OTC BB: PSVC! READ THIS!!
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 |
