Some call it a witch hunt; others, total quackery. Caught in between are the people who want alternative health care. A News 3 investigation into a behind-the-scenes battle... over good -- or bad -- medicine.

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I-Team: Fair Treatment, Part I Part II

It's the difficult job of some state regulators to watchdog health professionals to protect the public, said I-Team reporter Linda Eggert in Part I of her special report.

But some Wisconsin alternative care doctors and nurses allege they are being unfairly targeted. It's all a question Of: "Fair treatment?"

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The science may be far from clear, but the numbers are not.

Millions of people are spending billions of dollars to go beyond the boundaries of conventional medicine.

More folks are putting their faith and money into a wide variety of natural, complementary, and alternative treatments -- treatments for things like allergies. Watertown nurse Barb Lemke (pictured, left) says she works with energy imbalances.

"It has made a difference in how I feel," said Kay Degner, who has a sugar allergy and says treatment helps. "I don't get the depression, I don't have the extreme fatigue that I would have."

Madison's Robert Clark says his daily chest pain is gone and so are his nitroglycerine pills, thanks to chelation therapy.

"It's helped me, and I'm grateful for the possibility to explore the improvement that I hope it affords," Clark said.

But his access to future treatments is up in the air because his doctor's being investigated.

A News 3 investigation has found an expensive, and potentially precedent-setting behind-the-scenes battle between two attorneys at the state Department of Regulation and Licensing.

"It is quackery," said Arthur Thexton, DORL prosecutor. "That is all it is."

Some health care professionals' licenses hang in the balance.

"Financial loss, fear, worry, my staff never knows if I'll still be in business -- this is very serious," said Dr. Robert Waters (pictured, right), who runs a Wisconsin Dells Clinic. He's had no patient complaints, ever. Still he says he's spent $20,000 on lawyers, and another $8,000 for high-risk malpractice insurance.

Why? Because the state's had an open investigation against him for six years.

"In 1997, the complaints were made, and I sent in documentation," Waters said. "I heard nothing until 2002."

In 1997, a doctor and an insurance company separately complained about Waters for using a therapy for a controversial purpose. Chelation therapy has long been legal to rid the body of lead or heavy metal poisoning.

But Waters uses it mainly to treat heart disease.

One state attorney, Arthur Thexton, has said such therapy has no scientific basis.

But Waters and Lemke, who says she spent $25,000 trying to keep her license, believe other motives are at work.

"It's clearly a witch hunt," Waters said.

"I think there are a couple attorneys within the Department of Regulation that are very biased, and it almost seems as if they have a vendetta against alternative medicine," Lemke said.

"I have nothing against alternative and complementary medicine -- which can be shown to be rooted in science," Thexton said in a 2002 hearing.

But alternative care groups here and in California believe Thexton and attorney James Polewski are trying to limit unconventional medicine in general.

They question their ties to a couple of groups vilified by the alternative care community nationwide -- Quackwatch.com, and a related agency, the National Council Against Health Fraud, which dispute the science behind all kinds of alternative health care.

Acupuncture, they say, "cures nothing, and may be harmful...."

Chiropractic care "constitutes a major consumer health problem."

In one chelation case, Thexton's expert witness is someone he calls "extremely qualified."

Dr. Robert Baratz is also the president of the national council.

As for Polewski, News 3 finds he testified he was once a member.

"I think it's pretty inappropriate that a prosecutor for the state should become a member of a political group that has as their very mission the exposure and destruction of complementary and alternative medicine," Waters said.

The National Council Against Health Fraud's Mission statement says it focuses attention on health fraud, misinformation and quackery as public health problems.

The two state attorneys didn't return phones calls from News 3, but cannot comment on open cases.

When referred to Department Secretary Donsia Strong Hill, she told News 3 she knows of no cases without merit.

Still she tells News 3 her staff is making numerous changes in the division of enforcement to prevent future accusations of abuse:

"What I inherited were a group of prosecutors who basically had functioned in the past with very little supervision over them or direction or even the establishment of priorities," Strong Hill (pictured, left) said. "We certainly have changed that.

When News 3 asked Strong Hill, "You're supervising them more closely?" She responded, "They are definitely being supervised more closely."

But those new polices could come too late for a popular Green Bay doctor.

Part II