A single drop of blood: No research, FDA approval behind Shelburne doctor's testing methods

Isaac Fornarola | Burlington Free Press

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Medical doctors couldn’t help a teenager with thyroid disease who couldn’t get out of bed. They had no remedy for a child with a common infection causing persistent skin lesions.

But by using a test on a single drop of blood, a test without research or FDA approval behind it, Travis Elliott, a naturopathic doctor in Shelburne, says he succeeded where modern medicine failed.

These are stories from his video series about the Bioresonance Analysis of Health, a method that claims to measure the electromagnetic frequencies of a single drop of blood and use it to pinpoint underlying dysfunction in the body.

“DID YOU KNOW A SINGLE DROP OF BLOOD CAN UNLOCK YOUR INDIVIDUAL PATHWAY TO HEALTH?” Elliott’s website asks.

The test has no evidence-based or peer-reviewed research behind it. It is not covered by insurance, and neither the method nor the device used to analyze the blood are FDA approved.

Practitioners throughout the country who are performing the test say it’s a revolutionary way to find solutions for conditions that are difficult to treat, and the efficacy of the test can’t be proven because it works outside of the traditional medical paradigm.

Leading doctors and researchers in the field say the claims behind the test are too good to be true.

Elliott is a naturopathic physician, and Vermont is one of 22 states in the country in which practitioners like him are licensed and afforded the same rights to treat and in some cases prescribe as a medical doctor, according to the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians.

Elliott’s website and Facebook page are filled with encouraging posts, weekly poetry recommendations, and a number of YouTube videos explaining the value of the test, showering it with anecdotal praise.

The test was invented by Thomas Szulc, a medical practitioner in New York who runs a medical practice called the New York Center for Innovative Medicine in Huntington on Long Island.

Szulc has trained and certified people across the world in the method, yet the test is not often used, even by naturopathic doctors like Elliott.

A spokesperson for the American Naturopathic Certification Board said the organization was familiar with the test, “however, it is not a modality that one of our traditional naturopaths would use."

Szulc co-owns a business, Innovative Medicine LLC, with his son, Casper, which sells nutritional supplements and other products promising to “awaken your healing potential,” according to its website. Both Thomas and Casper Szulc did not return multiple calls and emails requesting comment for this story.

The blood is tested in-house and the procedure isn't covered by insurance. An initial visit with Elliott, which includes the first test, a medical interview, a physical exam and a review of the results, costs $350. Each additional test costs $100 and each office visit costs $50.

Elliott recommends patients undergo the test at least two to three times before making a decision about whether it’s right for them. A typical course of treatment, he said, would involve seven to eight tests.

'Worse than Theranos'

The bioresonance test analyzes levels in the body of things normally considered unquantifiable: Rather than measuring cholesterol or thyroid levels, practitioners claim they can identify underlying dysfunction by looking at the frequencies in the blood of Energy Anatomy and Emotions and Metabolic Toxicity.

Outside of the process of obtaining the initial drop of blood, it’s unclear exactly how the test is performed, and those who use it say patients and practitioners have to be willing to accept some level of subjectivity and be comfortable with the unknown.

Elliott said that the way the test works is something even those in the field don’t fully understand. “Similar to other scientific advances, it’s possible to use a tool even if we don’t 100% understand how it works,” Elliott said.

“There are observable phenomena that can be harnessed, in this case in a clinical setting, as long as we acknowledge that there are unknowns in this process,” Elliott said, “and I am always acknowledging that this is an alternative assessment technique. This is experimental, this could be described as cutting edge.”

Elliott says patients don’t always understand the process, either. He welcomes healthy skepticism, but for the method to be successful, he says, it does involve a level of trust in the physician.

Elliott told the story of an acupuncturist with thyroid dysfunction who had great success with the test despite not fully understanding the mechanisms behind it.

“She said she didn’t always understand each treatment, but she trusted in the process, and in the end, it’s changed her life,” Elliott said.

Leading scientists in the field say such claims are unproven and untested, and the technology needed to use a single drop of blood to identify dysfunction in the entire body does not yet exist.

“In theory? Maybe. In practice? Almost impossible,” said Tim Hamill, who was the director of clinical laboratories at University of California, San Francisco Medical Center for 20 years.

