In the second episode of The Cancer Doctor Podcast, we sit down with the Medical Director of Immunity Therapy Center, Carlos Bautista M.D. - a leader in alternative medicine whose life took a transformative turn when his father was diagnosed with lung cancer. This episode is a deep dive into Dr. Bautista's approach to alternative treatments, his collaboration with Dr. Kurt Donsbach, and the revolutionary work he's doing at Immunity Therapy Center.
[00:01:35] Dr. Carlos Bautista's Childhood and his Father's Pharmacy
[00:04:16] Attending Medical School and his Father's Lung Cancer Journey
[00:07:02] Dr. Carlos Bautista's curiosity of Alternative Treatments and commitment to Medical School
[00:09:30] Working with Dr. Kurt Donsbach
[00:11:40] Dr. Carlos Bautista deciding to start his own practice and his life today
[00:14:00] Why do people need to take medicine?
[00:15:35] Differences in Prescriptions in Mexico vs. United States?
[00:17:10] Bacterial resistance build-up to Medications
[00:18:46] Dr. Bautista on approaching his father's age when he passed away
[00:23:00] His family's response to Dr. Bautista deciding to become a Doctor and focus on cancer
[00:24:16] How did your father's diagnosis and cancer journey affect your decision to focus on cancer?
[00:27:51] Why does a full-dose of chemotherapy deteriorate a patient so quickly?
[00:30:58] How Immunity Therapy Center uses Low Doses of Chemotherapy + DMSO for an alternative approach to cancer
[00:34:05] How cancer becomes "invisible" to the Immune System
[00:35:40] What was it about Dr. Donsbach's practice that caught you attention?
[00:38:47] What was the contrast between Dr. Donsbach's practice and what you saw in conventional medicine?
[00:43:00] How does Medical School in Mexico compare to Medical School in the United States?
[00:47:16] Is cancer care in Mexico similar to cancer care in the United States?
[00:51:19] What is the goal with Immunity Therapy Center?
[00:58:58] What Robert has seen at Immunity Therapy Center and Why Dr. Bautista is at the treatment center every single day
[01:02:59] Why does Immunity Therapy Center support both In-Patient and OUt-Patient cases?
[01:05:14] What makes a patient functional vs. non-functional?
[01:06:00] How frequently do all of your Physicians meet together to discuss cases and why is communication so important?
[01:10:26] ITC wants patients to ask questions
[01:12:07] Gaston is an incredible team member at Immunity Therapy Center
Episode #2 — coming soon!
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Podcast Name: The Cancer Doctor Podcast
Episode & Title Number: Season 1 Episode 2
Date: Recorded on March 8th, 2023
Episode Transcript Link
Dr. Carlos Bautista, Immunity Therapy Center, Cancer Treatment, Alternative Medicine, Tijuana, Mexico, Medical School, Pharmacy, Antibiotic Resistance, Lung Cancer, Baja California State University, Robert A. Carrillo, Chemotherapy, Radiation, Social Service Year, Bacterial Resistance, Medical Consultation, Healthcare, Oncologist, Diagnosis
Robert A. Carrillo (00:00:10):
Hey everyone. This is a podcast I want to let you know is brought to you by Immunity Therapy Center. Immunity Therapy Center is located in the Mexico. You can find 'em at immunity therapy center.com. If anyone you know or you love or care about thinks they may be facing cancer or they have a cancer diagnosis, feel free to give them a call and contact them for a free medical doctor consultation. Dr. Bautista, thank you so much for coming here today. I can't tell you how much it means to me for you to come in here into our studio just to have a conversation about cancer, about healthcare, and about the future of cancer, what that might look like, but about the work that you're doing as well over at Immunity Therapy Center down in Tijuana, Mexico. This is a great opportunity for all the viewers that are watching this just to get a better understanding. There's so many questions, so we're really grateful that you've taken time out of your busy schedule. I know you're a busy doctor. I know you have a full schedule of flying out across the country. To come here means a lot to us.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:01:19):
Well, it's an honor, pleasure, and well, I'm looking forward to have this conversation and I hope it reaches a lot of people and we answer their questions.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:01:35):
That's great. Dr. Batista, why don't you just let all the viewers know who you are, where you went to school for medicine, the whole, your biography, your background, who is Doctor Bautista? How did you become a doctor?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:01:55):
Well, I was born in Tijuana, Mexico. I grew up there my whole life. I went to a Catholic school for the basic education. I graduated from, I was in the same school from elementary school up to high school, so it was Tuto, Mexico was the name of the school. Still my best friends are, we are still the same after so many years. Carlos Alvarez, he was with me when we were in elementary school, so I grew up in Tijuana. Then my father used to own a pharmacy in Tijuana, small pharmacy. So I grew up watching my father working there. A lot of people, he was not a doctor or anything like that, but in Mexico it's very common that the pharmacist is the first contact for anybody that it's sick. In those years, you went to the pharmacist and asked for something. So I had that experience and I liked it.
