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Dr. Miracle I 3. Selling Hope

2024/7/15
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知名游戏《文明VII》的开场动画预告片旁白。
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旁白: 本集讲述了罗伯特·杨博士及其奇迹牧场的故事,揭露其利用碱性疗法贩卖希望,并通过非法医疗行为牟利的真相。奇迹牧场以其独特的碱性饮食和静脉注射疗法吸引了众多追随者,但其疗效并未得到科学证实,反而导致一些患者病情恶化甚至死亡。本集通过多个案例,展现了杨博士及其团队如何利用患者的希望和对健康的渴望,进行医疗欺诈,以及其如何试图掩盖其违法行为。最终,Dolores McCullough的控诉和加州医疗委员会的调查,揭开了奇迹牧场的真相,也警示了人们对所谓‘奇迹疗法’的警惕。 Rick Lorenzi: 作为罗伯特·杨博士的忠实追随者,Rick Lorenzi分享了他通过碱性饮食减肥的经历,并将其描述为一次具有精神意义的旅程。他认为碱性饮食不仅帮助他减肥,还改善了他的健康状况,例如缓解背痛和睡眠呼吸暂停。他的经历体现了罗伯特·杨博士疗法对部分患者的吸引力,以及他们对疗法有效性的强烈信念。 Dawn Kali: Dawn Kali是罗伯特·杨博士的长期追随者,她相信碱性疗法可以治愈她的癌症。尽管她的病情在接受治疗后恶化,但她仍然坚持相信杨博士的疗法,这体现了患者对希望的渴望以及对杨博士的盲目信任。她忽视了疾病恶化的迹象,并拒绝接受正规的医疗治疗,最终导致了严重的后果。 Don Calley: Don Calley在奇迹牧场接受了静脉注射疗法,并描述了其带来的不良反应。他的经历揭示了奇迹牧场疗法的潜在风险,以及杨博士对患者健康的漠视。他接受了所谓的“KYA’s”静脉注射,这是一种高浓度的小苏打溶液,导致他严重不适。 John Baird: 作为奇迹牧场的法律顾问,John Baird试图阻止罗伯特·杨博士进行违法的静脉注射,但他未能成功。他的努力体现了在维护法律和规章制度方面的挑战,以及在面对强大的个人意志时,法律的局限性。他多次警告杨博士,静脉注射属于非法医疗行为,必须聘请有资质的医护人员进行操作,但杨博士置若罔闻。 June Assisi: June Assisi是奇迹牧场的员工,她在加州医疗委员会的调查中向调查人员隐瞒了牧场进行静脉注射的事实。她的行为体现了对杨博士的忠诚,以及在面对法律调查时的压力和选择。她出于对杨博士的忠诚,选择隐瞒真相,这反映了杨博士对员工的影响力,以及员工在道德和法律之间的挣扎。 Dessa Ireland: Dessa Ireland作为奇迹牧场的清洁工,亲眼目睹了牧场糟糕的卫生条件,这与牧场对外宣传的豪华诊所形象严重不符。她描述了牧场房间的脏乱以及老鼠粪便等问题,揭示了奇迹牧场内在管理的混乱和对患者健康的漠视。 Caroline: Caroline是Dawn Kali的朋友,她对奇迹牧场的设施状况表示不满,这进一步印证了奇迹牧场与宣传的形象不符。她指出奇迹牧场外部环境优美,但内部设施却破败不堪,与患者支付的高昂费用不相匹配。 Dolores McCullough: Dolores McCullough是奇迹牧场的一位患者,她患有肝硬化。她相信杨博士的疗法可以治愈她的疾病,并因此停止服用处方药,最终导致病情恶化。她的经历是本集的核心案例,展现了杨博士疗法的危害以及患者在错误信息引导下的悲剧后果。她写信给加州医疗委员会,揭露了杨博士的欺诈行为,这成为了导致杨博士最终被调查的关键因素。 Linda Shaw & Kelly Despotakis: Dolores McCullough的女儿Linda Shaw和Kelly Despotakis讲述了她们母亲在奇迹牧场接受治疗的经历,以及她们如何努力将母亲带回家。她们的讲述生动地展现了杨博士如何利用患者的希望和家人的担忧,来控制患者并继续牟利。她们的母亲在奇迹牧场接受治疗后病情急剧恶化,最终去世。她们的经历体现了患者家属在面对医疗欺诈时的无奈和痛苦。

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You're listening to Chameleon, Dr. Miracle. Before you dive in, if you want to listen to the whole story uninterrupted, you can. Unlock the entire season ad-free right now with a subscription to The Benj. That's all episodes, all at once. Unlock your listening now by clicking subscribe at the top of the Chameleon show page on Apple Podcasts or visit getthebenj.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts.

