Waning about the perils of alternative or desperation medicine

“A heralded, retired Boeing engineer dying of prostate cancer went to a West Columbia alternative medicine doctor last year believing unconventional therapies would prolong his life.

Instead, what Mike Bate received from Dr. James M. Shortt was a treatment that might have fed his cancer, instructions on how to find and use an illegal cancer drug, a false assertion he had Lyme disease and a $26,000 bill, according to his widow, doctor and medical records.

A proud, accomplished man, Michael Andrew Robertson Bate died July 21 at age 66, feeling a fool.

‘It’s unbelievable to me how an articulate, well-read man could be duped like this,’ said his widow, Janet Bate of Columbia, also a patient Shortt treated for Lyme, a disease caused by tick bites. ‘We were suckered in.'”