(00:03:17):
I was going to, since a young age, I went to help my dad in his drugstore pharmacy, Tika. We used to call them in Spanish and well, I cleaned shelves, put medicines in order, and that's how I became familiar with all of the names of the medications and all of that environment was very familiar to me. So then a little older when I was like 12 or 13, I started being there alone in the pharmacy. My father went to do something and then I stay, and then people come and ask me for things to me for what is good for headache or then, man, I need to know more about this. So I like it. I liked it a lot. So because of that experience growing up and working at the pharmacy and being in the environment, that's why I decided to get into medical school. So it was difficult to get into medical school, but I studied very hard for the admission exam. So I was admitted in the Baja California State University waa, which was up to these days, one of the best medical schools in Tijuana, in Mexico, sorry. And I graduated from there.
(00:04:54):
I graduated from there. And during the last year in Mexico, you have to, well, also here you have to do an internship year, and then you have to have a social service year where they send you to different communities. So you work for the government basically for a year. They pay you a little bit, but is something just very small amount. So during that year, unfortunately, my father was diagnosed with a lung cancer. He was a long time smoker. It was a complete surprise. You never expect something like that. So my father was with these small cell lung cancer and well, I went to my friends, I have my teachers and all of that. I was still in the school environment. So we went to the normal oncologist and he was recommended, well, the chemotherapy. He had chemotherapy, the conventional chemotherapy, and he was destroyed basically, right, because of this.
(00:06:17):
I understand it was what doctors thought it was the best, but it was really devastating for his health, for him to see him for himself, seeing watch for our family, and even for him looking at that, how he was becoming, breaking down, breaking down. That's the words that I was looking for was from, I was talking with Carlos this morning about it. So he was diagnosed in March, and then by August he passed away. But the process, it was devastating to see that, and that's when I decided that I wanted to see what other things were out there because at school, medical school, well, you learn about all the conventional treatments, but reading, the internet was starting. It was not even a thing back then.
(00:07:27):
But I started learning and reading, and I knew there was some other type of treatment, alternative medicine. So I started a little bit studying about it. I remember I started studying about hyperthermia, whole body hyperthermia and local hyperthermia. Those were my first therapies that I started reading about. And then, well, I started reading about all these other treatments that I had no idea. They were out there. We're talking about middle of the nineties, early nineties, and everything was, immunotherapy was not even a thing. Now there's a lot of research going on, but back then it was something that it was not even talked about. And I make a commitment with myself to try to find other options for people with this problem with cancer, trying to find out what else we can do. So at the time, I was aware that there were many alternative clinics in Tijuana, alternative medicine clinics in Tijuana, and I was on the situation of choosing to go a normal specialty coming to the US to continue my studies or dedicate my life to finding about alternative medicine. So I have those options. I did my exams to come to the US M at least to come to the us. I passed them. I did my exam for specialty in Mexico. I passed them. So I had my options, what I wanted to do. And during that process, I went to work in Tijuana with Dr. Don back then, Santo Thomas, Santa Monica Hospital need to mention this because he was an important part of my development into this. I learned a lot from Dr. D back then.
(00:09:54):
And in that process, I decided to stick with alternative medicine. I wanted to learn more, trying again, offer these other options to patients, to people trying to give them options because, well, I see time and time again the devastating effects of radiation and chemotherapy, and I don't want to tell you that I'm against those things. I understand that there's some benefits when use that properly. To this day, we use targeted form of low-dose chemo treatments where we are. But then I started, that was the reason why I decided to continue with studying more about alternative medicine. I dedicated myself to that. I work some years with Dr. D. Then I was invited to work in another hospital where they were therapies that I was not too agreeing with because back then I was already starting to form my idea. And with my experience trying to, well, not trying, I knew what therapies worked the best. That's when I started developing my own program. I was waiting for the opportunity to do it, so there was a problem in this hospital. So I decided to start my own practice, and I started my own practice very small, early two thousands, late nineties, I will say. And I started very small, but sticking with my beliefs and my experience on what was working, and thank God we started having a lot of success and more patients started coming and to the point where we were able to build our own facility.
(00:12:20):
And right now, I'm married. I have four great kids. I have my Joelle, he's a chef now, 26. I have Julian. He's studying and he's okay. I have two babies, my wife and myself, we wanted always to have girls, so we decided to go through a surrogacy program. And we had, or Emma, she's seven or Amelia, she's two. And we're very happy and looking forward to the future. So in a nutshell, that's it.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:13:04):
That's great. That's great.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:13:06):
I have two brothers, one older, one younger.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:13:10):
All right. You're the middle one. Okay.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:13:11):
Yeah, I'm the middle one.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:13:12):
Got it. When you were talking about the very early days working with your father in the pharmacy, obviously those are real impressionable years. You're just a young boy. Yeah, I
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:13:27):
Was working there from my, I was what, when I started working like eight years old in Mexico, that's usual. You help your family in whatever ways you can, and I was trying to do that and well, not all every day, but weekends and the afternoons and trying to help as much as I could as a boy. And yeah, it was at the time fun.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:13:59):
Yeah. When you were that age and you're working in a pharmacy and people are picking up medicines from your father, was there ever a time where you began to ask yourself, why are people having to take medicine? Yeah.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:14:13):
Well, yeah. It was a situation where, well, back then, when you're that young, probably not. But when you started to get older and trying to see, and yeah, definitely my experience was that I saw people buying too many medicines. And that's one of the situations that I was able to notice that if a person had an infection, they wanted to take three or four different antibiotics at the same time or whatever for problem. So I noticed the abuse, the abuse, even back then as a young boy, how people were taking too many medications. That was my first experience. And my advice back then, or whatever, after I got a little bit older was just to take enough or to control the problem. But since my young age, what I noticed is that people tend to take too many medications
Robert A. Carrillo (00:15:22):
Now when it comes to medications. And I know that. So I would like you to address back then when you were a boy versus today,
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:15:30):