There is another way. You've found Chameleon, Season 8. And this is Dr. Miracle. A production of Campside Media. The Bench. Hi, I'm Rick Lorenzi, and this is me when I was a kid. Healthy, happy, and the perfect weight. Here's me now. What happened? I got fat. Really fat.

This is a very, very trippy video on Dr. Robert Young's YouTube channel, which is quite active today. And we're going to be talking about some other things on there later. The man talking, Rick Lorenzi, is a devoted follower of Dr. Young's. Rick actually made this video to spread the word about the alkaline diet, which he says helped him lose 60 pounds.

And that fixed everything for him, including his back pain. All that extra weight turned your spine into a spaghetti noodle. It fixed his sleep apnea. Can't sleep in a bed. Fat distorts your body. It changes the breathing passageways. He explains his search for the answer to how to lose weight as an almost spiritual journey. Finding the alkaline diet is a religious experience. Moses went to the mountaintop when he needed help.

Next, the video cuts to Rick sitting contemplatively in a park. A little girl in a pink puffer vest approaches him. Again.

Video's a little trippy. And the little girl gives him the answer to all his problems. It sounds like you've been eating a dead acidic diet, though, Greg. It's hard to lose weight when you're acidic. It is? That was the answer. And now the video cuts to Dr. Young. It's not how much you eat.

It's what you're eating. What happens to human health when we stay in the acidic zone is we get sick and tired and fat. And if we don't get fat, we die. And then he makes the overall point of the video. He puts his finger on what he's really selling. I mean, I don't know if you've heard this before.

You can live without food for 40 days. You can live without water for four days. You can live without air for about four minutes. But you can't live without hope for more than a second. If you've ever been really sick or in chronic pain, you know that it's difficult not to hope you'll get better.

It's difficult not to think that this illness or pain is the source of all your problems. And it's really difficult to ignore someone who says they have the solution to all your problems. That all you have to do is join this program, buy these supplements, move to the pH Miracle Center for treatments. It's easy to get in too deep because a little hope can be a dangerous thing.

From Sony Music Entertainment, Campside Media, and Dorothy Street Pictures, I'm Larison Campbell, and this is Dr. Miracle, Episode 3.

By the 2010s, Dr. Young had gotten so good at selling hope that the people who bought it were willing to do just about anything he told them to do. Ensconced in a little world with Young, they ate an excruciatingly strict diet of recipes his wife Shelly had designed, like green mayonnaise, iced salsa soup, and steam-fried sprouts, which are actually just steamed bean sprouts.

You're going to make a pudding with the avocado, Shelly, right? Right. What else it has in it? Your almond oil or the almond milk? Right. Yes. When I make the pudding, I double the avocados. I put in a lime. This is good but weird. Good but weird. It's avocado and mint together. Yeah. Mmm. Let's see how it tastes.

But people in Miracle Ranch weren't just eating green or getting colonics. They were doing something else we haven't mentioned yet: receiving IV drips of baking soda dissolved in water. These IVs were supposed to help alkalize the blood. And, in fact, baking soda IVs are actually a thing in medicine. They're given to patients with severe metabolic acidosis, too much acid in the blood.

On the ranch, though, people were given baking soda IVs who were sick with things like cancer or cirrhosis, things that didn't necessarily cause acidosis. People like Don Calley. He was giving me lots of IVs. Don would sit in a special designated IV room at the ranch, sometimes alone, sometimes with other patients getting their IVs. Young or another doctor would hang a drip bag on an IV pole.

