Dr. Craig Alan Bittner

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  www.iem-inc.com/newitmr.html - [Cached Version]
  Last Visited: 3/24/2004  

  "We were first and foremost trying to change medicine for the better," said Craig Bittner, a radiologist from California who founded AmeriScan.

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  www.ameriscan.org/advisoryboard_bittner.asp - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/16/2003    Last Visited: 4/16/2003  

  AmeriScan was founded by Dr. Craig Bittner, a Board Certified Cardiovascular Radiologist.Dr. Bittner trained in the world premier medical institutions of Johns Hopkins, UCLA and Stanford. Dr. Bittner is a wellness-oriented physician dedicated to both the advancement of medicine and to the application of the latest technologies to help preserve health.Dr. Bittner left Stanford in 1999 to champion the change from re-active disease treatment to pro-active healthcare focused on early disease detection and prevention.
  
  Dr. Craig Bittner, AmeriScan
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  Craig Alan Bittner, M.D.
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  Dr. Craig BittnerDr. Craig Bittner is the Founder and Medical Director of AmeriScan, and is a champion of empowering the public to become an active participant in their own healthcare.Dr. Bittner is a world-recognized leader in the application of advanced imaging tehnologies for the early detection and prevention of disease.Dr. Bittner has been featured in the national media including NewsWeek, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, the Wall Street Journal and U.S. News and World Report amongst others.
  
  Dr. Bittner is a board-certified Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiologist and has trained at the nation's leading medical institutions.Dr. Bittner performed his medical school training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.He performed a Diagnostic Radiology Residency at the UCLA Medical Center and a fellowship in Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology at the Stanford University Medical Center.
  
  Dr. Bittner has received numerous awards throughout his career including the prestigious Research Resident Award from the Radiological Society of North America, the Johns Hopkins Otolaryngology Student Training Fellowship Grant and the Harrison Book Prize from the University of Miami.Dr. Bittner is the author of numerous peer-reviewed medical articles and is an internationally recognized medical expert and sought after lecturer and speaker on the proactive healthcare movement and advanced medical technologies.
  
  Dr. Bittner serves as the Medical Director for AmeriScan and has also served as a Clinical Advisor for FeRx, a biotechnology company that develops new technologies for the treatment of disease.He previously served as a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University Medical Center.Dr. Bittner is a member of the Radiological Society of North America and has been a member of the Society of Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology, the American Heart Association's Cardiovascular Council, the American Roentgen Ray Society, and has served as the Johns Hopkins delegate for the American Medical Association.

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  www.marinij.com/special/cancer/cancer8.html - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/31/2002    Last Visited: 12/31/2002  

  "If we let medicine evolve on its normal schedule, 50,000 women a year will die while academicians debate the value of advanced technology," said radiologist Dr. Craig Bittner, founder and medical director of AmeriScan."Why are we keeping the cannons in the basement and instead going out there to fight breast cancer with pistols?"
  
  Bittner said when MRIs are used with correct technique and their results interpreted by radiologists who understand what to look for, they are 100 percent accurate in finding cancer.
  
  MRIs work by picking up patterns of angiogenesis - or blood vessel creation - in tissue.Cancer tissue has an abnormal angiogenesis pattern that radiologists must be taught to spot, said Bittner, noting that he trained at Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University and the University of California at Los Angeles.
  
  Sohlich, however, is not convinced.
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  AmeriScan normally charges $2,260 for the breast MRI scan; during October, the fee dropped to $1,695 in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Bittner said.
  
  "Our false negative rate is almost zero," Bittner said, meaning that the MRI will not say a woman is cancer-free if she has cancer."Our false positive rate is 20 percent, meaning that four out of five times we say a woman has cancer, it's cancer.
  
  "With mammograms, they miss two out of three cancers," he added."Mammograms are incredibly non-specific."