Still the same.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:15:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure it is maybe worse, but do the patients in Mexico, do they need to always have a prescription to get a medication or There are certain medications that we would need in the United States, we would need a prescription, but in Mexico you don't necessarily need a prescription
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:15:51):
For, yeah, well, back then there was no, back then in the nineties, eighties, when I was working at the pharmacy, well, eighties. So no, there was no control basically over what was sold. For example, you needed a prescription for controlled substances. Not even that back then. Now it's more controlled. Now you need prescriptions for many medications, it's not as tight as it in the United States. But for example, down in Mexico now you need prescriptions for antibiotics, for pain, medications for well, and obviously controlled substances. But now it's way better than it was antibiotics. You need a very specific prescription because all these used, and I'm talking about cause a lot of resistance and bacterial resistance. Nowadays there's more controlled, but still people find a way of getting whatever they want, if they want it.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:17:10):
That's interesting. You just said something, taking certain medications, a person can develop resistance to a, and it could harm them as far as being able to fight off a bacteria. Is that
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:17:21):
Well, no, definite no. The problem is that if you have an infection and you take unnecessary antibiotic therapy, the bacterias will get resistant and the next infection with the next person, the antibiotics are not going to work. So probably the antibiotics will work for you, but it will create a bacterial resistance. So the will learn about how not to die with that specific antibiotic, and they will become resistant to the next people that will get infected.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:18:02):
Okay, interesting. So they will write their own little program, their own little code to become
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:18:07):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a problem with antibiotics. Penicillin at the beginning was very useful and it was very well, it took care of basically a lot of bacterias, but then these bacterias develop resistant to penicillium, and then that's why next generation antibiotics were created. And it's because of the resistance and it's because of the abuse and unnecessary use of antibiotics sometimes that create these bacterial resistance.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:18:45):
Got it. Your father, what is his name?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:18:49):
Herardo. Jose Herardo Reyes.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:18:53):
How old was he when he was diagnosed? How old was
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:18:56):
He when he got, he was 59 when he was diagnosed.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:19:00):
Just a little older than you are right now.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:19:01):
Well I'm, I'm going to turn 55 actually at the end of this month. And yeah, now that I get closer to my dad's age, when he passed away, you think about he was young and that he had a lot of, still, I do a lot of plans for the future and unfortunately this disease cut his life short and that he was a great man.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:19:47):
Do you remember your dad's last words to you or some of his last words?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:19:52):
Actually, I had a talk and because actually my dad, I was making night shifts with Dr. Doba back then. I was in my social service year and that's when I started to do night shifts over there. And Dr. D was kind enough of treating my father with some alternative medicine. Actually, my father died at Santa Monica Santo Thomas Hospital. And I was there actually doing night shifts with my father as a patient.
(00:20:31):
And well, it was a situation where I spoke to him and he told me what he wanted to do, his plans and well private things that it is. But I understood him, different life experiences and advice that he gave me that I follow up to this day. And probably after that conversation, probably one or two days after my dad passed away. So it was like those advice and those things that he talked to me back then to be a good person and to take care of my family and to try to be productive and other things. Yeah, I still follow that advice always.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:21:39):
That's great. And your mother and your father were married at that time?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:21:45):
Yeah, my mom and my dad, they were married I think, well they were married in 1964, I think, until my father passed away in 1998. And yeah, they were married all the time with her ups and downs, but always together. Yeah.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:22:06):
Did your mother ever remarry?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:22:08):
No,
Robert A. Carrillo (00:22:09):
She never remarried.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:22:10):
She never remarried? No. She says that my father was the love of her life and that she didn't want to go through that again. And she never took interested even though she had people, men trying to take her out and things like that. But no, she didn't. She just wanted to be with us and that's it.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:22:45):
And how old is your mother today?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:22:47):
My mom right now is 80. I haven't been very clear about my mom's age, to be honest
Robert A. Carrillo (00:22:55):
With you. We probably shouldn't repeat it.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:22:57):
She is like 81 80 to something like that. Okay.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:23:00):
Yeah. What did she think when you decided that you wanted to go into the field of cancer? I mean, did she have any? No.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:23:09):
No. Well, obviously they were happy and proud that I became a doctor, but they never questioned whatever we wanted to do. We always have that freedom. Well, when I explained a little bit what I wanted to do, obviously they wanted me to come to the US and become a doctor California. And when I explained that I wanted to follow this, well not explain more than share a little bit what I wanted to do with them, they were all agreeing and whatever made me happy. And I felt back then with this, my father experience that I needed to do it, that I really needed to do it, and I was well committed to do these for the rest of my life.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:24:17):
Your father has played obviously the most significant role it sounds like to me. In your decision to pursue this career and the passion, the mission that you have, when you think back to your father, was it the fact that he got a cancer diagnosis or was it how much he actually suffered through the types of treatments that he had that altered your
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:24:46):
The second, okay, I can answer that. Yeah. The cancer, we saw this very bad disease, but unfortunately the treatments, it was devastating. The side effects and how he suffered from the treatments with not much benefit and that's what I had a problem with the treatments. So that's why I wanted to try to see what other options. The cancer itself, obviously it's a very bad disease and particularly in this situation, likely smoking had a lot to do with it because, well, my dad started smoking well once told me that he was 13 or something like that, and back then there was no education and there was no, I was watching and saw that even at hospitals, they were able to smoke patients and nurses came by with cigarettes,
Robert A. Carrillo (00:25:57):
Smoke, yeah, really on your nerves.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:26:00):
They're all really in the sixties or something like that. Even earlier than that. So, sorry, I lost track. What was the question?
