Letter to the Director Volume 13. STRONG TRIUMPH OF DRA. ADRIANA SCHWARTZ AND AEPROMO IN FAVOR OF OZONE THERAPY

AEPROMO

May 2023

The OMC-CGCOM denounced Dr. Adriana Schwartz, president of AEPROMO

The Spanish OMC (Collegiate Medical Organization)-CGCOM (General Council of Official Colleges of Physicians, by their acronyms in Spanish, similar to the Federation of States Medical Boards of the USA), which by legal mandate group all medical colleges in Spain, and these all Spanish doctors, in 2007 “motu proprio” included in its list of pseudotherapies to ozone therapy. Subsequently, the ICOMEM (Illustrious Official College of Physicians of Madrid, by its acronym in Spanish, similar to a State Medical Board of the USA) expelled AEPROMO (Spanish Association of Medical Professionals in Ozone Therapy, by its acronym in Spanish) from its building, where it had its official headquarters.

Subsequently, the OMC-CGCOM, through its former treasurer and then director of the “Observatory against Pseudosciences, Pseudotherapies, Intrusions and Sanitary Sects” of the same OMC-CGCOM, Dr. Jerónimo Fernández Torrente, from his official email (jftorrente@ cgcom.es) filed a complaint (January 17, 2019), against Dr. Adriana Schwartz, president of AEPROMO, before the former president of ICOMEM Dr. Miguel Ángel Sánchez Chillón, where Dr. Schwartz was a collegiate.

Thus, a full blown persecution against ozone therapy began under the name of the head of ozone therapy in Spain, Dr. Adriana Schwartz.

The complainant wrote: “I am sending you information about what was commented yesterday in this regard, in a very special way in Dr. Adriana Schwartz” who “is the head of the AEPROMO gang”, being on behalf of “AEPRONO” [sic] “the author (…) of the letter that D. Salud [Discovery Salud magazine] used to attack us members of the Permanente and the Observatory.” The complainant added: “You will be impressed by who is that lady, who exhibits in her clinic a certification from the Community of Madrid for ozone consultation and colon hydrotherapy and non-conventional treatments.” Certification qualified by the complainant, despite being legal, as “incomprehensible.”

The same day, the president of ICOMEM sent the complaint to the College’s Ethics Commission, specifying that it had been referred “by the CGCOM Treasurer and, at the same time, responsible for the observatory on ‘pseudosciences and health sects’.

The complainant did not point to a specific accusation against Dr. Schwartz. But the president of ICOMEM, when sending it to the College’s Ethics Commission, indicated that the collegiate had “played a very active role promoting these pseudotherapies [he does not say which ones] in serious diseases.”

The complaint was processed, despite the fact that the complainant had not presented any evidence, not even the alleged article published by Discovery Salud magazine. Magazine with which the accused had no relationship, nor had she ever published anything of her own. The defendant, despite constant requests to ICOMEM, had access to the disciplinary file one year after it began.

For more than four years (January 17, 2019-February 2, 2023), Dr. Schwartz, in her capacity as a doctor and president of AEPROMO, found herself immersed in a disciplinary and then judicial investigation, exclusively because of the complaint presented by the OMC-CGCOM, through its then treasurer.

ICOMEM asked Dr. Schwartz (April 9, 2019) to inform it “of the use of ozone therapy in the treatment of oncological processes”. Dr. Schwartz, adopting a low profile, faced the attack, as a strategy of the OMC-CGCOM to destroy ozone therapy in Spain, even though it was camouflaged as a specific complaint for her medical activity. Throughout these four years, Dr. Schwartz responded in a timely manner, in scientific-medical terms and well-founded legal arguments, to each of the accusations of ICOMEM.

Sanctioning resolution adopted by the ICOMEM Governing Body (June 25, 2020)

Despite the compelling evidence presented by the defendant, the ICOMEM (Illustrious Official College of Physicians of Madrid, by its acronym in Spanish) decided: “It understands that it has been sufficiently proven” that the defendant has “advertised antitumor treatments that have not been scientifically proven”; and sanctioned her to pay a fine of 1,500€.

Decision of the ICOMEM Appeals Commission (November 16, 2020)

Dr. Schwartz filed an appeal with the Appeals Committee. This decided to “fully dismiss the Appeal Appeal” against the “agreement of the plenary session of the Governing Body ” (June 25, 2020).