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  www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=biodie - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/24/2008    Last Visited: 12/30/2008  

  Craig Alan Bittner, 40, medical director of the now-defunct Beverly Hills Liposculpture and a board-certified radiologist, didn't stick around to make his case for the use of flabby fuel. Rather, he fled to South America to avoid prosecution for several alleged crimes (in addition to the unsubstantiated claim of using human fat to make biodiesel), including allegedly allowing his assistant and his girlfriend to perform surgeries without a medical license, Forbes.com reports.
  
  The California State Medical Board last month searched Bittner's Rodeo Drive office and his home, confiscating medical records, computers and other documents regarding his "liposculpting" practice, the Beverly Hills Courier reported earlier this month.
  
  In a letter to patients posted on his Web site, Bittner says he left his plastic surgery practice to return to South America "to volunteer with a small clinic that is very similar to where my medical career began decades ago, where I can help those most in need."
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  It's possible that Bittner didn't realize he was breaking the law, given that he posted regular updates on his fat feat on his blog, lipodiesel.com, which is no longer functioning. He portrayed his liposuction business as a success, claiming to have treated nearly 7,000 patients. There are also customer testimonials on Bittner's site, where he posted photos in which he's pictured with patients holding up bags purportedly containing the globs of fat suctioned from various parts of their bodies.
  
  Bittner's legal troubles (he was also sued in 2003 for "false and deceptive advertising" of a test marketed as an alternative to mammography for the detection of breast cancer) aside, his quest for a feasible form of renewable fuel is shared by scientists worldwide.

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  10/16/03 More CT screening centers close doors - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/16/2003    Last Visited: 10/17/2003  

  In the May issue of Business 2.0, CEO Dr. Craig Bittner predicted there would be 500 AmeriScans.More recently, the company added virtual prostate cancer scans and offered franchise opportunities to providers interested in screening services.
  
  Within the last few weeks, however, word spread about the sudden closing of facilities, including those in Chicago and Philadelphia.The company's Web site offers no word on the closures but lists only the two viable locations: Glendale, AZ, and San Jose, CA. Bittner could not be reached for comment.
  
  A call to either of the locations was answered by the same man in Glendale who said no one was there: no doctors, no technologists, and no customers.He said the other facilities began to close several months ago.The director of marketing was gone as well.

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  10/27/03 California sues AmeriScan over breast MR... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/27/2003    Last Visited: 11/29/2003  

  The San Francisco district attorney's office and the California Medical Board had each been separately investigating AmeriScan CEO Dr. Craig Bittner for several months.
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  Bittner could not be reached for comment.
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  The complaint also cited as false and misleading and not supported by the literature the many claims made by Bittner about the ineffectiveness of mammography:
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  "By filing this suit, we found the most aggressive and efficient way to attempt to compel Dr. Bittner and AmeriScan to stop their false and misleading advertising."

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  10/27/03 California sues AmeriScan over breast MR... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/27/2003    Last Visited: 12/15/2005  

  The San Francisco district attorney's office and the California Medical Board had each been separately investigating AmeriScan CEO Dr. Craig Bittner for several months.
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  "We did not file suit without first attempting informally to get Dr. Bittner to change his advertising," Cravett said.
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  Bittner could not be reached for comment.
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  The complaint also cited as false and misleading and not supported by the literature the many claims made by Bittner about the ineffectiveness of mammography:
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  "By filing this suit, we found the most aggressive and efficient way to attempt to compel Dr. Bittner and AmeriScan to stop their false and misleading advertising."
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  "To the extent that Bittner is going to be reinventing himself as a franchise business, we want to make sure there is a permanent injunction in place to prevent this type of advertising from being a part of that business model," she said.

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  10/29/02 Customer-oriented breast MRI screening stirs... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/29/2002    Last Visited: 10/29/2002  

  Several hundred women have bought the screening exams, priced at $1700 to $2200, since the for-profit company began advertising the service in July, according to medical director Dr. Craig Bittner.The ads in Phoenix and San Francisco Bay Area newspapers claim that traditional mammography misses more breast cancer than it finds, jeopardizing the lives of thousands of women, and leads to over 500,000 unnecessary and costly breast biopsies each year.
  