Robert A. Carrillo (00:26:10):
It was just, was it the side effects really drove your decision?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:26:15):
It was the side effects definitely of the treatments. He started with chemotherapy and then they add radiation and that combination was like a bomb because when he did that, he became nothing very thin and it didn't help much because actually the tumor continued being the same size and the cancer spread to the brain. And so that's what I had most of the questions, what was the treatment, why they were doing that, right? If it was not working and it was very obvious that it was not working and they wanted to keep doing it. And it get to the point where I told my dad what he wanted to do, but he wanted to leave and to do as much as he can. So the advice he got from the doctor is to continue. So he continue and that's what my main problem with that experience. Yeah, definitely. That was, I dunno if that's the right word to say, but people or something that make me go in this direction. That's why the main event that caused for me to go in this direction. Definitely.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:27:52):
Your father was diagnosed in March and five months later in August, he passed on
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:27:58):
Early September.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:27:59):
Okay, early
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:28:00):
September seven.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:28:00):
Okay. So maybe just maybe six months or somewhere between five and six months. It's really fast. And you may not have known at the time what was happening to his physical body, but now, today, presently, what is it about a patient receiving a full dose of chemotherapy or full doses of radiation? What is happening in the human body to make it disintegrator disappear so rapidly? It's
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:28:28):
A toxic effects. The thing is that the radiation and chemotherapy, like everything, those is very important. Those is very important. With everything a little bit might help, a lot probably will kill you, and that applies to basically everything. So yeah, those has a lot to do with how you react. The toxic effect of high doses, obviously trying to get to a tumor to get destroyed with chemotherapy, there's
(00:29:23):
A line where you need to get a concentration of that medication in the blood to be able to make the effect. Unfortunately, those substances are very toxic. That's how they kill the tumor by poisoning basically the cancer cells. So that's the main problem and that's the reason why. And unfortunately, cancers will develop a resistant quickly. They will become resistant. They will try to defend something. It's hitting you like yourself, you want to defend, right? So that's what cancers do. So the principle of using chemotherapy is good because it's going to destroy the cancer cells. Unfortunately, what comes along in putting these toxic substances in the body, that's what causes a problem. Obviously radiation, well, it's radiation, so it's going to destroy by the same process, the cancer cell, but at the same time, it's going to affect many other tissues, is going to keep damaging.
(00:30:55):
Unfortunately, that's why we trying to get the good benefits from the chemotherapy. That's what we try to do ourselves in our hospital. That's why we use metronomic doses or low doses of chemotherapies, but we try to target the cancer. The main thing that we do at our hospital, I T C, is use immunotherapy. And don't get me wrong, the main treatment is trying to stimulate through different ways is to use the immune system to be able to recognize and destroy cancer cells. But sometimes the cancer is so active that you need to put a stop to it. Obviously using high doses of chemotherapy is not recommended, but we use these metronomic doses and we use the M Ss. O D P T is called the therapy where the M S O will bring this medication to the cancer site is a good transporter. The M S O will have even a very specific anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory effects.
(00:32:12):
There's other way that we have that is called I P T. This is a little bit more complicated because it's based on the fact that cancer feeds on sugar. So the cancer cells will have these glucose receptors with insulin, you drop your glucose levels in the body that will make those glucose receptors open, and then you give glucose in combination with low doses of chemotherapy. So that's how it goes, and it goes into basically the cancer cell. We eat the sugar along with the cancer medications, with the chemotherapies. That's how we are able to use low doses of it very effectively, avoiding the bad side effects. So we do that. But what we work a lot and been trying to develop for many years is ways to stimulate the immune system to fight the cancer, because that's how the anti-cancer effect will remain. Your immune system will develop memory to recognize cancer cells, the antigen.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:33:36):
Interesting. So I'm going to repeat that. What you said was so very important. So at times you may use something like a low dose chemotherapy to put a cancer cell in check to stop it or halt it spread, but you want to train the immune system of a patient to recognize that cancer cell, so it can build a system of attack to destroy it itself and have a memory as well.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:34:06):
Yeah. Well, one of the main problems with cancer is that it becomes invisible to the immune system. There's even videos where you see the tumor here growing and you see all the white cells, killer cells or the different types of immune cells passing by and attacking the cancer. So yeah, that's why it's able to grow and spread the cancer because the immune system doesn't recognize basically the cancer cells. That's how the cancer is able to grow. What we do at I T C is through different methods, 20 to teach and make sure that the immune system is able to recognize, and not only that, but have the tools to go and fight it and destroy it.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:35:04):
So cancer cells are intelligent enough to camouflage themselves to hide.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:35:10):
Basically. That's what they do and that's how they grow. That's the main way of being able to pass undetected and to grow, because basically the only objective of a cancer is to grow and destroy. So that's how they do it.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:35:28):
Wow. Wow. Got it. You said, so that's so valuable. When you began to study under your mentor, Dr. Don Zba, right?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:35:47):
Well, yeah.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:35:48):
You started studying a little bit under him. Yeah. What was it about what you were seeing in his practice in the alternative, I'll call it the alternative way of practicing medicine with I'm assuming some cancer patients.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:36:03):