Lawsuit before the contentious-administrative court filed by Dr. Adriana Schwartz

Bearing in mind that if Dr. Schwartz accepted the decision – which was the easiest thing to do and thus the medical-legal ordeal she was suffering would come to an end – and agreed to pay the fine, a very dangerous precedent would be set against the practice of ozone therapy in Spain. The tireless work of AEPROMO carried out in the almost last fifteen years, in favor of the scientific foundation of the therapy, of its regulation by the authorities; and its dissemination and application in accordance with the protocols established in the “Madrid Declaration on Ozone Therapy“, 3rd. ed., 2020 would be destroyed.

For this reason, Dr. Schwartz did not throw in the towel and filed a lawsuit before the contentious-administrative court (May 5, 2021) against the unfair, illegal and arbitrary administrative sanction of ICOMEM. The claim was admitted for processing by the Contentious-Administrative Court No. 25 of Madrid.

Comprehensive rectification of ICOMEM in favor of Dr. Adriana Schwartz

The plaintiff (Adriana Schwartz) and the defendant (ICOMEM) should present their evidence and substantiate their allegations in a single hearing that would take place on November 24, 2022. Thus, ICOMEM would be sitting on the defendants’ bench when called to testify before the judge. By then, Dr. Schwartz had already been elected by the votes of her Madrid colleagues, as her representative member at the ICOMEM General Assembly (October 13, 2021), with the right to speak and vote, and she was practicing as such.

Two days before the trial was to take place, ICOMEM called her to a meeting informing her that the new Governing Body of ICOMEM was against the sanction that had been imposed on her; and asked her to please jointly request the suspension of the legal proceedings. So, it was done.

Unanimous decision of the ICOMEM Governing Body in favor of Dr. Adriana Schwartz and ozone therapy

A couple of days later, the ICOMEM Governing Body (December 9, 2022) unanimously adopted “the revocation of the sanction agreement” against Dr. Schwartz. “After analyzing the concurrent circumstances, the documentation provided by the interested party and the content of said file, it is unanimously agreed to revoke the sanction agreement adopted on June 25, 2020, by which it was imposed” on Dr. Adriana Schwartz “a fine amounting to 1,500 euros.”

“The motivation for said agreement is that it is considered, based on the reviewed documentation, that there is sufficient scientific evidence to understand that ozone therapy can be used as a complementary treatment for therapies such as cancer, among other pathologies, that her freedom of prescription as a physician subject to professional responsibility covers said conduct, and that the collegiate never mentioned that [ozone therapy] was a curative treatment for cancer.” Decision made public on January 16, 2023.

Based on this decision, both parties submitted to the court a brief based on the decision of the ICOMEM Governing Body requesting the completion of the process. Finally, the Contentious-Administrative Court No. 25 of Madrid decided the file resolution of the lawsuit (February 2, 2020).

Triumph obtained

After four years of being “sub-judice”, harassed, persecuted, and with the inquisitive finger of the former ICOMEM Governing Body, at the request of the OMC-CGCOM accusation, Dr. Adriana Schwartz obtained a resounding victory in her favor, the members of AEPROMO, and in general of all the physicians who in Spain, day after day, practice ozone therapy within the parameters established in the 3rd. edition of the Madrid Declaration on Ozone Therapy, 2020.

The decision adopted by the Medical College of Madrid, the largest in Spain by the number of its members, is essential for the OMC-CGCOM to reconsider its position, adopted unilaterally and without prior scientific discussion, of classifying ozone therapy as pseudotherapy without solid arguments to support it.

AEPROMO thanks the current ICOMEM Governing Body for the transcendental step taken in favor of ozone therapy and for the reversal of the decision against Dr. Schwartz by the previous Governing Body; and commits to work with ICOMEM, so that the therapy favorably becomes a point of importance in ICOMEM’s work agenda.

Work continues in favor of ozone therapy

Since the foundation of AEPROMO in 2008, we have worked tirelessly in favor of ozone therapy, we have gone through and continue to go through difficult times, but perseverance, study and practice based on science and in favor of patients will allow us to overcome the different obstacles we face.

Throughout these very difficult and delicate years of the disciplinary and legal process that Dr. Schwartz had to go through to defend her absolute innocence against the falsehoods, happily avoided, she continued her work. He continued to dedicate time, energy, resources and knowledge in favor of scientific research on ozone therapy, such as the intense and exhausting work, totally ad-honorem, carried out with COVID19 patients in a Madrid hospital at the height of the epidemic (April 2020), using in a pioneering and absolutely successful way the ozonated saline solution. A tight synthesis of the results obtained can be consulted on the Aepromo website. The scientific research, duly analyzed and documented, is published. She went ahead so that ozone therapy was applied correctly; intensified the teaching and dissemination of ozone therapy through courses, webinars and the 300-hour “diploma course on ozone therapy“, totally online; and from the Ozone Therapy Global Journal.