Havana/Chamber V of the Argentine Criminal and Correctional Chamber, made up of judges Rodolfo Pociello Argerich and Hernán López, ordered an expansion of the investigation into the method for the supposed cure of cancer promoted by the youtuber Cuban Ernesto Prieto Gratacós and that would have caused the death of two patients diagnosed with pancreatic and colon cancer.
The judges ask to specify whether the procedure to which the women were subjected at the Metabolic Therapy Center, owned by Prieto Gratacós, “has scientific endorsement,” and to indicate who it involves and their degree of participation. “The Court also considers it necessary to hear statements from other witnesses (patients and/or family members) so that they can express themselves about what the professionals or those in charge of the center assured them in relation to the therapies,” public Infobae.
In mid-2020, the victims’ relatives filed a complaint for the crime of fraud against Prieto Gratacós and the doctors María Victoria Rodríguez Amador – also Cuban – and Roberto Pablo Álvarez. Last February, those involved were prosecuted without preventive detention and Judge Martín Yadarola ordered a seizure of $20,000 for each one.
According to the investigations, Prieto Gratacós promised that “he could cure any type of cancer,” in addition to eliminating tumors and extending the life expectancy of affected patients by up to 84 months. The women spent $350,000 for protocols that did not prevent their early death.
In mid-2020, the victims’ relatives filed a complaint for the crime of fraud against Prieto Gratacós and the doctors María Victoria Rodríguez Amador – also Cuban – and Roberto Pablo Álvarez.
The man sold himself as a influencer Cuban health on their social networks. On his Instagram account he has more than 340,000 followers and on his YouTube channel he has more than 68,000 subscribers. Its reach led it to be promoted on television, where it was seen by the family of Rosa Azucena Kairus, one of the victims, who had abandoned her chemotherapy sessions because her body could no longer support it.
Prieto Gratacós was introduced to Kairus’ family as a scientist. The person in charge of the clinic, Dr. Rodríguez Amador, offered them a protocol for the patient. The scheme included 35 applications of a system they called CISA (Competitive Inhibition with Structural Analogues), 30 of the “metabolic induction” protocol and a “antineoplastic” nutrition program KETO-MR (Keto-Metabolic Rehabilitation).
The family stressed that the doctor promised them results “13 to 19 times greater than conventional therapy” proven in cancer patients considered terminal or untreatable. However, two weeks after the procedure began, “my mother could no longer walk. She had enormous edema in her legs, water was coming out of her skin and she barely spoke. She couldn’t open her eyes and it was even difficult for her to breathe,” the victim’s son, Patricio, told The Uncovering.
The symptoms, according to the doctors at the clinic, were the expected effects of the treatment. “We have to move forward, the treatment is working,” Kairuz’s relative told the same media. A week later, on January 15, 2020, his mother passed away.
“This is a criminal organization where most of the accused were not even doctors,” denounced lawyer Pablo Rovatti. “They promised desperate people, like the Taboada family, that their sick relative would recover 100% using a revolutionary technique to combat cancer. They told them that they would be injected with a drug that would fight the affected cells and prevent them from reproducing. But, in reality, it was a scam,” he added.
In his defense, Prieto Gratacós claimed to be, simply, a writer, a “self-taught” person who never exhibited degrees he does not have. He had settled in Argentina in 1997. The man insisted that his therapy was “merely complementary.”
Regarding the Center, he highlighted that it had organized four Pan-American conferences on metabolic therapy, with the attendance of numerous specialists, including the then director of the National Cancer Institute of Argentina, and that there was even evidence of the interest of the Argentine Ministry of Health in said activities.