Yeah. He treat cancer. Yeah.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:36:04):
What was it that you were noticing that caught your attention? You were like, I think there's something here. What
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:36:11):
Was better results? He was curing people.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:36:15):
Curing people. Big word.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:36:17):
Big word. But he was doing it back then and he was harassed and everybody was against him, but I really see how patients loved him and how he was getting good results, and that's why I knew there was something there, a lot of value, and that's what basically I saw that he was getting good results with patients. Robert, that's what I was able to see and got my attention and trying to learn and know why. That's when I started getting into the books and traveling and trying to get informed about it. He was kind enough of, he shared a lot of his methods. He wrote a lot of books and a lot of, he had a radio show back then, but yeah, definitely I learned a lot from him as well as other doctors. But working with him was my first contact and my first experience in a structured alternative medicine program. And I saw the good results and that's it.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:37:54):
So at that time, when you're working alongside of him, I mean you're now a credential medical doctor. At that time I
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:38:02):
Was already graduated. Yeah. Certified. Yeah.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:38:06):
Now, obviously there's this a stigma or this negative idea that follows somebody, a doctor like Dr. Sba, for example, who is doing alternative care and the public may be led to believe that this is not a reputable person, this is not a person of high character, but you were an eyewitness as a medical doctor working there in his hospital or treatment center. You were there as an eyewitness seeing what was happening with patients. Yeah, yeah,
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:38:44):
Yeah. I was seeing it. Yeah, definitely.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:38:49):
In your mind, as you go back, and we're going back years now, but is there a particular patient or an individual from back then that really stunned you? The response that they had was, wow.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:39:03):
Well, thank God there were many, I cannot remember one in particular, but it was in general in all type of cancers, not only a particular one. So he was getting good responses, some of them not complete remissions, but improving. I can tell you that one way or the other, everybody got benefits, and that's what I'm trying to follow up with. And thank God here in our hospitals, we get even better results. But yeah, definitely everybody was getting better, and that was the difference. When I was in a normal oncology service, everybody died. Basically, you get into the room and the patient was gone, right? So it was a constant thing. And then I come to this very well, it was a nice place and everything, but you see that they are surviving and they're some of them thriving, and it was a very different experience from my conventional hospital experience with cancer patient than in this other place.
(00:40:25):
So that's when I started question many things and probably going a little bit against conventional, and definitely you're under the eye of everybody, the medical community, when you try to innovate or to do something different, you get into a lot of problems, obviously more here in the US and in Mexico. But what is important is for me patients and getting them better, and we take all the precautions and all the effort and everything to make them make sure that they get better. Obviously, there are cases that come to us in a very advanced situations that is very difficult, and we're very clear about our limits. And the main policy that we have is that we don't promise anything at the hospital. We cannot make any promise, but we do everything we can. Everybody.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:41:34):
That's great. With your mentor, Dr. Dba, right? Yes,
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:41:42):
Correct.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:41:43):
He's no longer in practice, I'm assuming he's not.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:41:45):
No, he's no longer in practice. I haven't seen him for many years. I lost contact with him many years, but in my formative years back then, right after I graduated, I learned a lot from him. I must say it absolutely.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:42:03):
Okay. So your father was your driving force. That's where the passion came from.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:42:11):
It was the one that I saw that I was basically graduating from school. I went through the oncology course that I needed to pass. So when you need to pass, you pass and you do it, but you don't get attached emotionally to whatever is going on in that particular area. But yeah, my father was the one that made me put the attention on the devastating effect of the treatment. Okay.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:42:41):
Yeah. So he's your driving force as far as the passion, and then obviously your mentor. He's the one that's opening your eyes to a different way of
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:42:49):
Doing this. A whole new world of
Robert A. Carrillo (00:42:52):
Medicine.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:42:52):
Medicine, yeah.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:42:54):
Okay. Okay. Two very influential people. Wow. Some people that are watching this right now are listening to this in the United States, maybe thinking to themself, well, medical school in Mexico is inferior to a medical school in the United States. This is something that people have vocalized before. I've heard this, it's just not as good. Speak to that for a minute. The kind of training you receive as a medical student in Mexico, and is there any difference between medical school in Mexico versus the US or what does that look like? I mean, you obviously pass some tests to even come to the United States if you wanted to.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:43:45):
There's a grading system for medical schools in Mexico, and when I started, when I was trying to get admitted into Wawe campus, Tijuana, it was probably, I think between the first and the second in Mexico, the whole country. I haven't been in the university in the us, so I don't know, to be honest with you, what's the situation. But what I can tell you is that my faculty, it was very hard. You have to study every day a lot. For many years, the test and exams were very hard. I took a lot of my effort and thank God I live at my house with my parents. So I was able to study as much as I wanted to and not worry about anything else. It was really hard getting through medical school, a lot of effort, physical and intellectual, you have to dedicate yourself.
