Did anyone happen to see this????? COULD BE HUGE FOR PSVC!!!!!!
NEWS ARTICLE!!!! ALI TRIES TREATMENT
This ran in the PALM BEACH POST on Saturday August 1, 1998
Ali vows to recapture grace, beat disease
By Douglas Belkin and Mary Warejcka
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The Muhammad Ali who danced around a generation of heavyweight fighters
and set the standard against which all boxers are judged leans deeply
into the armrests of his chair and rises.
He walks gingerly to a door frame, lingers, leans for a moment into the
wall with his right shoulder, and bidding his audience of three to pay
attention to the soles of his black high-top sneakers, he levitates.
In the moment, the years fall away, as does the Parkinson's disease that
has stolen his grace. In the moment, Ali is again, the magician. And the
magician has risen.
He has come to suburban Boca Raton on a pilgrimage, he says, to return
to the days when he floated above the ring and punished his opponents
with a beauty so startling everyone looked.
"I'm going to make a comeback," Ali says, his gravelly voice barely
above a whisper. "That's my dream."
He arrived Tuesday from Canada to begin treatments with Jerry Jacobson,
a retired dentist and oral surgeon who lives in Jupiter.
Inside an office at West Boca Medical Center, Jacobson is surrounded by
acolytes. They are the parents of children with cerebral palsy and brain
damage, and they believe in his magic. They sing his praises. They
believe that the Jacobson resonator will deliver their children.
Ali, too, has come to be saved. Modern medicine, the establishment's
best and brightest, have failed him.
"I've been to 15 different doctors," Ali says softly, his expression
flat. "None of them have been able to do anything."
So The Greatest has sat, for five sessions now, on a cushion in a $15
lawn chair between two black, 8-foot high circles. He has sat and prayed
that the self-described genius with the white hair and white suit is
telling the truth, and has figured out a way to rejigger the particles
of his body and deliver him.
"They have no cure," he says, again his voice barely audible. "Maybe
next year. In 10 years. Next month."
His mind has never stopped working, his acuity has not been diminished.
He closes his eyes in mid-conversation as if he is asleep, and reopens
them a moment later, wide-eyed, in mock surprise at the faces looking at
him.
"I am the most recognized man on Earth," he says. "Of all the movies
stars, of all the athletes . . . " He turns to a teenage girl sitting
nearby.
"If you saw me on the street, would you recognize me?" he asks. The
girls answer yes. "Everybody knows who I am," he says. A smile crosses
his face.
It is the face of the most recognized man on Earth, and it is waiting to
be saved.
The legendary boxer is just one of many celebrities Jacobson says he's
treated with his signature Jacobson resonance machine, which emits a
weak magnetic field.
Jacobson is using the electromagnetic machine to treat everything from a
bad knee to neurological disorders like Ali's.
He is working on proving the machine will help patients overcome
osteoarthritis in the knee so the Food & Drug Administration will give
him approval to mass produce the gadgets.
The machines are built at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
NASA got involved with the help of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent
Lott, R-Miss., after Jacobson promised to mass produce the machines in
Mississippi if he receives FDA approval.
Researchers must treat at least 135 patients in the study for the FDA.
About 70 are patients at two centers at West Boca Medical Center -- the
Pioneer Services Medical Center and the National Medical and Research
Institute.
The hospital says it has no affiliation with the research. The companies
say they rent space from the hospital.
Jacobson in 1996 became the president of Pioneer Services International,
a firm that received $1 million in venture capital from LBI Group Inc.
in exchange for stock. The company's stock has traded this year at as
low as 3 cents on Jan. 9 and as high as $1.50 on March 5. It closed
Friday at 59 cents.
About 120 people are being treated for illnesses that are not part of
the FDA study. Most of the patients are seen in suburban Boca Raton; the
rest are being treated at clinics in Miami-Dade County and Gulfport,
Miss., Jacobson said.
The treatment is free to those in the FDA study. It costs others about
$100 a treatment.
And more research is being done at Cornell University and University of
Oklahoma.
In 1995, Jacobson promised 11-year-old Angelie Diya that he could cure
her AIDS with his machine, though he's since backed away from that
claim. The young girl had won over many hearts when she told classmates
at Jupiter Farms Elementary School that she had the disease.
Still, Diya has been to the clinic for pain-relief treatments, said
Frank Chaviano, chief operating officer of Pioneer.
In the case of Parkinson's, Jacobson theorizes that his machine's
magnetic waves will awaken Ali's homeotic genes. He says those are the
genes responsible for making all your body parts what they are. Making a
liver, a liver; an eye, an eye; a brain, a brain. They shut down after
their initial work in young children.
Once the homeotic genes are stimulated, Jacobson hopes they will
regenerate cells in Ali's brain and produce dopamine, which helps us
move. The lack of dopamine results in Parkinson's.
Although homeotic genes are described in some medical literature and
universities' Web sites, they aren't listed in the widely used Taber's
medical dictionary or a term familiar to Dr. Robert Brodner, a West Palm
Beach neurosurgeon.
And Brodner, who has done brain surgery on about 60 people with
Parkinson's, said that regeneration within the brain is "minimal to
nonexistent."
"So personally, I don't know what this fellow is talking about. I only
hope that he does," said Brodner, who's interested in seeing the
results. "Any treatment that doesn't have the potential to harm a
patient can be considered."
Without a miracle cure, the prognosis for people with Parkinson's
varies. Some can last years without any noticeable effects.
Others are almost immediately bedridden and incoherent. Patients can be
susceptible to other problems like choking, pneumonia and falls -- which
can result in death.
One strike against Ali, 56, and a four-time heavyweight champ, is the
relatively young age when the Parkinson's set in. He was in his early
40s.
Ali is not the only sports star to get Jacobson's treatment.
Professional Bowlers Association Hall of Famer Dave Davis of Boynton
Beach said pain from a broken right kneecap disappeared after a partial
knee replacement last fall and treatment at Pioneer.
Pro Golfer Doug Tewell thought he was headed for surgery on his right
elbow. But after several treatments in the past month, he is holding off
on the operation.
"I had trouble picking up glass with my right arm without severe pain,"
he said. "I went from severe pain and possible surgery to winning
$115,000 in two weeks."
Originally published in The Palm Beach Post on Saturday, Aug. 1, 1998.
Copyright c 1998, The Palm Beach Post. All rights reserved
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