He'd push a needle under Don's skin and into a vein and run a tube from the IV bag to the needle. Don remembers one IV treatment in particular. I called it the KYA's, which was a kick your ass IVs. He made a bag for me and this other guy who was really, really sick.

Dawn and this other patient sat there, waiting as their bags of baking soda and water slowly emptied out into their bloodstreams. And both of us got so sick off the IV, I spent the whole next day in bed, shaking and shivering. She thought maybe something had gone wrong. But when she told Dr. Young, she remembers he seemed almost excited about her agony.

When he found out about it, he just said, "Oh, it's nothing but good, you know, getting it all out." Now, any time you do a medical procedure that involves breaking the skin, drawing blood, administering a vaccine, even tattooing someone, there are serious risks involved, like infections or transmitting blood-borne pathogens like hepatitis or HIV.

This is why, in order to legally break the skin, you need special certification. And to get it, you usually need to be a nurse or a doctor. An actual medical doctor, that is. And as we know, Young was not that. The thing is, though, a lot of patients did think he was a medical doctor. I mean, he did call himself Dr. Young. But most of the employees at the ranch knew that Young wasn't an M.D.,

Like his legal advisor, John Baird, who was on him to stop these IVs. Giunasisi, the accountant. John told him that he had to hire medical people. If he was going to do medical treatments, he had to hire medical people. John was a by-the-books kind of guy, a Mormon. He'd even been a mission president. So when Young pushed needles into veins, it was illegal. John kept telling him,

You can't do IVs. You have to have medical staff to do IVs. But that was his thing, to do saline IVs to change people's blood. Even John Baird couldn't get Young to stop giving the IVs. The best he could do is get Young to hire an actual medical doctor to sign off on some of Young's work at the ranch. But would that keep Young from breaking the law? And would it keep him from being found out?

It wasn't just the illegal IVs that made Miracle Ranch a chaotic place. The ranch itself was sort of falling apart. Dawn's friend Caroline. It was beautiful on the outside, the grounds, but apparently when he bought it, he never did anything for improvements along the way. Clients were even saying, "We paid all this money to come and be here in this environment?"

These people think they're paying this $3,000 a night or whatever it was a night to stay in this luxury clinic. Dessa Ireland held the unfortunate position of cleaner at the ranch. And literally, one of the units when I got there was their RV coach with the keys still in it.

from a family Christmas vacation and all of the personal stuff still in the cupboards. Not only that, I kid you not, there was probably an inch and a half of rat shit in the bottom of the oven, in the bottom of the cupboards. Oh, God. And people were paying that amount of money to stay in this

The other rooms were more normal, but they were also filthy when she first arrived. I don't think they were changing duvets and stuff, which is disgusting to me. One time I went in there, I had changed the duvet and everything was beautiful and tight and clean. Everything was white, you know. And I went back in because it just is my nature before someone's going to check in to do a once and done. There were four.

footprints, little, well, not little, from a rat or something that had crawled across the bed. So big that it left footprints indentions

It wasn't just the patients' rooms that were disgusting. The main house, where Dr. Young and his family stayed, was as bad as the RV. Yeah, I was in their personal home doing their laundry, cleaning their dishes. So their shower, the master shower, was so filled with mold that it took me days to get it clean.

They're just pigs. There's no consideration for anybody else but themselves. This is not just, oh, borderline. Oh, well, he's a good man. No, they have no, no, no. I don't know what's going on there, but it's not healthy. What does it say about a person when they keep their space extremely dirty and make other people clean it up?

What does it say about someone whose job is to care for patients, administer colonics and IVs? What does it say about the quality of care?

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If somebody says the right words, promises the right things, anybody can become a victim. Since the early 2000s, millions of handwritten letters were landing at people's doors all across America. She truly believed that this was going to save her mind from going further astray.

into the depths of demand shut. I'm investigative journalist Rachel Brown, and I'm going to tell you the story of a scam unlike anything I've ever seen and the shape-shifting mastermind who evaded capture for more than 20 years. We never in our wildest dreams thought that these schemes were at this scale. They'd been without water for two months. All they wanted in return was whatever it was that Maria Duval was promising them.

Now it's 2013, six years since Dawn first came across Young's books, three years since her first long stay at the ranch.