(00:45:05):
I passed, like you said, the US M and I didn't think it was the big thing. So I guess that qualifies and that put me at the level of the universities here in the US when I did those exams. And yeah, definitely there is that impression that universities down in Mexico are inferior, but I don't think so, to be honest with you. I have my personal belief that is the person, not the university or where you go that will make you or not make you. So I think depends. You can be very in a Caribbean school that they consider inferior and you can be an excellent doctor. So it's up to you how you study. And anybody that graduates from medical school, from any school, anywhere in the world, they will have my respect because I know what it takes to some level. All type of medical school will not be easy, I'm sure. So particularly with the us, no, I think Mexico has great universities. I feel there that I was very well educated in the public university that I went to, still is one of the best in Mexico, and I'm very proud to be a Cimarron. That's or
Robert A. Carrillo (00:46:49):
Your mascot? Our
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:46:50):
Mascot, yeah. And what can I tell you? The best school that I was, I'm blessed going to.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:47:07):
That's great. That's great. We were talking earlier about your father. I wanted to ask you, it sounds like cancer care in Mexico back then, and maybe it's still the same today, is identical to the conventional cancer treatments in the United States. Is that correct? Same. It's the same.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:47:30):
Well, basically you need to know that it was a President Nixon, I think, that declared war on cancer, and that's when all the chemotherapies and everything started being developed. But unfortunately, oncology stays still with the same treatments for 40 or 50 years after that. There was no big changes. There was changes in diversifications, changes in some treatments or new medication development, but basically it was the same for a very long time up until now where there's a lot of new research on immunotherapy, now everybody's turning the head to immunotherapy. But I need to tell you that probably once Dr. Dos, but that was the first time I heard about using the immune system to attack cancer. It was with Dr. D back then and I started. Nowadays it's something that they are even, there's a lot of medication, extremely expensive, conventional immunotherapies, but basically the treatments stay the same for a very long time, and there was no change for years and years.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:48:59):
Yeah, because you talk about Nixon's war on cancer, and someone listening to this is saying, yeah, we're losing the war because I think in the United States, it's about 5,000 people every day that are diagnosed with cancer.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:49:14):
Yes, definitely. Nowadays, my experiences being, and now it's attacking even younger people. Before when I started dealing with cancer, with alternative treatments, for example, you saw, for example, breast cancer patients, probably they were in the late forties, fifties at the most. Now you're seeing patients with breast cancer in their thirties, very aggressive type of cancers. So things that you were not seeing before you're seeing now has a lot to do, I guess with environmental diet, things that we're in contact with that people are getting contact with at a younger age. So definitely it's becoming, it's a very serious public health issue. Absolutely.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:50:07):
Yeah. No, agreed. I mean, in the United States, it's a second leading killer, over 600,000 people diarrhea from cancer. So it is a big problem that needs to be addressed, and we need to find the ways to best address it so that people don't at least have to suffer. Your father suffered or anyone else that's suffering today, right, under the regular treatments, right,
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:50:32):
Right now, yeah, definitely. And yeah, definitely one of my main goals is to get the word out there. Not for hospital, we're doing our own effort, but to know that there might be other options to help them probably if they want to continue with what they're doing, but there might be other things that he can do that they can do to make it better. I'm talking about supplementation, I'm talking about treatments, I'm talking about different things like that,
Robert A. Carrillo (00:51:09):
Incorporating other things, other tools.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:51:12):
Exactly.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:51:14):
That's great. Along with it. That is great. Thank you for that. Dr. Bautista, tell us about Immunity Therapy Center, as you call it, I T C. Tell us about the organization, the people that work there, how many doctors are there, what your staff looks like, what the goal is at Immunity Therapy Center with every patient that walks through the doors. Just tell us about that.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (00:51:40):
Well, yeah, thank you. So we started, I think it was like 2005. Yeah, so we started very small. I decided to do my own thing after working with different hospitals back then, and I started opening a small office. A doctor friend of mine gave me the opportunity to rent out his building, and then I started with one or two couches and some devices that I was able to buy with some money that I save. And we started, and again, with good results, we were getting more patients and I needed to change to another office a little bigger. We were full then. We were having patients line up on the outside of the office, so it was kind of embarrassing. And then we moved to the hospital that you knew in that it was an old building. We had a lot of issues. All the while.
(00:53:00):
My goal was to build a facility where we have everything we needed, because before we needed to adapt to where we were renting, we needed to adjust and make our own adjustments to the spaces. And I wanted to have the physical space, a facility to have everything that the patients need to be comfortable. So that's why my goal, since the beginning and since the beginning, I started saving money for that objective. Since the very beginning. It was already in my mind that I wanted to do something like this, a facility like the ones we have right now. So it was a process. It was a lot of effort. And then we were able to build it, the building that were now on and with all the facilities and all the spaces and the hospital part that we have our own surgery room that now we have to do two because one is not enough. So we are going to have to remodel that area because we're incorporating other services. There's a plastic surgeon that started working with us, and there's a bariatric surgeon that's going to start with us. So we are trying to offer other services as well.
(00:54:35):
And the organization grew like that. So people, which I consider more than the brick and mortar facility, I think. What makes I T C, the people, the people, the staff, my team, some of them are people that I work with before that I know their value. Some of them are new people, doctors are young. David, Dr. Alvarez Tota as you know him. He started with me very young, is kind of all of them. Dr. Orozco, Dr. Rivera, Dr. Carillo, Dr. Alvarez, as you know, they're my treating physicians and they're excellent doctors, very qualified, very human, very caring, and we make a good team. We have very good communication. I supervise everything on the other areas. We've been adding different services like physical therapy, dentist, so we want to make a more complete all around service and the administration needed to grow as well. Mariana her, she's the head of the operation and the part of the operation of the hospital.
