Is Warner A Healer Or A Danger? -- Patients Speak Out For Doctor Whose License Was Suspended

Loyal patients describe him as a big-city doctor with a country attitude: He goes by his first name instead of a title and spends hours quieting their fears, even when his waiting room is full.

But this summer, Dr. Glenn Warner is battling more than the cancer that has invaded his 1,500 patients.

The 76-year-old Bellevue grandfather, called a pioneer by hundreds of Puget Sound cancer survivors, is fighting the establishment to get back his medical license, revoked in July. Last week, he won its temporary reinstatement while the matter is on appeal.

Stress management, good nutrition, meditation and agents that stimulate the immune system are his preferred cancer weapons. But Warner's belief that the body can heal itself led to two deaths in 1990, a state board maintains.

Warner is a danger, the state Medical Quality Assurance Commission said when it pulled his license.

The case, many think, is not about Warner but about philosophy. The traditional medical community, with its tools of chemotherapy and radiation, is clashing with alternative medicine.

"Cancer is a negative adjustment to a negative situation," Warner said in his office at Northwest Oncology Clinic in Seattle, his hand resting on a copy of the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.

He believes attitude is everything.

"We show (patients) they can take charge, and we try to demonstrate with example," Warner said.

Describing himself as a teacher, he said the patients do the real work. Hundreds campaigning to win his permanent reinstatement say they are living proof.

A traditional oncologist "has one tool, chemotherapy, in his little black bag," said former state Sen. J.T. Quigg, a Warner patient. "Dr. Warner has the equivalent of a Sears Craftsman newspaper insert."

One year ago, Quigg was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and told he had three months to live. He combined chemotherapy, prescribed by a traditional oncologist, with Warner's alternative treatments, including vitamins and agents to boost his immune system.

"I don't care how they try to dress it up," Quigg said. "The Medical Quality Assurance Commission is really just a marketing mechanism for traditional medicine."

Warner is a threat to the public, Beverly Norwood Goetz, assistant attorney general, told a King County Superior Court judge last week.

She said Warner is accused of botching cancer treatment or failing to use conventional methods that could have cured or prolonged life.

The commission said his decision to limit surgery led to the death of a 45-year-old woman who had a 90 percent chance of survival with conventional treatment. His reluctance to prescribe chemotherapy resulted in recurrence of breast cancer in a 44-year-old patient, the panel claimed.

In its 43-page report, the commission described six cases of alleged negligence and unsafe treatment. Warner should no longer practice medicine, it ruled.

The decision stalled a medical career that began in 1948 at George Washington University Medical School in Washington, D.C. Warner, a native of Orting, Pierce County, trained as a pathologist at Swedish Hospital. He completed a residency at Swedish Hospital Tumor Institute and served as a radiation therapist there beginning in 1963.

Took note of immunology

In the 1960s, he took note of scientific evidence that the body's own defenses can be boosted to battle cancer, something known as immunology.

He started the immunologic oncology division at the Tumor Institute and researched immunology, cooperating with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

In 1979, he went on his own, opening the Northwest Oncology Clinic.

Warner teaches that positive attitude, spirituality, exercise and diet can stimulate the body to heal itself.

He recommends patients trim their intake of meat and refined sugar and drink large amounts of liquid to detoxify their bodies. Vitamins and regular exercise, especially walking, are prescribed.

"You make the patient feel good physically. They sleep better. They're more refreshed, and they bring their own inherent healing mechanisms into full play," Warner said. "The immune system is strong enough to overcome (cancer) if we can figure out a way to harness it."

Warner and a psychologist meet weekly with patients to discuss attitude and teach meditation or explore spirituality.

He will prescribe traditional treatments such as chemotherapy, but sparingly.

Instead, he typically offers patients immune-system stimulants, including a tuberculosis virus removed from cattle, to boost their immune systems. The bacterial agent, Bacillus calmette-guerin, has been studied since the 1960s and is approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a treatment for certain cancers.

Warner, however, has prescribed the agent for cancer therapies not necessarily backed by the FDA, acknowledged his attorney, Richard Jaffe.

Warner argues that chemotherapy is also not scientifically proven and maintains he has always made it clear that what he offers is not traditional.

"Glenn never said, `I can fix you,' but he was really upbeat and supportive," said Susan McElroy, who was living in California when she heard of Warner. She came to him with a metastasized head and neck tumor, she said.

Her original doctors, she said, told her to find a minister. That was seven years ago; today, she said, she is cancer-free.

Patients by the dozen tell similar stories, saying few doctors who treat advanced cancer have as many long-term surviving patients. More than 350 wrote letters to the commission in support of Warner and hundreds gathered at the county courthouse, celebrating when he won temporary reinstatement of his license.

"I am here, and I am not supposed to be," said Gail Lober, a Bothell woman diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1992.

Lober declined chemotherapy. Instead, she interviewed seven physicians and selected Warner, in part because he was the only one who could name five patients who had survived ovarian cancer for five years.

Healing more than physical

She and Warner share a belief that healing is more than physical, she said. Lober remembers the doctor ended their first conversation by saying, "I'm sorry this happened to you, but it is possible for us to beat this thing together."

Most of his patients have been to other doctors, were told they must start aggressive treatments immediately and are panicked, Warner said.

"First of all, we tell them, `This is not an emergency. Let's stop and analyze this. This has been coming on for a long time. You should get second, third and fourth opinions, and pick the treatment of your choice.' "

That lack of aggressiveness was cited by the commission as substandard care and negligence. A 56-year-old Yakima woman should have had a breast tumor completely removed in 1988 but instead followed Warner's advice of radiation and immunotherapy, the commission found. Later that year, she transferred to another doctor, underwent surgery and was found to have cancerous nodes.

The commission said Warner harmed a patient with high doses of radiation and misdiagnosed an enlarged liver as an enlarged spleen.

Now back at work, Warner is continuing care of his patients but has been ordered to offer his charts for review.

He must warn patients that some of his treatments are experimental and obtain their written consent.

Warner's appeal will be heard in the coming months. Patients say they will continue to fight for what they describe as their right to choose their own care.

"I want body, mind, emotional, spiritual healing. Treating only the body is not enough anymore," Marilyn Thompson, a Seattle resident Warner has treated for lymphoma, wrote to the commission. "To me, there is a difference between curing and healing. That man is a healer."