And Don is still totally into Young's protocol. I know his speech by heart. He always used the fishbowl metaphor. When the fish gets sick, do you treat the fish or do you change the water? Your blood is only as healthy as the fluids that it bathes in. And then due to its environment, it becomes corroded.

turning a normal healthy red blood cell into bacteria, the bacteria then the fungus, the fungus then into mold, and then that's cancer. Cancer is mold. And so if you want to get rid of cancer, you clean your fishbowl. He was on fire and passionate and he was just in discovery mode. It's true.

Dr. Young was constantly picking up all sorts of theories, like one that says germs don't make us sick. Instead, Young's theory is that our own over-acidic blood cells turn into viruses and bacteria. So germs are a symptom of disease, not the cause. Germs don't cause disease. Germs are the symptoms of cellular breakdown and transformation, and they're endogenously created. The germ theory...

We've been programmed to believe it without any solid evidence of its case. This is all so, so wrong. But selling BS is a swift business. And Young had products to sell along with all of that BS.

Here he is with motivational speaker Tony Robbins, talking about a special product Young says that you can put on your skin to alkalize the bloodstream. You've found a way to deliver these nutrients so the body can really use it. But your solution to that is to really deliver almost all of your products as a base in a colloidal form. Could you explain to people what a colloidal is? Well, when we're talking about colloidal, we're talking about size and we're also talking about systems.

So we're talking about the size of the matter or the particle. And our particles, because we're using very fine meshes, range at 5 nanometers. Now, 5 nanometers would be like you standing on the top of the Empire State Building looking down and trying to see that little tiny ant. That's how small.

So it's transdermal. That means that this little particle will go right into the lymph or right into the blood. And since it's negatively charged, these elements can then go to work to help neutralize acids or help build or structure or act as cofactors for carrying out metabolic biological purposes. If this idea sounds confusing to you, it's because it's a lot of science-y sounding nonsense, like a lot of Jung's ideas.

By the way, I really wanted to hear more about Young's perspective on all this stuff, so late last year I emailed him asking for an interview. He politely declined. Anyway, as far-fetched as Young's ideas may sound, Dawn is taking them very seriously, at grave risk to her health. I remember I had these little tumors in my lymph nodes. Now, feeling your body for tumors when you already have cancer is not a good way to track the spread of cancer.

Western medicine has a whole field of radiology and scans for that. But Dawn says Dr. Young discouraged her from getting any. And without effective treatment, her cancer was spreading silently. And at first they felt like little rice pellets and eventually they merged into one. And he was like, this is great. It's encapsulating. It's actually not cancer now. They're stones. They're stones.

How can someone who's been diagnosed with cancer believe that these new lumps are not tumors but stones? I think Dawn really wanted to believe her cancer was going away, and so she would latch on to anything that seemed to support that. It all goes back to what Young was really selling: hope. He would give me these little tidbits of hope, like the lymph node,

As the cancer spread, Dawn started feeling pain.

But even that was waved off. My back was in so much pain. I remember asking Young, "Do you think I have cancer in my bones?" And he said, "No, no." He said, "I've looked at your labs. You don't have cancer in your bones." So I felt very reassured. But she shouldn't have been reassured because nothing medical was happening here. Plus, that doctor that John Baird had had Young hire to oversee the IVs

He wasn't there very much. The doctor only came about once a month. June says Young kept on administering IVs. I did see patients at the ranch with IVs in when I knew that there was not a nurse or a doctor there. Eventually, this would be a critical mistake by Young. But the dominoes started to fall in a different way at first.

It was all set in motion when a certain patient arrived at the ranch. Her name was Dolores McCullough. She was just ahead of her time, like health-wise. When we were in fifth grade, she was growing wheatgrass. Linda Shaw is one of Dolores' daughters. She's talking to me with her twin sister, Kelly Despotakis. It's two days after Christmas, and they're both at Kelly's house. Her son just had an engagement party.

They're in their 50s and have a tendency to finish each other's sentences. And juicing, extracting. I mean, she was just eating macrobiotically. So she was always just ahead of the game in health and trying to be well. And so when my sister and I were born, we were born in a naval hospital. And they, I think we were a year. There was a reason Dolores was so health conscious.