(00:56:11):
Alex Rio, he's our chief financial officer. He manages all the monies, and I know him from other hospital that we work with together. I know of his value, how good he is on doing what he does. We have our marketing team, which is very, very important for us, which is headed by Carlos Alvarez, which is he's here with us. I've been friends with Carlos for many, many years. He just sent me a picture that way. We were in elementary school, so we've been friends for a very long time. He's a very important part of our organization, of our group, and probably has the highest responsibility, which is bringing people into the hospital. And more than anything, the human quality that our staff has, I pick them up very carefully. All the nurses, which are extremely important because that is the face that we have with a patient. So we are on top of that every day. It's everyday work, communicating with them, making sure, and also making sure, communicating with the patients myself to make sure that they're good. Hearing from them that they're good gives me peace of mind. That's why I see them. I see the patients one or two times a week. All of them, myself and their doctors see them every day. So it's been a gradual work, I know is that way to say it, but it's been gradual.
(00:57:59):
There's new people coming, but it's always picked up with very, very carefully. We pay them well, but we want them to have more than anything, to have good human qualities because caring for these kind of patients is not easy sometimes because of their stress and their pain and their previous experiences. They're not easy to get along with sometimes, but we never take anything personal. We understand. So the staff needs to understand that and have a good face and a smile all the time. That's very, very important for us. And usually most of the time, 99.9% of the time, patients end up loving the hospital and the care they receive.
Robert A. Carrillo (00:58:59):
One of the things that has struck me when I've been to Immunity Therapy center in person, and you're even conveying it now, is that it's highly organized. It's a very organized, actually, there is a, as you mentioned, Carlos Alvarez and the representatives that speak with patients on the telephone, they manage all those phone calls or emails that come in, and it's really the first contact per patient. But once a patient's there, the team is really executing, it seems on a timely basis every day. And I know any business, it takes real work. There's real effort that has to be executed every day in order for things to go well. And the patient, which is really your customer, they may have had a bad experience someplace else or they're suffering. And so it's really difficult. A lot of your staff, it's obvious. I mean, some dating back to school. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. So your team, you're there every day. How big is your, remind me, how big is your staff? Just approximately about how many people are working there at the Ommunity Therapy Center these days?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:00:27):
I really don't dunno the exact number, give or take between 80 people, something like that.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:00:33):
So obviously, and you have a team of treating physicians, why do you need to be there every day?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:00:40):
First of all, because I like it, because I love to be there and I consider that my life mission, and that's the first thing. Second, I'm trying to guide the organization for the day that I'm not there to continue. That's my main goal, to be able for I T C, to continue doing what we do, and I'm trying to head in that direction and we're getting there. Okay. I T C, I'm there still because I consider that, first of all, I like it and I know that the people that work with me are very capable. It's not because I need to supervise them or anything like that. It just, because honestly, I want to make sure that the patients have the best treatment. I want to ensure that they are well treated, that they're getting their benefit, that they're getting better. And it's just a personal thing that I want to be there in contact. I know that they will come the day where I will not be able to hopefully many years from now, but I want I T C to continue because I convinced and I can see it, that we're doing good work. I want that to continue.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:02:12):
That's fantastic. So it's about more than just Dr. Bautista, it's about the institution itself. It's
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:02:19):
About an institution, and I want to do that. That is my goal. It's not an easy goal. It's difficult to make that transition sometimes, but I hope I'm able to do it. I think we have the right people, the right organization. You're mentioning that I'm not needed if it comes to that really, because doctors are very capable and everything works in automatic, and I think the system we have works well, but I just want to be there, be part of it. Feels good.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:03:00):
That's great. You have there at Immunity Therapy Center, it's a hospital and you take inpatients that stay at the hospital and you have outpatients out. Tell us a little bit about that. Why do you have both? Why are both necessary?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:03:16):
Yeah. Well, like I mentioned to you, I work in other places where I saw the needs and sometimes unfortunately with cancer situation changes even from one hour to the next. Sometimes patients can be well, and the next one they need oxygen or they need more care or they need supervision or they have pain or suddenly a pain attack or something like that. And these other places that I work with, they were not ready for that. They treated cancer, but they were not completely fully able to deal with those situations. So that's why we have our inpatient program that is for patients that need more care in stage four, sometimes you are functional, sometimes you're not functional. But still, we want to be able to give them, or at least give them the chance or the opportunity to receive these other treatment, these other options. So that's why we have our inpatient program where patients stay with us and they have our full nurse care and all the treatments in the room, and we have hospital care, pain management, nutrition, whatever it's needed in a full certified hospital that we are along with all the alternative treatments against cancer.
