“A Danger To The Public”: Judge Shuts Down Former Amish Man’s Health Facility

An Iowa health facility run by a former Amish man has been shut down by court order. A judge has ruled that those operating it are a danger to the public.

We’ve looked at this case already on two occasions – once when the story of charges against clinic operator Eddie R. Gingerich broke back in May, and later when further details emerged on his claims to have treated over 70 cancer patients.

We find further details in the newest reporting, notably comments from Gingerich on how he treated patients – including use of a “quantum feedback scanner,” more stories of negative patient outcomes, and two additional men being named in the civil suit.

Clark Kauffman has the latest in another thorough report for the Iowa Capital Dispatch:

District Court Judge Crystal S. Cronk issued a temporary injunction last week barring the owners and affiliates of Centerville’s Old Cabin Retreat from continuing to engage in the unlicensed practice of medicine, dentistry and dietetics, ruling that they “are a danger to the public.”

The order was issued in response to a new lawsuit initiated by three of Iowa’s health-related licensing boards.

The Old Cabin Retreat has been in business since 2020, according to state records, and is alleged to have promoted treatments for cancer and other ailments despite the fact that none of the staff are licensed medical professionals.

The shut-down injunction is temporary, but the boards have asked the court to bar the men permanently. Gingerich has pleaded not guilty to all criminal charges. A jury trial is set for September 15.

The civil suit was filed July 27 by the Iowa Board of Medicine, the Iowa Dental Board, and the Iowa Board of Dietetics. It names two additional defendants, Jake Gingerich and Dan Helmuth, both alleged to have run supplement businesses out of the same building.

An Amish Man’s Complaint Started The Investigation

As we learned in previous reports, the story here goes back to 2021, when Gingerich was first investigated. Amish patients appear in the accounts repeatedly.

At one point, according to a source I corresponded with, Gingerich reportedly “had more clientele than he could handle,” though he apparently lost much of that business when he left the Amish.

Court records show that in the spring of 2021, less than a year after the Old Cabin Retreat opened for business, Appanoose County Deputy Jonathan Printy filed a search warrant application with the court as part of an investigation he was conducting into the facility.

Printy told the court his investigation began when an Amish man complained that he had taken his wife to the facility to be treated for some unspecified type of illness, but his wife was later discharged in worse condition than ever, barely able to speak or walk.

On Nov. 5, 2021, Printy went to the Old Cabin Retreat where, he reported, a large banner hung outside saying, “Members Only. Private Organization.”

Printy asked Gingerich about a device the business advertised as a “quantum feedback scanner.” Gingerich allegedly showed him into a room, where:

“a young Amish man was laying on a hospital-type bed and had some wires or tubes coming from his body and going into a laptop computer or a machine that was hooked up to a laptop computer … I asked, ‘What does that do?’

Gingerich then stated, ‘It goes through and gets the (microorganisms) of, you know, what’s in people – and that’s kind of what we use to go by what herbs they need. If, you know, they got any health issues, it’ll pop up, you know, kind of (indicate) what’s going on, and that’s kind of how we go at it.’”

A month later Printy was called back to the retreat, where a 53-year-old Wisconsin man named Dan Miller had died. Miller had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2018 and entered the facility as an inpatient in August 2021. The state medical examiner ruled he died of untreated prostate cancer.

Another piece of the story is eyebrow-raising: “Eddie Gingerich allegedly informed the sheriff’s office he anticipated future deaths at the facility, indicating the retreat was a place for patients to come and die.”

To be charitable, that may reflect a dual track of his operation – attempting to treat what were believed to be treatable cases, but also managing terminal cases. But whether they should all have been considered terminal, or if some became that way due to health care choices – and whether Gingerich was qualified to do any of this – is questionable to say the least.

Prior reported claims had it that Gingerich diagnosed patients with various ailments. Worth noting against that is this passage from November 2021:

In his warrant application, Printy told the court Gingerich explained that no diagnoses are made at Old Cabin Retreat, telling the deputy, “Usually most people that come in, they got diagnosed from a doctor somewhere. They come in here, then we know what’s going on mostly. That’s our main thing. They come from a doctor and they don’t want to take medication … They want to go on herbs.”

But two years later he was telling an undercover operative she had cancer in her pancreas, liver, and large intestine (more on that below).

An Amish Boy Taken Off His Insulin

In July 2023 an 11-year-old Amish child traveled from Indiana with his parents for inpatient treatment of Type 1 diabetes. His care plan described treatment intended to “re-train his pancreas to make insulin.”

The boards allege that on the advice of Eddie Gingerich, the child gradually stopped taking insulin, with his last dose administered at Old Cabin Retreat on Aug. 17, 2023 …

On Aug. 22, 2023, three weeks after his admission at the retreat, the child was taken to a nearby hospital emergency room due to complications from uncontrolled diabetes … life-flighted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at a Des Moines hospital where he was admitted with diabetic ketoacidosis.

The sheriff’s office opened a second investigation, sending an undercover operative into the retreat that October with a hidden camera.

