Tennessee cracked down on a questionable therapy. Georgia gave its doctors a home.

For years, the DOJ found, Drs. Charles Adams and Robert Burkich received millions of dollars in government funds by treating hundreds of elderly patients with chelation for arterial disease, high blood pressure, headaches, gastrointestinal ailments, fatigue and other conditions — and billing Medicare as if the patients had been diagnosed with heavy metal poisoning.

Burkich settled with the government last year, agreeing to pay $700,000. While the settlement did not include a determination of liability, the DOJ said in its announcement that it would continue to pursue cases against those who commit acts of waste, fraud and abuse against the Medicare program.

All told, court records show, Adams and Burkich filed just more than 12,600 false Medicare claims for treating patients with chelation in the nine years between 2008 and 2017 and received reimbursements from the government totaling $4.6 million. At the time, no providers in the U.S. had submitted more bills to Medicare for chelation.

“We must assure patients and taxpayers that the care provided by federally funded healthcare programs is dictated by clinical needs, not fiscal greed,” Paul Brown, then-special agent in charge of FBI Atlanta, said when announcing Burkich’s settlement.

Beyond the billing issue, the lawsuits offered a revealing subtext, tracing the two doctors’ paths as each moved his practice from the Chattanooga, Tennessee, area to Ringgold, just over the state line in Georgia, to avoid a 2005 ruling by the Tennessee medical board restricting physicians to using chelation only in the FDA-approved manner.

Credit: U.S. Department of Justice

Credit: U.S. Department of Justice

Over and over, each testified that what brought them to Georgia was the belief that, as long as patients agree to a treatment, medical regulators should stay out of it.

Asked why he had moved his practice to Georgia, Burkich replied: “Because Georgia is a better state for giving patients the kind of care that they want. In other words, if a patient signs a consent form and they want chelation therapy or they want a specific type of therapy, we can give that to them without a medical board that says, ‘No, we don’t approve of that therapy.’”

Differing opinions

Except for their focus on chelation and their decisions to relocate to Georgia, Adams and Burkich have little in common. They are, in essence, competitors with very different personalities. However, at one point, they used the same billing agent, and both testified that the agent, located in Florida and recommended by doctors doing chelation there, assured them that the Medicare reimbursements were proper.

Although neither is accepting Medicare now, they still use chelation outside the FDA guidelines, justifying it on the basis of so-called “provoked” urine tests. The tests measure the metals excreted after an initial infusion of a chelating drug. If a test shows a level of “toxicity,” chelation is an appropriate treatment, both say.

That, however, is not the opinion of medical toxicologists, who assert that such tests result in misleading diagnoses. Even healthy people excrete metals after receiving chelating drugs, according to guidelines published jointly by the American College of Medical Toxicology and the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology.

The guidelines also point out that chelating drugs can cause serious side effects “even when used for appropriately diagnosed metal intoxication.” The side effects, according to the guidelines, include a significant loss of calcium, kidney injury, elevated liver enzymes and deficiencies in essential minerals.

In fact, the most widely used chelating drug, EDTA, comes with a “black box” warning from the FDA stating that the drug is capable of producing toxic effects that can be fatal.

Credit: U.S. Food and Drug Administratio

Credit: U.S. Food and Drug Administratio

According to most experts, the determining factor for whether chelation should be administered is a blood test showing a lead level far beyond normal. For adults, that blood lead level is so rare that the Georgia Department of Public Health had reports of only 18 such cases in 2024.

Chelation without evidence of lead or other forms of heavy metal poisoning is “a treatment in search of a disease,” said Dr. Michael Kosnett, a medical toxicologist at the University of Colorado School of Public Health and a past president of the American College of Medical Toxicology.

“There’s no evidence that it’s effective,” he said. “And the very fact that you remove metal from the body by chelation doesn’t mean you’ve undone the harm and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to improve the outcome in the future, with the exception of very severe poisonings.”

In using chelation as a general cure-all, Adams and Burkich are following a playbook widely accepted by practitioners of alternative medicine and, in interviews with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, both made it clear they remain firmly in that camp.