When Linda and Kelly were babies, something happened to her. Dirty needle. Yeah, and she ended up, she had, I want to say strep throat, and went to the hospital and they gave her... Like an antibiotic through like a needle. They shared needles back in the day. I mean, what did they know? It was 1967, 1968. So fast forward, she ended up with cirrhosis. Non-alcohol related cirrhosis.

But it was cirrhosis from, she ended up with hepatitis. Hepatitis B. From the dirty needle. Back on the East Coast, Dolores was living with cirrhosis, a disease that causes scarring of the liver.

It's serious and can eventually lead to liver failure. Medications can slow the progression of the disease, though, and diet changes can help with symptoms. She just never felt 100 percent. But you would never know it. Like, she was going to school, she was working two jobs, she was raising two kids, she got her master's degree. Like, she didn't let things stop her. Because Dolores never felt well, and there was so much she wanted to do in her life, she took her health seriously.

She saw a hepatologist at a hospital in New Haven, and she also tried alternative therapies. Then she stumbled upon Young's book. Oh, I found this new book. This book is amazing. And her crazy-ass friend, excuse my French, this woman, she was a wackadoo. She introduced her mom to this book and then let my mom borrow it. And, you know, she was like, it spoke to her. It was Robert Young's book.

It explained that there was only one disease, being too acidic. The cure, of course, was to alkalize your body. Could this be the answer to Dolores' struggle with cirrhosis? At first, it seemed to Linda and Kelly that this was just another one of those harmless wellness fads that their mother was trying out, like the wheatgrass. But this diet was more intense than that.

I'll never forget this. We were, and all she was eating. Yeah, it was tomatoes and avocados. Tomatoes and avocados. Which she grew on his ranch. And cucumbers. I remember going to her house and she was preparing herself lunch. And when I tell you she was, it was probably six tablespoons of salt that she was, that she was encouraged to take, but she couldn't taste anything.

because of the salt. Yeah, Dr. Young advised people to take in a lot of salt. And she kept trying to say to us what the difference were like, mom, that's so much sodium. No, no, no. Trust me. He's told us this isn't sodium. This is so what she couldn't taste food. She couldn't taste anything because she had destroyed her taste buds from using these salts. It was incredible.

The salts were one of Young's supplements, which he called Four Salts, spelled P-H-O-U-R, like pH. Get it? It was baking soda mixed with some other stuff. Yeah, Young was really into baking soda. By 2008, Dolores had been following the alkaline diet for about a year and a half, but wasn't feeling any better. So she booked a three- or four-day stay at the Miracle Ranch. During that time, Young consulted with Dolores.

According to her, he said his protocol would cure her, which is actually impossible. Cirrhosis can't be cured. It can only be managed. But Young spent time with Dolores, really listened to her. Here's her daughter Kelly. Look at this doctor. And he's so reachable and he's so wonderful. And look, he's here. He's invested in my case. He wants me to get healthy.

You know that, because sometimes you go to a doctor and they come in, you're there for 15 minutes, you walk out, you're like, wow, what just happened? Do I even know my doctor? So I feel he felt he put a personal spin on it. And his children were there and his wife. You know, it felt very like a family of people that cared so much about you. But there were some surprising instructions from Dr. Young, according to her daughters. He told her to stop taking her thyroid medication.

He told her to stop taking thyroid medication that her doctor, her real doctor, had prescribed. This is dangerous. If your thyroid isn't regulated, it can cause severe liver damage. So now, Dolores was all for thyroid medication and she was taking tons of these salts, which could also make her cirrhosis worse. And at home, she began to retain water in her abdomen. So my mother had some potluck dinner at her church.

that she asked me to help her, like, you know, get her stuff ready. Okay, fine. So I met her in the church, and my mom, I don't know, it was maybe three weeks I hadn't seen her. My mom's walking down the hallway of the church, and I was like, I mean, it caught my breath. I'm like, her stomach, it was so distended. And I said, Mom, what the hell are you doing? The file of immunodue is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida.