Hamill is no stranger to bold claims about single drops of blood. He was one of the scientists featured in John Carreyrou’s investigative series for the Wall Street Journal that exposed Theranos, a company that claimed to have developed a device that could perform all standard laboratory testing on a single drop of blood.

Carreyrou found that Theranos took billions from investors before developing a device that could actually achieve those results, and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, now faces up to 20 years of jail for multiple counts of fraud.

For Hamill, assessing the validity of the test boils down to one measure: If it works, then prove it.

Hamill said he couldn’t find anything in the literature about blood testing and bioresonance.

Though Szulc’s website says the test “has been repeatedly shown to achieve extraordinary results,” none of the practitioners interviewed for this story who are using the test could point to a study or peer-reviewed research showing its methodology or efficacy.

“Those are just the huge red flags for me. If there’s nothing in the literature on blood bioresonance then my guess is it’s a hoax at this point until proven otherwise,” Hamill said.

George Church, a Harvard scientist who also was quoted in Carreyrou’s expose of Theranos, said the test had nothing substantive to back it up. “This seems even worse than Theranos,” Church said, “since there are few connections to any existing medicine.”

Finding 'causes,' not diagnoses

Elliott and other practitioners using the test are, usually, careful not to make claims that the test can diagnose an illness.

Because the method has not been studied by the FDA, Szulc and his students are not legally allowed to claim the test can diagnose, treat, or cure a disease.

Those disclosures are interspersed sporadically throughout Elliott’s patient brochures, and often muddled by claims that the test can offer answers to those who have struggled to find them.

On one tab of his website, Elliott describes the test as “an advanced diagnostic and evaluation method.” But in other places, he draws a distinction between bioresonance analysis and diagnosis.

“We may talk about an infection like Lyme disease or a condition like heavy metal toxicity, but the BAH findings would not be used to diagnose you with either of these conditions," the patient orientation handout on his website states.

The handout also has a disclosure on the first page about the test’s inability to treat or diagnose: “The information presented in this report is an energetic assessment only and is provided for informational purposes only ... and is not meant to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or replace conventional medical treatment.”

However, the report goes on to detail the ways in which Elliott uses the test to come up with treatment plans: "I listen to your system and find treatments that your body can effectively work with.”

Advertising the test as a diagnostic or treatment tool without evidence to back it up could cost a practitioner a hefty fine or even the loss of their license, Gabriel Gilman of the Office of Professional Regulation said.

His department is in charge of the licensing and oversight of naturopaths in Vermont. Gilman said the test warrants skepticism because it “invokes mysticism and energy fields.”

“A clinician employing any diagnostic test that operates by unknown means, lacks established clinical utility, or contravenes any aspect of federal law concerning medical devices, could expose himself to license discipline for unprofessional conduct,” Gilman said.

Vermont’s Naturopathy Practice Act says a licensed naturopath may “use diagnostic procedures commonly used by physicians in general practice,” including clinical lab tests.

“I cannot conceive of general-practice physicians ‘commonly’ using diagnostic procedures similar to those described online as ‘Bioresonance Analysis of Health,’” Gilman said.

When asked whether the website and videos could lead a patient to believe that the test can diagnose and treat illnesses, Elliott says there’s always a risk of things getting lost in translation online.

“Any time you are trying to simplify something on the website there is some possible risk for misinterpretation,” Elliott said.

He says he spends a lot of time educating patients before undergoing testing. “I’m really clear about what is a diagnosis and what is not,” Elliott said.

Melinda Beck, a naturopathic doctor who says she was one of Szulc’s first students, said that on average, patients had seen an average of 23 practitioners before they made their way to her.

The test, Beck said, finally offered answers for those who were told the underlying cause of their symptoms could not be determined or didn’t exist.

Beck says that diagnoses drawn from traditional lab work can have deleterious effects on a person’s ability to heal, and that testing blood by traditional methods only offers a “spot shot” of what’s happening in the body on the whole.

“We are energetic beings,” Beck said. “Every function in our body is dictated by electromagnetic signals. But those are electromagnetic signals that are on a biological level, on a natural level, not on a technical level.”

Beck said the method behind the test—using frequencies to understand health—is backed up by decades of research that predates 20th-century scientists Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla.

Beck has since left private practice and started her own company, YouMatrix, which sells a product that claims to intercept frequencies from cell towers and wifi routers and turn them into therapeutic tools.

She said Szulc’s work with electromagnetic frequencies was instrumental to her decision to start the venture.

