After Arraignment, Man Arrested Again : Court: Ongley Solution inventor is held on a New Mexico warrant alleging practice of medicine without a license--just after facing the same charge in Newport.

NEWPORT BEACH — A medical administrator, already facing criminal charges of practicing medicine without a license, was abruptly arrested after his court arraignment here Friday on a warrant out of New Mexico accusing him of practicing medicine there while awaiting his Orange County trial.

Milne J. Ongley, 65, who has been hailed by some physical therapists as an innovator in muscle treatment because of his Ongley Solution drug, remained in City Jail on Friday night on the New Mexico no-bail warrant.

“Undercover operators attended a seminar he gave in New Mexico in which he was treating patients there,” said Kathy Schmidt, a Medical Board of California investigator. “But he had already left the airport before they could get a warrant served on him.”

Ongley will face extradition before he can be transferred back to New Mexico, she said.

Ongley’s Institute of Orthopaedic Medicine in Newport was closed last month by court order. The criminal case against him, filed in March by the attorney general’s office, is pending.

He had operated the clinic with Dr. Louis Schlom, who was also arrested in the Newport case. Together, the two face 25 misdemeanor counts of conspiring to practice medicine without a license, grand theft, using patients in medical experiments without their consent, unlawfully using an unapproved drug and false advertising.

Ongley’s staff members allege that he never presented himself in Newport as a doctor but only as Schlom’s assistant.

However, California undercover medical investigators reported to the court that it was Ongley who treated them and Schlom who appeared to be the assistant.

State prosecutors say there is no medicinal value in the Ongley Solution, which is manufactured for Ongley by a Utah pharmaceutical company. Prosecutors said the manufacturers had no idea that Ongley was using the solution in injections. California authorities said the solution is worthless, not sterile and not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Investigator Schmidt said Ongley was conducting a seminar in Santa Fe on May 4. California investigators learned of it and told New Mexico officials. Schmidt said the New Mexico authorities reported that the business Ongley conducted at the seminar was tantamount to practicing medicine.

“The man just doesn’t know when to quit,” Schmidt said. “He knows he’s facing charges here, yet he just goes on about his business like nothing has happened. He’s got to be stopped.”

Free on bail in his Orange County case, Ongley had appeared at Harbor Municipal Court in Newport on Friday morning for a routine arraignment on charges of practicing medicine without a license.

Ongley’s Orange County arrest brought protests from many of his patients, who say they don’t care whether he’s a licensed doctor.

“He is the only person I’ve been to who has been able to stop the terrible pain in my back,” said one woman who called The Times from Maine but did not want her name used.

She said she has made several trips across the country to be treated by Ongley.