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gone bypass surgery or suffered from heart disease. The book Death by Deception: Unmasking Heart Failure was completed by his children as a tribute to Quinn's life and as an information resource for all.
As his daughter explained, Quinn made two fatal mistakes. First, he led a hectic, stressful, sedentary life fueled by fast food (he cheerfully called himself a nutritionist's nightmare) and took none of the nutritional supplements that help heal and protect the heart. His second mistake, caused in part by his fear of physicians and unwillingness to use drugs with serious side effects, was to stop taking the digitalis which was prescribed when his congestive heart failure was diagnosed.
Unfortunately, he did not seek a second opinion or look for a doctor who would work with him. "Dad's fatal error," wrote Shannon Quinn, "was not his decision to get off the drug but how he handled it." An experienced herbalist or naturopathic physician could have safely weaned him off digitalis by substituting other herbs, as is commonly done in Europe, where botanical medicines are widely prescribed by orthodox physicians.
In fact, although they were not able to repair the damage caused by his sudden discontinuation of digitalis, German botanical medicines repeatedly saved Quinn's life, and he lived another 10 months before his aortic aneurysm ruptured.
Dick Quinn's story is important because it demonstrates so clearly the importance of heart disease prevention and its alternative therapies, including the well researched use of effective botanical medicines unfamiliar to American physicians but widely used in Germany and other countries. His books are rec-

 
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