A single drop of blood: No research or FDA approval behind doctor's testing methods

BURLINGTON, Vt. – Medical doctors couldn’t help a teenager with thyroid disease who had trouble getting out of bed. They had no remedy for a child with a common infection causing persistent skin lesions.

But by using a test on a single drop of blood, a test without research or FDA approval behind it, some naturopathic physicians say they’ve succeeded where modern medicine failed.

These are stories from a video series by Travis Elliott, a naturopath in Vermont, about the Bioresonance Analysis of Health, a method that claims to measure the electromagnetic frequencies of a single drop of blood and use it to pinpoint underlying dysfunction in the body.

“DID YOU KNOW A SINGLE DROP OF BLOOD CAN UNLOCK YOUR INDIVIDUAL PATHWAY TO HEALTH?” Elliott’s website asks.

The test has no evidence-based or peer-reviewed research behind it. It is not covered by insurance, and neither the method nor the device used to analyze the blood are FDA approved.

Practitioners throughout the country who are performing the test say it’s a revolutionary way to find solutions for conditions that are difficult to treat, and the efficacy of the test can’t be proved because it works outside of the traditional medical paradigm. Leading doctors and researchers in the field say the claims behind the test are too good to be true.

The test was invented by Thomas Szulc, a doctor in Huntington, New York, who runs a medical practice called the New York Center for Innovative Medicine. Szulc has trained and certified people across the world in the method, yet the test is not often used, even by naturopathic doctors like Elliott.

A spokesperson for the American Naturopathic Certification Board said the organization was familiar with the test, “however, it is not a modality that one of our traditional naturopaths would use."

Szulc co-owns a business, Innovative Medicine, with his son Casper that sells nutritional supplements and other products promising to “awaken your healing potential,” according to its website. Szulc’s methods, including the blood test, were featured in Goop, actress Gwenyth Paltrow’s lifestyle website.

Thomas and Casper Szulc did not return multiple calls and emails requesting comment for this story.

Elliott recommends patients undergo the test at least two to three times before deciding whether it’s right for them. A typical course of treatment, he said, would involve seven to eight tests, each of which costs $100, excluding the cost of office visits.

'Worse than Theranos'

The bioresonance test analyzes levels in the body of things normally considered unquantifiable: Rather than measuring cholesterol or thyroid levels, practitioners claim they can identify underlying dysfunction by looking at the frequencies in the blood of Energy Anatomy and Emotions or Metabolic Toxicity.

Outside of the process of obtaining the initial drop of blood, it’s unclear exactly how the test is performed, and those who use it say patients and practitioners must be willing to accept some level of subjectivity and be comfortable with the unknown.

Elliott, who has a practice near Burlington, said that the way the test works is something even those in the field don’t fully understand. “Similar to other scientific advances, it’s possible to use a tool even if we don’t 100% understand how it works,” Elliott said.

Leading scientists in the field say such claims are unproven and untested, and the technology needed to use a single drop of blood to identify dysfunction in the entire body does not yet exist.

“In theory? Maybe. In practice? Almost impossible,” said Tim Hamill, who was the director of clinical laboratories at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center for 20 years.

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Hamill is no stranger to bold claims about single drops of blood. He was one of the scientists featured in John Carreyrou’s investigative series for the Wall Street Journal that exposed Theranos, a company that claimed to have developed a device that could perform all standard laboratory testing on a single drop of blood.

Carreyrou found that Theranos took billions from investors before developing a device that could actually achieve those results, and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, now faces up to 20 years of jail on multiple counts of fraud.

For Hamill, assessing the validity of the test boils down to one measure: If it works, then prove it.

Hamill said he couldn’t find anything in the literature about blood testing and bioresonance.

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Though Szulc’s website says the test “has been repeatedly shown to achieve extraordinary results,” none of the practitioners interviewed for this story who are using the test could point to a study or peer-reviewed research showing its methodology or efficacy.

“Those are just the huge red flags for me. If there’s nothing in the literature on blood bioresonance then my guess is it’s a hoax at this point until proven otherwise,” Hamill said.

George Church, a Harvard scientist who also was quoted in Carreyrou’s expose of Theranos, said the test had nothing substantive to back it up. “This seems even worse than Theranos,” Church said, “since there are few connections to any existing medicine.”

Finding 'causes,' not diagnoses

Elliott and other practitioners using the test are, usually, careful not to make claims that the test can diagnose an illness.

Because the method has not been studied by the FDA, Szulc and his students are not legally allowed to claim the test can diagnose, treat, or cure a disease.

Those disclosures are interspersed sporadically throughout Elliott’s patient brochures, and often muddled by claims that the test can offer answers to those who have struggled to find them.

On one tab of his website, Elliott describes the test as “an advanced diagnostic and evaluation method.” But in other places, he draws a distinction between bioresonance analysis and diagnosis.

“We may talk about an infection like Lyme disease or a condition like heavy metal toxicity, but the BAH findings would not be used to diagnose you with either of these conditions," the patient orientation handout on his website states.

Melinda Beck, a former naturopathic practitioner says she was one of Szulc’s first students, is less discerning – or less careful – about describing the test as diagnostic.

“In my last couple of years of practice, that really was the only diagnostic means I used to devise a very individualized treatment plan,” Beck said.

So does it work?

If the 28 five-star reviews on Google and glowing testimonials on his site are any indication, patients see a great deal of success with the bioresonance test, though Elliott acknowledges that the test isn't for everyone.

"No test is going to work for everybody and in all situations," Elliott said.

He does acknowledge there's a monetary risk, but particularly for those who are suffering without answers, he said it's worth a shot.

For Hamill, the doctor who worked on the Theranos story, it all boils down to the money.

"If they’ve got something that really does what they say this does," Hamill said, "then they should be getting venture capital, and this is a multibillion-dollar company." The science and the technology, he said, simply isn't there.

"And that's what we saw with Theranos," Hamill said. "They had an interesting idea, but in actual application, their box never worked. Now this may be a whole different technology I know nothing about, and this will come out and be the best thing since the invention of fire," he said.

"But until proven, I’m going to remain extremely skeptical that people aren’t just throwing away their money."

Follow Isaac Fornarola on Twitter: @isaacforn

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont naturopathic doctor offers blood test that has no FDA approval