For the past year, more than 140 New York City firefighters, some ailing from their work in the ruins of the World Trade Center, have walked into a seventh-floor medical clinic just two blocks from the former disaster site. Once inside, some have abandoned the medical care and emotional counseling provided to them by their own department's doctors, and all have taken up a treatment regimen devised by L. Ron Hubbard, the late science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology.
The firefighters take saunas, engage in physical workouts and swallow pills -- all of which together constitute what for years has been known, amid considerable dispute, as Mr. Hubbard's detoxification program, one meant to wash the body of poisons or toxins. The firefighters are not charged for their trips to the clinic, called Downtown Medical.
Of the more than 140 firefighters and 15 emergency medical workers who have undergone the program, some have told colleagues of its virtues. Others have said they were simply following the regimen in order to enjoy free saunas.
But one retired firefighter is a paid member of the clinic's advisory board, and the city's main fire union has pledged its ''full support'' to the clinic as it seeks government grants and other forms of financing.
''The statements I have heard from firefighters who have completed the program are truly remarkable,'' Stephen J. Cassidy, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, wrote in a letter that is posted on the clinic's Web site. The letter adds, ''The work you are doing in this regard is unique in the city, and is very welcome.''
But the existence of the clinic has upset city Fire Department officials, who, among other concerns, are alarmed that the medical treatment prescribed by its doctors is being discarded by some firefighters who enroll at Downtown Medical. They say the clinic's detoxification program requires firefighters to stop using inhalers meant to help with their breathing and any medications they may be taking, like antidepressants or blood pressure pills.
The department officials, including its physicians, said they had no way of vouching for the program's practices. The exact makeup of the pills taken as part of the program, for instance, is not widely known, although they are believed to contain niacin. One clinic board member wrote a report published in a firefighting magazine that firefighters produced blue beads of sweat during the program. One city firefighter said that the man next to him in the sauna once appeared to sweat a quarter-size black substance -- evidence, he said, that toxins were being drained out of his body.
''While we are aware some members of the department have availed themselves of the program, we in no way endorse it,'' said Deputy Commissioner Francis X. Gribbon. Dr. David Prezant, deputy chief medical officer for the department, added, ''It's risky for anybody to stop any type of medication without guidance and a plan from their own treating physician.''
Officials with the clinic, while acknowledging some of them are Scientologists, said the clinic is not formally affiliated with the Church of Scientology. An official at the church's office in Los Angeles said they were aware of the clinic, but described it as a secular enterprise employing Mr. Hubbard's methods.
The official in Los Angeles, Linda Simmons Hight, said many Scientologists had donated to the clinic, but ''as far as it being part of the church, it isn't.'' Joseph Higgins, a retired firefighter who is now a paid member of the clinic's advisory board, said Tom Cruise, the actor, had paid for ''quite a bit'' of the treatments for rescue workers, estimated by Mr. Higgins to cost $5,000 to $6,000 apiece.