According to Adams, even seemingly healthy people can benefit from chelation because they may have been harmed by aluminum from vaccines or exposure to lead when it was in gasoline.

“Getting those metals out makes the body work better,” he said. “It can fight better.”

Adams said he has undergone the procedure himself between 160 and 200 times, each time removing various metals that he contends affected his health.

Burkich offered a similar explanation. He said he believes the provoked urine tests are the “gold standard” and that repeated chelation treatments have allowed him to improve the health of his patients. In his own case, he said he has been chelated more than 300 times and benefited from it.

“People don’t come and sit for three to four hours with a needle in their arm because it’s fun,” he said. “That’s not why they do it. They do it because it gets them results.”

A devastating trial

For Adams, taking his case to trial put him in a particularly precarious position, as his practice was dissected in open court.

Testifying for the government, Dr. Travis Olives, a medical toxicologist from Minnesota, said he examined the medical records of 67 patients who visited Adams’ office and received chelation. None required the treatment, he testified.

The government also presented evidence that Adams had chelated at least five patients over 100 times each. One was a 68-year-old who was chelated 168 times over three years, resulting in Medicare payments to the doctor totaling $35,385.

When Adams was asked during a deposition why he’d chelated an 83-year-old female patient 36 times in 10 months, he replied: “Her call, she feels badly.”

Asked about a 63-year-old patient who’d been chelated 67 times after complaining of arm and neck pain, breathing problems, constipation and changes in mood, he noted that the patient was born in 1950 and therefore had driven a car when lead was in gasoline.

Although Burkich’s case didn’t go to trial, court records show he chelated a 69-year-old patient 286 times, a 74-year-old 207 times and a 79-year-old 188 times.

Credit: U.S. Department of Justice

Credit: U.S. Department of Justice

In depositions, Burkich testified that the things people routinely experience in daily life can make them candidates for chelation, even simply coming in contact with hair dye or makeup.

“I think if you’ve been around other people, then there’s a good chance you’ve been exposed to heavy metals,” he testified.

Asked about the guidelines for treating lead poisoning, Burkich testified: “This is left kind of loose. My feeling … is (it’s) a matter of looking at the patient, seeing, you know, as a physician you’ve been doing this a long time. You kind of get the … gestalt feel for it.”

Moving on

Even though in Georgia it’s a violation of medical board rules for physicians to fraudulently bill for services, neither Adams nor Burkich has been disciplined as a result of the government’s lawsuits.

Today, Adams’ practice, Personal Integrative Medicine, is operating largely as it always has. In a large room with seven recliners and two rocking chairs, his patients receive chelation and other IV therapies, including the so-called “Myers’ Cocktail,” a mix of vitamins and minerals that, like chelation, isn’t approved by the FDA as a treatment for disease.

Still, he contends that his practice has suffered from the perception that he was criminally charged when, in fact, he was sued in civil court. The feds treated him as if were “a Mafioso,” he claims.

“All of a sudden, people are thinking, `He’s been scamming, skimming. He’s a criminal,’ even though there were no criminal charges,” he said. “That doesn’t help things.”

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

The judgment against him was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in January. Meanwhile, the DOJ has initiated proceedings to garnish his bank and investment accounts.

Burkich has moved to Los Angeles and opened a practice in Beverly Hills. His Ringgold practice — Preventive Medicine, Anti-Aging and Chelation Therapy — remains open, and his daughter and son-in-law, both physicians, practice there, he said.

He said he agreed to a settlement, finalized in March 2025, not because of what happened when Adams went to trial, but because his case had reached a point where he didn’t see a better option.

“They more or less tried the case on social media, in the papers,” he said. “‘Doctor accused of Medicare fraud.’ How do you get a fair trial? … Sometimes the best thing to do is get the best outcome you can. It’s not so important to be right. It’s important to get the best outcome.”

Burkich, too, believes the government’s case cast him in an unfair light, making him look like someone harming patients when in his view just the opposite is true.

“I’ve been very disappointed with the legal system,” he said. “I’ve been very disappointed with the healthcare system. I mean, what happened to people doing for other people what they would want done for themselves? Why is that so complicated?”