Beck said even conclusions drawn from traditional lab testing are up to a physician’s interpretation, and she's less discerning — or less careful — about describing the test as diagnostic.

“In my last couple of years of practice, that really was the only diagnostic means I used to devise a very individualized treatment plan,” Beck said.

Treating kids with unconventional methods

In a video on his Youtube channel called “BAH and kids,” Elliott says the test is particularly effective in helping children.

“Yes, I love treating kids, and they generally respond a lot faster than adults,” Elliott says in the video. “Plus, we give family discounts.” He relays anecdotes of its efficacy on children with thyroid issues and infections that wouldn’t go away until the underlying cause was discovered by the test.

As to whether the test can help children, Ani Anderson couldn’t agree more. She traveled from New York to Vermont to see Elliott after her daughter started missing school for feeling generally unwell.

Her family physician believed it could be meningitis and suggested standard blood testing, but the results came up negative. The unexplained symptoms had presented in the past and, reluctant to put her daughter through more testing that was seemingly unable to find the cause, she opted to try the bioresonance test.

Anderson is the founder of Motivation Beyond Measure, which she described as a consulting company.

According the company's Facebook page, it offers qualitative assessment of its own ("We're not like any other workplace culture company on the planet! We are one of the only US based company who can quantitatively measure the motivation of your people," the page states.)

“There was an underlying virus, actually, that wasn’t able to be detected by the blood test that the regular doc put her through,” Anderson said.

First, Elliott's test found that her nervous system was stressed. After three or four rounds, it uncovered the virus. Elliott prescribed her a plant formula which, after two to three days, Anderson said, alleviated her daughters symptoms completely.

“After she started taking it, she felt different than she had in three years. It was like whatever was kind of lingering was finally being addressed, and she could definitely feel the results of that,” Anderson said. “It was pretty wild.”

When asked whether he felt there was any danger in using a test on children that wasn’t FDA approved or backed up by research, Elliott said yes — but only if traditional medicine is outright ignored.

“If I completely lopped off the physician part of me, and looked only through this lens, then that would be irresponsible and potential for putting a kid at risk,” Elliott said, “and I take that seriously.”

Elliott said that, particularly with children, he will often use conventional treatment methods and order lab tests if the presenting issue is serious enough.

Though naturopaths like Elliott can serve as primary care physicians in Vermont, he said he recommends his patients keep their primary care doctor for traditional medical care.

Anderson, however, said Elliott never spoke to her about keeping her daughter’s primary care physician.

She does live in New York, where naturopathic doctors are not recognized by the state and, thus, she asserted, he had no reason to clarify that she should rely on someone else for her daughter's primary care.

As to whether the risk of an unproven test outweighs the benefits, Anderson said it was “a no-brainer.”

“I mean, what do you have to lose from giving a drop of blood and seeing what happens next?” Anderson said, “I don’t really think there’s anything to lose from it.”

So does it work?

If the 28 of five-star reviews on Google and glowing testimonials on his site are any indication, patients see a great deal of success with the bioresonance test, though Elliott acknowledges that the test isn't for everyone.

"No test is going to work for everybody and in all situations," Elliott said.

"There’s so much we don’t know still about the human body, even the immune system, that I feel like I’m closer to helping people with complex chronic disease with this, but I don’t have all the answers."

Elliott was skeptical of the test at first, and thinks a degree of skepticism is healthy.

"It comes down to me for how can I best help people who are suffering," Elliott said, and that's the part of the job that brings him joy. "This is the first time I’ve felt like I had a tool and a process that helps me be the type of physician that I want to be," Elliott said.

He does, however, acknowledge there's a monetary risk, but particularly for those who are suffering without answers, he said it's worth a shot.

For Hamill, the doctor who worked on the Theranos story, it all boils down to the money.

"If they’ve got something that really does what they say this does," Hamill said, "then they should be getting venture capital, and this is a multi-billion dollar company." The science and the technology, he said, simply isn't there.

"And that's what we saw with Theranos," Hamill said. "They had an interesting idea, but in actual application, their box never worked. Now this may be a whole different technology I know nothing about, and this will come out and be the best thing since the invention of fire," he said.

"But until proven, I’m going to remain extremely skeptical that people aren’t just throwing away their money."

Email Isaac Fornarola at ifornarola@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter: @isaacforn