After collecting urine and saliva samples, Gingerich allegedly told her there was “no doubt” she had cancer in her pancreas, liver, and large intestine. She left with written dietary advice, as reproduced in the filing with the original spelling:

Cows eating the wrong salts will refleck in the numbers! Only in there milk. Any salt thats not pure salt will give you a low sugar for 6 days, its impossable to make a new cell when sugars are low, oxygen is not available, won’t be available for 6 days!

As to what that means, and where Gingerich was getting this from, your guess is as good as mine.

From A $1,500 Fine To Fresh Felony Charges

In November 2023 the county charged Gingerich with felonies for practicing medicine and dietetics without a license, and for operating a hospital without one. That case did not go far:

Within two weeks, he and the Appanoose County Attorney’s Office reached a plea deal that resulted in Eddie Gingerich pleading guilty to one reduced misdemeanor charge of employing an unlicensed dentist.

Court records show Eddie Gingerich paid a fine of $1,500, and the Old Cabin Retreat remained open for business.

Will it end as easily this time? I’m not so sure. On the criminal side, the charges he faces include two felonies – ongoing criminal conduct, and money laundering – as well as two “serious misdemeanors” related to practicing medicine without a license.

On the money laundering count, records from a June search warrant describe yearly activity in a bank account tied to the business growing from $58,909 in 2019 to $914,256 in 2022. The warrant application states that 2021 was the only year Gingerich filed taxes, reporting $67,538 in income against bank records pointing to at least $792,548.

The Other Defendants

A word on the two other men named as business partners of Eddie Gingerich. The surnames are common to Amish communities, but no reporting indicates whether either man is Amish or was formerly Amish (as Gingerich was). Leaving that aside, here’s what the three boards alleged:

“Eddie Gingerich, with assistance from defendants Jake Gingerich and Dan Helmuth, is practicing medicine without any license,” the three licensing boards told the court.

The boards allege that while Old Cabin Retreat is a sole proprietorship owned, operated, and managed by Eddie Gingerich, Jake Gingerich is running Kingdom Health Source, and Helmuth has run Solutions by Nature, with all three businesses having operated out of the same building at one time or another.

Solutions by Nature has allegedly offered a wide variety of herbs, supplements and other natural “remedies” sold by Helmuth and which correspond to the products Eddie Gingerich has prescribed to patients. Jake Gingerich is alleged to have purchased Solutions by Nature and now operates the business in largely the same manner as Helmuth but under the name Kingdom Health Source, the boards allege.

So it sounds like Eddie Gingerich told patients what to take, and the other two sold it to them, out of the same building.

Inside The Old Cabin Retreat

One thing that you can say in Gingerich’s defense is that in his advertising at least, he wasn’t putting himself out as an “MD”:

Helping the sick – spiritually, mentally and physically, by the Word of God and with God-given foods and herbs!! Bring us your worst case. Warning: There are no MDs here, only the wisdom God taught us, and to him be all the glory.

The boards’ lawsuit also says every patient at the Old Cabin Retreat signed a “Private Healthcare Membership Association” contract before treatment – acknowledging they were pursuing nontraditional methods, from people with no license to practice medicine.

So, at least to some degree, patients knew what they were getting themselves into. I’m not sure how much we should emphasize “to some degree” here, though.

State inspectors visited again in September 2025 and reportedly photographed what was described as the facility’s “medical, dental, and pseudoscientific equipment” still on site.

As another example of the pseudoscientific appearing in the retreat, there is this detail:

“Charts on the wall purport to map out how specific teeth in a person’s mouth are related to other parts of the body and/or vital organs,” the boards allege.

The boards further allege that many patients were given “Miracle Mineral Solution,” a trade name for chlorine dioxide gas. That is described in the piece as “a toxic industrial disinfectant that is considered unsafe for human consumption but is promoted by some alternative practitioners as a cure for various ailments.”

Amish Health Care In Context

As I typically do in these sorts of posts, I should point out there is no single Amish approach to medicine. Some families use conventional doctors as a first resort, others favor traditional remedies and informal practitioners. Many use some combination depending on cost, distance, and family recommendation.

Cases involving unlicensed practitioners in Plain communities have come up before in other contexts. For example, two Amish midwives in Indiana faced felony charges in 2018. There is a whole gray area of Amish “dentists” operating in some communities.

Some of these are more defensible than others. Getting a tooth pulled locally for a donation can make a lot of financial and convenience sense for a non-driving Amish person with a family of a dozen people – and comes with a relatively low risk level. Getting cancer, diabetes, or other serious disease treated by an unqualified person is an entirely different story.

The more I read about Gingerich’s operation, the more it sounds like pure quackery. Unfortunately you do encounter a version of this in some Amish circles. You’ll find an overconfidence and certainty about medical care that’s not always based in what you might consider sound science.

Some of it is reactionary in response to bad experiences with conventional care, either directly or through family or fellow church members. And you can understand that perspective. But taken to its extreme, it strikes me as oddly arrogant when it shows up in a people who typically carry humility and good sense about the limitations of their abilities.

Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a place for alternative medicine and traditional treatments, if not as a first-line approach then as a supplemental one. But men playing doctors and purporting to be able to diagnose and treat serious, complex diseases with tools like quantum scanners and the like are another thing entirely.

The jury trial is set for September 15, with a pretrial hearing the week before on September 8.