‘Medicinal’ egg conviction upheld

CINCINNATI – A federal appeals court Friday upheld the conviction of a suburban Chicago doctor who helped sell powdered egg yolks that he and his partner claimed could cure and prevent a variety of diseases, including AIDS and Alzheimer’s.\nBut the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Dr. Mitchell Kaminski of Niles, Ill., to be resentenced in U.S. District Court in Columbus, saying the trial judge wrongly considered a letter Kaminski wrote to increase his sentence beyond federal guidelines. The three-judge panel upheld the sentence of his co-defendant, Marilyn Coleman, a poultry researcher from Richwood.\nColeman and Kaminski said their egg powder was “magic bullets” that could be used to treat disease, including autism, cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome, federal prosecutors said.\nColeman, Kaminski and their company, Ovimmune Inc., each were convicted of 15 misdemeanor counts, including selling unapproved or misbranded drugs and failing to register them.\nEach was sentenced in 2005 to five years’ probation, fined $6,000 and ordered to pay nearly $34,000 in restitution. They were ordered to serve six months of the sentence in a halfway house and six months under house arrest.\nThe three-judge panel ruled that Kaminski’s sentence was improperly increased above sentencing guidelines for obstructing justice, largely because of a letter he wrote to the Food and Drug Administration. \nThe panel upheld the increase in Coleman’s sentence because she falsely portrayed herself as a medical doctor to promote the egg products as medical cures.