Book On Alternative Medicine Stirs Ill Will

It is the oddest of confrontations, involving unlikely opponents, based on an incident near the Statue of Liberty.

It indirectly pits a Puyallup book publisher against a prominent New York medical-school professor and self-described "health-fraud opponent."

It also involves Ellis Island, the First Amendment and a loud argument at a Manhattan cocktail party.

It is an angry, contentious mess.

The publisher, Burton Goldberg, says he will sue the National Park Service for recently yanking his new book - "Alternative Medicine: A Definitive Guide" - from an Ellis Island exhibition and banning its sale at the park gift shop. The exhibition, running through mid-January, features immigrant health traditions.

The professor, Dr. Victor Herbert of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, complained angrily to the Park Service superintendent that the book was an "encyclopedia of frauds." He told another park official he might sue to force closure of one exhibit room that featured the framed covers of "Alternative Medicine" and 16 other books on the same subject.

Ann Belkov, superintendent of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, did close that part of the exhibition. But she said Herbert's angry complaints had nothing to do with it.

"I do not intimidate very easily," said Belkov, a veteran Park Service superintendent.

She closed it, she said, because she discovered the books didn't fit chronologically with the period featured in the immigrant health tradition exhibit, 1892 to 1954.

`It's book burning!'

The object of all the heat is a 1,068-page, phone-book-sized volume on alternative therapies - ranging from acupuncture to "flower remedies" to yoga. Released last December, "Alternative Medicine" is published by Future Medicine Publishing, Inc. of Puyallup and lists for $59.95.

Goldberg's attorney, Lance Rosen of Seattle, says his client will file a lawsuit contending the government violated his freedom of speech in two ways: Because the superintendent allegedly banned the book from the gift shop based on its content, and because she allegedly closed part of the exhibit for the same reason, even though the book had been on display nearly two months.

"It's book burning at freedom's birthplace!" boomed Goldberg, 67. "It's the Ellis Island scandal."

Goldberg made millions as a Miami developer, including building the now-closed Hotel Bounty and its glitzy "Mutiny Club" in the city's affluent Coconut Grove section. He said he sold the two in 1984, semiretired and now owns a ranch in Eatonville and apartments in San Francisco and Aspen.

Goldberg said he became interested in alternative medicine 18 years ago when his girlfriend's suicidal daughter was cured of hypoglycemia and depression by vitamin therapy and diet changes. The book "Alternative Medicine," he said, is the culmination of years of work and cost $2 million to produce.

Ellis Island exhibition curators consulted with the book editor about displaying it. At the exhibit, its framed cover was displayed with others in Room 6 as an example of how some traditional immigrant therapies were incorporated in modern alternative medicine.

Herbert, of Mount Sinai, is nutrition and hematology research director at the Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center and a lawyer. He is a longtime critic of alternative medicine and has testified before Congress on practices he views as quackery. When he visited the popular exhibit in June and saw "Alternative Medicine" and the other book covers, he was enraged.

"This room of quack books is home-grown U.S. fraud, which has nothing to do with Ellis Island or immigrants," he wrote to superintendent Belkov, asking her to remove the display.

Belkov's assistant, Larry Steeler, drafted a two-page reply citing staff consultations with 11 universities, health agencies or medical organizations about the exhibition. The letter said the exhibition staff did not judge the alternative therapies' effectiveness but displayed the material because of renewed public interest in the subject.

At a July 4 cocktail party hosted by a mutual friend, Steeler met Herbert and they soon began arguing heatedly about the exhibit.

The argument ended with Steeler leaving the party as Herbert threatened to sue to force closure of Room 6.

"I just blew my cork. There was no excuse for it," Herbert later wrote in a letter of apology to Steeler.

Sales of book in shop stopped

Steeler said he told Belkov on July 5 about the incident. The reply to Herbert's first complaining letter was scrapped. She replaced it with a letter telling Herbert he would "be pleased to know" she had closed Room 6 and stopped sale of "Alternative Medicine" in the gift shop.

But Belkov said Herbert's threat was "not a big deal." She said it only prompted her to take a look at Room 6 for the first time - even though the exhibition opened May 10.

She said she hadn't seen Room 6 because she was in Australia on Park Service business for two months until mid-May. She even extended the popular exhibition from a September closure to January without having seen the room, she said.

"The sixth room was never in the (exhibition) planning documents," she said. "I don't know why not."

She added: "This whole thing with the exhibit is . . . very unfortunate and very circumstantial. But it was done without malice or anything like that. It (the Room 6 closure and book ban) was simply done because it wasn't timely. It didn't commemorate the time that the site commemorates."

The feisty Herbert has not backed away from the flap. He recently appeared opposite attorney Rosen on a New York City radio talk show, shouting and disputing just about everything Rosen said.

He also has written to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, asking her to file a counterclaim for fraud against Goldberg, his publishing company, the entire editorial board for his book and 19 alternative medicine organizations and clinics listed in his book.

Rosen, a polite, soft-spoken downtown attorney, denies any suggestion that Goldberg's suit is an attempt at publicity for the book, which he says already has sold 50,000 copies.

"This really transcends the book," he says. "This is about the First Amendment."