FDA seizes records, lasers from Owasso business claiming to cure cancer
BY RHETT MORGAN World Staff Writer
Thursday, July 26, 2012
7/26/12 at 1:50 PM
OWASSO -- Computer and financial records, drugs, laser units, patient files and $7,800 cash were seized recently by federal authorites executing a search warrant on a business it alleges has misbranded drugs and defrauded customers by saying it can cure cancer.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating Antonella Carpenter, owner of a retail store known as Lase Med, 8555 N. 117th East Ave., Suite 205.
Other items taken during the July 11 raid were promotion materials and prescription pads, records show.
An affidavit filed July 9 in U.S. District Court, the Northern District of Oklahoma, alleges that Carpenter “is preying on patients and giving false hope to those who are seeking options for their disease.” In turn, she charges fees for the treatments that aren’t covered by insurance and uses interstate communications -- via email and telephone calls -- to induce prospective clients to participate in her “scheme,” the affidavit claims.
Efforts to reach Carpenter by phone were not immediately successful.
Carpenter doesn’t have a medical license, documents indicate. Lase Med obtains saline solution with black walnut green-hull extract and mixes the substances together to form a product the company’s website calls OxyM, records claim.
Carpenter administers OxyM to individuals with cancer by either topically applying it or injecting it into the cancerous tumor and then uses a laser -- called the LaserTouchOne -- to heat the infected area to a temperature she claims kills the tumor. Lase Med labels the process “Light Induced Enhanced Selective Hyperthermia,” or “L.I.E.S.H. Therapy,” documents show.
In July 2011, Lase Med Inc. and Carpenter were defendants in a civil case that ended in Arkansas when a federal jury awarded a California woman a $2.5 million judgment for negligence, fraud and deceptive trade practices.
The plaintiff, Therese Westphal, who traveled to Lase Med’s facility in Jacksonville, Ark., in November 2007, was told that the treatment would be a cure and that she would not require surgery or a follow-up drug regimen, court records indicate.
Westphal said she was told at the end of her treatment that the tumor in her left breast was dead. But doctors in California confirmed four months later that her cancer had progressed and would require aggressive treatment that included a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, records show.
