during the hearing–he failed to communicate this to the patient’s family, telling them instead that SAFE chemotherapy was slowing down and stabilizing the cancer. Dr. Khan also sent the patient’s oncologist an email stating that SAFE chemotherapy had successfully undergone a Phase 2 trial approved by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration, which had rubber-stamped it as an off-label therapy for colon cancer. In reality, however, Dr. Khan had never seen evidence of such a trial, according to the decision document. This patient’s case was not the only instance where Dr. Khan had either ignored or rejected results from conventional investigations. In the case of a pediatric patient whose MRI results showed a small brain tumour had grown into a significant mass while another tumour had developed in the spine, Dr. Khan concluded that the growths were pseudoprogressions. In an email to the patient’s family, he stated that if the patient was feeling fine and had no clinical findings on examination, then “the MRI is wrong.” Read: Long lasting cell treatment cured leukemia patients: doctors Dr. Khan continued to treat the patient’s medulloblastoma with dichloroacetate which, according to one of the college’s expert witness, lacks literature to support that it is effective in pediatric medulloblastoma. By comparison, the witness said, conventional therapy would have given the patient—who was seven years old when his parents brought him to Dr. Khan—a high likelihood of cure. The patient died almost a year-and-a-half after his parents placed him in Dr. Khan’s care. Dr. Khan’s reliance on non-conventional investigation methods caused “devastation” in one patient whom he diagnosed mistakenly, through an ONCOblot test, with leukemia and proceeded to treat with low-dose naltrexone. Even after a hematologist-oncologist at Scarborough General Hospital in Toronto evaluated the patient and told her she did not have leukemia, Dr. Khan continued to insist she had cancer and kept her on low-dose naltrexone. In her testimony, the patient talked about the impact of Dr. Khan’s misdiagnosis on her and on her family, and how their decision to relocate to Toronto to have closer access to medical care led to financial difficulties. Read: Doc facing 7-year-old $146K fraudulent billing case gets suspension and $31K penalty on separate issue The complaint pertaining the fraudulent billing stemmed from palliative care codes that Dr. Khan submitted to the Ontario health insurance plan for six patients he was treating with SAFE chemotherapy. While some of these six patients were in the last year of their life, “this is not sufficient to submit palliative care codes to OHIP if the physician is not actually providing palliative care,” wrote the discipline tribunal. “One cannot conclude that a physician is providing palliative care to a patient based only on the fact that the patient’s prognosis and disease stage indicate that palliative care is required,” the tribunal stated. The tribunal also noted that Dr. Khan was uncooperative during the investigation, in particular refusing to produce patient charts requested by the college. While Dr. Khan’s licence is active, he currently practices under conditions that include posting signs at his clinic advising patients he is prohibited from providing medical exemptions in relation to COVID-19 vaccines, mask requirements and testing. He is also required by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to provide logs of all patient encounters, submit to unannounced inspections and, since September 2017, he has been under orders to provide treatment only under supervision. Read: 4 docs who won't give CPSO access to records are on shaky legal ground: Health law experts

Doctor slammed for using unapproved, unproven cancer treatment treatments, even on a patient with no cancer

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