(01:04:48):
And we have these other outpatients where patients that are functional able to come and go, move around. And obviously the outpatient program, it's less expensive, but that's basically the reason because I want to have a facility where all cancer patients can be treated regardless of their stage and their condition.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:05:17):
That's wonderful. You mentioned the word functional versus non-functional. Someone listening to this is going to ask themself if they're a cancer patient, well, what makes me non-functional? So what does that look like?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:05:29):
Well, functional, non-functional is when you're in bed, you're not have the strength to get up to walk, to move around in an outpatient program. You need to get out of the car, get into a vehicle, walk to where you're staying, being able to take care of yourself. Some patients, unfortunately, they're not able to do that, and that's what it non-functional means.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:05:59):
Got it. Okay, great. That makes sense. The physicians that you have, you mentioned Dr. Alvarez, you have Dr. Orozco, Dr. Carrio, Dr. Rivera, right.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:06:17):
All these, and we have other doctors, sorry to interrupt you, that make shift night shifts and there's many doctors, but those, they are the treating physician
Robert A. Carrillo (01:06:26):
During the day and all
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:06:27):
And afternoon
Robert A. Carrillo (01:06:28):
Afternoons. Now, how frequently do those doctors meet with you about every patient that they're seeing
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:06:38):
Every day? Robert, we meet every day from nine to 9 45. That's our meeting time and we have our meeting area. We go there every day and we talk about everybody when their treatments are scheduled and briefly talking and describing their conditions and what might be a good direction with their treatments. So we meet all of us every day at nine o'clock in the morning.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:07:09):
So that tight or close communication with your doctors is extremely important to you.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:07:16):
It's very important. One of the main problems that I see here in the US with treatment is communication. There's a very severe lack of communication between professionals, not only here, everywhere. And that's for the, unfortunately very bad for patients. That's why sometimes they're overmedicated and different doctors prescribe different medications they're not aware of. So yeah, so definitely I consider communication between us and not only between doctors, but us with the nutritional department, which we're in very close contact with everybody, every aspect of the treatment. It's important from their food, their medical treatment. We have the emotional therapy, which is counseling, trying to address the emotional part of cancer, which definitely is an issue. There's already research and studies done about their relation between emotional stress and developing cancer. So we try to address all those areas and as being communicate, communication between us is really important to try to adjust or go in a slight different direction if needed.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:08:39):
Okay. Yeah, that's fantastic. You just mentioned when you have these meetings, if you need to make an adjustment with a patient, that's when a decision is made. During those daily meetings,
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:08:49):
We have a whole team of specialists as well. There is, or cardiologists, internists even. We have oncology doctors working with us. We have all type of urology, all type of specialists that we consult with as well when it's needed. And yes, we make those adjustments when we meet. And if a patient, because there's a situation where we're not seeing the results that we want, we try to adjust or change or whatever we need to do to make sure that we give that particular patient the best chance.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:09:33):
That's great. Yeah. I know I had surveyed some people recently about healthcare and about what they were least happiest about, and it was communication that came up. They just felt that whether it was just calling for an appointment, communication was poor,
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:09:55):
Getting their blood results, things
Robert A. Carrillo (01:09:57):
Like that, meeting with a doctor, communication wasn't great. It's too fast, et cetera. It just, communication just seems to be the cause of some avoidable problems.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:10:08):
Oh, yeah. Breakdown in communication causes a lot of problems and mistakes, and that's why I consider communication between all aspects, not only the medical part is very important for a good outcome.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:10:26):
When you're meeting or when your team is meeting with a patient, or when you meet with a patient, are you trying to create an environment with them? So they ask questions? Do you want them to ask you questions?
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:10:38):
We want them to ask questions. The system or what we try to do is explain everything so they don't have questions. I want to put myself in their position, and that's why we have different levels when they come in, the doctor that makes the intake, explains the treatment. And then actually all the patients that come in, they meet with me personally and just make sure that everything is well explained that I understand each therapy and the reason why we're doing it. And that's one of the other reasons that I meet with everybody in the hospital at least one or two times a week, is because of that reason that I want them to understand. If they have questions, obviously we're very happy and glad to answer them, but I try to be a step ahead trying to answer their possible questions. So part of our customer service commitment is that we're going to do our best to do that.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:11:47):
That's fantastic. And I've seen that play out when I've gone there and inspected and observed what is taking place between the doctors and the patients, that there is a two-way communication that's open.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:12:02):
It's very, very important that the patients feel that they can come to us Anytime.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:12:08):
You even have on staff, one of your, I'll call him your customer service manager. Oh, Gustone.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:12:15):
Yes. He's a personal friend from a long time as
Robert A. Carrillo (01:12:18):
Well. Yeah, and he's a great human being. He is. Patients will go to him and ask him about anything, I guess,
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:12:28):
From going to the store where to buy certain things. He's like a buffer between the medical part. So there's some patients that have some issues with a particular nurse or whatever. He's the one in charge of mediate whatever. We're human. So in human contact there will be some discrepancy sometimes. So we try to make sure that all parts are addressed. And Gaston does a very good job doing that. He has the right personality for
Robert A. Carrillo (01:13:04):
It. Yes, he does. Yeah, he really does because he knows Tijuana really well. And so if they want to go sightseeing, he's able to tell 'em, Hey, here's where you go. It can go. Or there's some good restaurants that you can pick out. Or even if they just need laundry done or something, he has the answers. And if they have a complaint, as you mentioned about a nurse or a staff member, they can file a complaint and he gets it addressed.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:13:29):
Absolutely.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:13:30):
That's wonderful.
Carlos Bautista M.D. (01:13:31):
Absolutely. Good friend as well.
Robert A. Carrillo (01:13:33):
Yeah, he's a great guy. Good choice for the position.