In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant.

one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes. From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. As Dolores McCullough's cirrhosis got worse, she also began retaining water in her legs. So she called up Robert Young for advice.

He told her to keep taking the salts and increase her water intake to about eight liters a day. That's about three times the recommended amount. She gained around 50 pounds in water weight and finally went to a hospital. They gave her diuretics to help her eliminate the extra fluid. But after all this time following Young and buying into his anti-medical establishment beliefs, the idea of taking this medication scared her.

Young told Dolores not to take the diuretics. Instead, she should come back to the ranch for treatment. The treatment at the ranch started with a four-day fast. Dolores had nothing but water and four salts. Here's Dolores' daughter, Linda.

It was our mother's, like, life savings that she was spending out there. Do you know what? He had her in a camper van in the back of his property. It was the same one Dessa the cleaner had found full of rat poop. After the four-day fast, Dolores ate only tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados, salad greens, and sometimes a sort of alkaline pancake. She had a colonic every day. And every day, she felt worse.

Finally, Dolores demanded to be taken to the hospital. Young told her not to mention to the hospital staff that she was staying at the Miracle Ranch. Dolores found that a little suspicious, but she was in such bad shape, she couldn't really focus on it. At the hospital, they drained six liters of fluid from Dolores' abdomen, and then she was free to go. So she headed back to the ranch.

And that's when Young started giving her IVs. She would call us and be on some vitamin C drip that they would administer and then leave her. And she was like, it's empty. It's been hours. She'd have to remove the needle herself. Kelly and I had what, like nightly, every other night, phone calls with him. ♪♪

I remember sitting on her back porch and the birds were chirping. It was such a beautiful day. And this man was like, "Yeah, she's dying." I mean... Yeah, if you don't, if you take her home, she'll die. She did not want us to bring her home. He wanted her to continue spending her money. After about a month at the ranch, Dolores was so sick. Robert Young wanted her to stay there, but Linda and Kelly wanted to bring her home.

According to Linda, they were told that Dolores still owed $14,000 for her stay. And they were made to understand that Dolores wouldn't be released until someone paid. So I flew out to San Diego. They wouldn't even let me go to the ranch. They met me at the airport. I was outside and they

They pull up in the car and there's my mother. She couldn't get out for, she couldn't help herself. So they get the wheelchair and my mother was massive with the water weight, massive. And then they wheeled her up to me and my mom's sucking on that bottle of greens. And I took it and I fucking threw it at that woman. And then I said, here's your check. Give me my mother. And that was it. And I wish so much I avoided that check and I didn't.

But I knew I was aware that I had to give them the money to get my mother. It was awful. I flew that morning, got my mother at the airport, got on a plane to come home with her. And just was like, my mother will die on this flight. It was so terrifying. He smelt like death. She had that ketosis. And she slept the entire flight home. And then I had a car service meet us in New York.

And the driver had to help me like basically carry her to her apartment because she couldn't walk up the stairs. And I tell you when I just was like, she's not going to wake up. And then so I obviously I slept there and I slept in her bed because I wanted to keep an eye on her. And I remember she had her back to me and she was just skin and bones like she was just skin and bones. And our mom was always so vibrant.

And I said, she said, I'm going to make it through the night. Dolores did make it through the night. And Linda and Kelly did whatever they could do to help her get better, starting with taking her to a real doctor. Before this, her liver doctor, who would see her, I think it was monthly for a while, said, OK, you're good for a year. I'll see you in a year. Keep doing what you're doing.

And then the next time I brought her to him was after I got her back from the ranch. I pushed her into his office in a wheelchair, and he looked at her and he said, "Dolores, what have you done to yourself?" And I said, "Wait, do I have a story for you?" And I told him. Yeah. He was horrified. By the time Dolores McCullough came home from the ranch, she understood that she had made a terrible mistake in following Robert Young. She had trusted the wrong person, and instead of making her healthy,

He had made her so much sicker. And then we worked really hard to get her better, and she just never got better. She never got better. He really weakened her. He did. She tried like hell, but she just couldn't. She couldn't. She was never okay again. Dolores McCullough died in August of 2010.

