A man who called himself a naturopathic doctor is scheduled to stand trial for the death of one of his patients starting Tuesday in Jefferson County District Court in Golden, Colo.

Brian O'Connell, 37, was charged with manslaughter after he unsuccessfully treated Sean Flanagan, a 19-year-old who suffered from Ewing's sarcoma, a form of cancer.

Sean Flanagan's father, David, 43, said he was desperate when he and his wife Laura, 42, brought their son to O'Connell's Mountain Area Naturopathic Associates office in Wheat Ridge in December 2003. They had tried chemotherapy, radiation therapy, bone marrow transplants and surgery.

David Flanagan said he put his last hope in O'Connell's services, which typically included herbal medicine, nutrition and physiotherapy.

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"He assured us that he would be able to save our son," David Flanagan said.

On Dec. 10, O'Connell administered ultraviolet blood irradiation, in which he removed blood from Flanagan's system, passed it under ultraviolet light and injected it back into his body, according to an arrest affidavit.

The treatment was supposed to stimulate the immune system by increasing oxygen in the blood. However, Sean Flanagan was admitted to a hospital two days later.

"He had an infection to the bronchial line, which he never had," David Flanagan said.

The UV light treatment was then administered at home, which caused his oxygen saturation levels to drop from a normal range down to 17% in the next couple days, David Flanagan said.

"O'Connell was scared," he said. "He didn't know what to do."

On Dec. 18, O'Connell allegedly treated Sean Flanagan by injecting his blood with hydrogen peroxide.

"Please God, no more," Sean Flanagan said before dying the next day, according to his father.

Flanagan's cause of death was listed as probable complications from the hydrogen peroxide treatment.

David Flanagan is certain that O'Connell hastened his son's death.

"His medical doctor, who was treating him for an entire year, said he had months to live. Within two weeks after seeing O'Connell, he was dead," David Flanagan said.

In October 2004, the Flanagans sued O'Connell for wrongful death in Denver District Court, but it was dismissed last June.

O'Connell still faces up to 45 years in prison when his two criminal cases are tried together. After he was arrested in May 2004, he violated his bond by continuing to practice medicine, prosecutors said.

As a result, he was charged again for a total of 44 counts, including reckless manslaughter, impersonation, illegal practice of medicine, theft, assault, possession of a controlled substance and violation of bail bond conditions.

History of malpractice

Police claim that although O'Connell said he had a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a certificate of naturopathic medicine from the Colorado University of Naturopathic Medicine, his only health-related training came from Marijah McCain's Herbal Healer Academy, Inc., a non-accredited correspondence course in Arkansas.

O'Connell's arrest affidavit named six other patients. Five got worse after they saw him.

One patient, Roy Gallegos, allegedly died prematurely after seeing O'Connell. When the cancer patient visited Lutheran Medical Center on March 23, 2004, Dr. Kelli Lewis found O'Connell's advice to be "dumb and pointless," according to the affidavit. O'Connell put black salve on Gallegos' cancerous areas, but it caused wounds so large that Dr. Lewis initially thought they were incisions.

Two days later, Catherine Bresina, then 17, went into cardiac arrest after O'Connell administered UV blood treatment. He told police that she had a panic attack after seeing a drug needle.

O'Connell told another patient, Gladys Shoemaker, that he could cure her breast cancer by applying black salve, according to the affidavit. She later died.

When police searched O'Connell's office, they found vitamin B17, which was banned by the Food and Drug Agency. They also found Depo/Testosterone and other controlled substances that O'Connell was not licensed to possess, according to the affidavit.

In fact, O'Connell was fired as a pharmacy technician at a Milwaukee hospital in 1994 for allegedly stealing medicine and prescription pads, O'Connell's ex-fiancee, Judith Dudek, told a detective.

Prosecutor George Brauchler and his spokeswoman Pam Russell were unavailable to comment.

Defense attorney Richard Jaffe said that Flanagan was already near death, regardless of O'Connell's actions.

"Flanagan had terminal Ewing's sarcoma before he met O'Connell," Jaffe said. "There's evidence that his doctor told the parents that he was about to die. Flanagan was on death's doorstep."

The cause of Flanagan's death was a dramatically increased dose of dilaudid, a narcotic he took as a painkiller the day he died, Jaffe said.

"He had recurrent pneumonia. What you don't take with pneumonia is dilaudid because it causes respiratory arrest," Jaffe said. "It's perfectly understandable for him, who had days to live, to take it to ease his suffering."

The original death certificate listed Flanagan's death as a natural result of his illness, but the medical examiner amended it one year later, Jaffe said.

Coroners never performed an autopsy on Flanagan, because his remains were cremated, Jaffe said.

"Prosecutors are saying the use of hydrogen peroxide caused the death, and they have to prove it. That's scientifically impossible," Jaffe said.

Although O'Connell used untraditional methods, they were safe and in thousands of other cases, successful, according to Jaffe.

"The guy had the largest practice in Colorado after one and a half years of business. He's treated thousands of patients, and many thought he gave a miraculous cure," Jaffe said. "The so-called victims were referred by patients who were successfully treated."

'Fake' doctor?

O'Connell's case has spurred a heated debate over Colorado's current non-licensing of naturopaths. The Colorado Association of Naturopathic Physicians has lobbied for licensure to ensure patients' safety.

"We are just matching what is commonplace in North America for [traditional] medical professionals and what the other licensing states do for naturopathic physicians, which is four years of pre-med, four years in an accredited graduate naturopathic program and passing an exam," said naturopath Rena Bloom, the association's president.

"Brian O'Connell is a fake," she said.

However, the Colorado Naturopathic Medical Association, where O'Connell was an elected vice president, maintained that such criteria were unnecessary.

"In naturopathy, you have a tradition where you come out of an allopathic world. To say you need to go back into a traditional school is redundant," said naturopath Steve Colton, the organization's president.

Medical doctors have opposed licensure out of fear of naturopathic results.

"To some, many of the therapies considered to be [Complementary Alternative Medicine] represent unscientific treatments that may at best be benign and at worst harmful," read an October 2005 report from the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies.

"There's a lot of gray. It raises issues of freedom of choice and the medical establishment," Jaffe said.

The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.