  AmeriScan promotes its MRI BreastScreen as the "absolute best breast cancer screening available in the world."Bittner confirmed the claims in an interview with Diagnostic Imaging last week.
  
  "Simply put, it is the best screening test," he said."MR mammography has nearly 100% sensitivity and about 80% specificity for breast cancer.The MR literature shows that it is a fantastic tool.In comparison, x-ray mammography misses two of three cancers."
  
  Bittner recruited MR mammography researcher Dr. Werner A. Kaiser, chair of the Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany, to develop AmeriScan's program.
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  Bittner traveled to Germany for training and to read cases under Kaiser's direction.Kaiser, who serves on AmeriScan's advisory board, also spent several weeks in the U.S. this year to train technologists who perform the exam and an unnamed California-based radiologist who assists Bittner with interpretation.
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  In general, radiologists should not perform screening MR mammography because of its high protocol and operator dependence, according to Bittner.
  
  "There is no other group right now that should or could offer MRI as a screening technology," he said.
  
  Several breast imaging experts say no clinical evidence supports the use of MRI as a breast cancer screening tool in low-risk asymptomatic women.
  
  "It's really unproven.The vast majority of published work on MRI has been done in a diagnostic setting.
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  Bittner is convinced his MR screening program breaks through an institutional logjam that has barred access to what he believes is a diagnostically superior technology.
  
  "When are we going to say that technological advancement is a good thing?We should be championing this, not trying to retard it," he said.

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  10/29/02 Customer-oriented breast MRI screening stirs... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/29/2002    Last Visited: 6/27/2003  

  Several hundred women have bought the screening exams, priced at $1700 to $2200, since the for-profit company began advertising the service in July, according to medical director Dr. Craig Bittner.The ads in Phoenix and San Francisco Bay Area newspapers claim that traditional mammography misses more breast cancer than it finds, jeopardizing the lives of thousands of women, and leads to over 500,000 unnecessary and costly breast biopsies each year.
  
  AmeriScan promotes its MRI BreastScreen as the "absolute best breast cancer screening available in the world."Bittner confirmed the claims in an interview with Diagnostic Imaging last week.
  
  "Simply put, it is the best screening test," he said."MR mammography has nearly 100% sensitivity and about 80% specificity for breast cancer.The MR literature shows that it is a fantastic tool.In comparison, x-ray mammography misses two of three cancers."
  
  Bittner recruited MR mammography researcher Dr. Werner A. Kaiser, chair of the Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany, to develop AmeriScan's program.
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  Bittner traveled to Germany for training and to read cases under Kaiser's direction.Kaiser, who serves on AmeriScan's advisory board, also spent several weeks in the U.S. this year to train technologists who perform the exam and an unnamed California-based radiologist who assists Bittner with interpretation.
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  In general, radiologists should not perform screening MR mammography because of its high protocol and operator dependence, according to Bittner.
  
  "There is no other group right now that should or could offer MRI as a screening technology," he said.
  ...
  Bittner is convinced his MR screening program breaks through an institutional logjam that has barred access to what he believes is a diagnostically superior technology.
  
  "When are we going to say that technological advancement is a good thing?We should be championing this, not trying to retard it," he said.

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  11/04/03 AmeriScan shuts down remaining screening... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 11/4/2003    Last Visited: 12/4/2004  

  CEO Dr. Craig Bittner announced the closures in a letter on the business's Web site:
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  "Just because Dr. Bittner is no longer in business does not remedy past acts," Cravett said.
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  The lawsuit seeks restitution to victims who paid for breast MR, as well as penalties against Bittner of up to $2500 for each deceptive advertisement or unlawful business practice up to the time of the closures, Cravett said.
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  In addition, the suit seeks a permanent injunction against Bittner from using the same claims in the future.
  
  "The permanent injunction will follow him in any endeavor he would pursue," she said.
  
  Bittner did not immediately return phone calls or e-mail requests for a comment.
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  Bittner echoes this sentiment on his Web site, where he writes, "My only fault is to be the voice for medical science."

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