I'm producer Dan Galucci, and this is The Dream.

We're on vacation this week, but we are bringing you a rerun from Season 2,

our Season on Wellness.

It features calls from listeners like you.

In 1981, a stranger showed up in Spokane, Washington to open a natural health clinic.

He was 32, married from Idaho.

Not a lot is known about his early years, but it is known that he graduated from high school.

That's it. He had no medical training. Apparently, a year before opening the clinic, in 1980,

he signed up to take a course led by a naturopath, but dropped out after only a few classes,

stiffing the course leader with an $1,800 unpaid tuition bill.

Despite this lack of education, he opened Golden Six Health World, a facility that offered

a variety of naturopathic services, and some that he himself developed, like taking

blood samples from patients to interpret them,

his words, in an effort to detect cancer cells. He also offered water births at the clinic.

At that time, the state had been kind of lax in making sure folks practicing medicine were licensed,

but something happened at Golden Six Health World on September 4, 1982,

that would inspire the Washington State Department of Licensing and local police to stage a weeks-long

undercover sting operation of the facility, and it would land the owner in jail.

On that September day, almost 40 years ago, Donna Young came in for a water birth at the clinic,

as she and her husband both opposed hospital births.

The father was later quoted as saying,

There are more damn hazards in the hospital than out of the hospital, and there are enough damn statistics to prove it.

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