But before she passed away, she thought deeply about what happened to her. And she wrote a detailed letter to the Medical Board of California, which regulates how medicine is practiced in the state. In it, she described everything that happened to her, from reading Young's book, to being hospitalized, to being held hostage, until her daughter handed Young's employee a $14,000 check. But Robert Young didn't know about the letter.

So rather than sticking to weight loss and selling his bogus supplements, Young brought patients under his care at the ranch who were sicker and sicker. Initially, the patients that were coming were still mobile and still able to care for themselves, even though they had cancer and were told that by the doctors there was nothing more they could do. So those kind of patients were...

Those were fine. And most of them only stayed for a week. They couldn't afford more. And then we started getting more long-term patients. What were you worried about with having very sick patients on the ranch? That they were going to die on the ranch. He told us we were not allowed to call an ambulance to pick up patients from the ranch. And so I'm like, well, you can't have people dying here then.

You've got to keep them off the ranch. Young didn't want anyone to call an ambulance because he didn't want to draw attention from the authorities. He didn't want people to die on the ranch for the same reason. So when very sick patients like Dolores McCullough needed to go to a hospital or just came too close to death, he had employees drop them off at the emergency room. Each time, they took patients to a different hospital. Again, probably to keep the ranch flying under the radar.

What had started as a diet of green smoothies had turned into a massive cover-up of actions that caused sickness and led to death. But maybe, eventually, the law would catch up with Robert Young.

It's a hot day at the Miracle Ranch in May 2011. The Palma Valley is decked out in bright colors of the bougainvillea, and fat flies buzz in lazy circles under the sun. Patients are getting their treatments, drinking their avocado smoothies and their ionized water. Robert Young and John Baird are off the ranch, on their way back from the airport.

And June Assisi is pretending that she's not totally freaking out as she talks to two men who have shown up at the ranch. I was at the kitchen, and they drove up, and they told me who they were. They were investigators for the California Medical Board.

Their names were Carlos Rodriguez and Tony Yu, and they were there to look into a complaint about Miracle Ranch. That someone here was practicing medicine without a license, doing things like administering IVs. Did June know anything about that, they asked? June could have told them then and there. She could have brought them to the IV room, shown them the evidence, introduced them to the patients who'd been receiving IVs there. But she didn't.

I have this really strong sense of loyalty. I've had it all my life. Like, when I worked for Provo City as a dispatcher, I would not shop outside of Provo City because I wanted my tax dollars to go to the city that I was working for. But that's kind of where my loyalty is. And so at this point, I was very loyalty invested in the process.

whether I believed it or not. So June lied to the investigators as she gave them a tour of the property, carefully avoiding anything incriminating. We happened to have a very, very ill patient in the guest, main guest house, which was pretty close to the kitchen. I took him in the kitchen and explained that it was all about the food.

Everything that was, you know, whatever was going on at the ranch was just exercise and proper nutrition. And then I took them down to the office. Did you sort of instinctively know not to take them near the places where the IVs were to keep them away from that? Yeah, yeah. John had drilled that into us. ♪♪

June slips away to call John Baird and warn him and Robert about the investigators. And eventually, as June is showing the investigators around the microscopy classroom, John and Robert arrive back from the airport. But only John shows up in the classroom to join June. Robert hid. I guess he hid in the main house. And John came down and took over and just mainly was going through things with the people from the medical board.

in the classroom. The whole visit lasts an hour. Carlos and Tony see the garden and the tennis courts and the breathtaking views of Palomar Mountain. But they don't see any patients. And they don't see any medical supplies. But that night, panic sets in at the ranch. And another loyal employee named Rosie offers to help. That night, we were instructed to get all of the IVs and IV things off the ranch.

We loaded everything up. There were several loads, truckloads full, and put it in a shed on Rosie's property. June was starting to see who she thought Robert Young really was. He just started getting this God complex that he could do anything. He just felt like he was above the law.

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Dr. Miracle is a production of Campside Media, Sony Music Entertainment, and Dorothy Street Pictures. The show was hosted by me, Larison Campbell. I reported it with Lily Houston-Smith, our producer, and also our field recordist. Shoshi Smolovitz is our managing producer and editor. Our executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriotis and me, Larison Campbell.

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