UNDATED (KTHV) -- There's a controversial cancer treatment under fire with direct ties to Central Arkansas.
Just this week, a federal jury in Little Rock awarded $2.5 million dollars in damages to a patient receiving the treatment and still battling breast cancer.
The company at the center of all this is Lase Med Inc. They currently operate in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. But between 2004 and 2008, it had offices in Jacksonville and North Little Rock where patients from around the country came for treatment.
There's Star Wars-like music with hopeful messages on the homepage video greeting from Lase Med Inc. On an attached YouTube video, we find the founder, Antonella Carpenter.
"I am a physicist. I never claim to be a medical doctor, that's why the patients come to me because those are the ones who want alternative," Carpenter said.
It's an alternative using lasers to kill cancerous tumors. Carpenter says the heat activated in the process does the job.
"Elevated temperature, the tumor reached 134 degrees farenheight, and that is the temperature sufficient to kill the tumors. I have the science that backs it," Carpenter said.
But not everyone buys it.
"Look, you just can't say whatever you want to people, whether it's on the internet or in person, even if it's an alternative," Will Bond said.
And that was part of the basis for a federal lawsuit against Lase Med Inc.
Little Rock Attorney Will Bond represented a California woman who used the company's treatment in November of 2007 for breast cancer. Bond says she felt OK at first but later became worse.
"In late April, early May, she found out from medical doctors that in fact her cancer had spread and that she was inoperable," Bond said.
On Tuesday, a federal jury in Little Rock sided with Bond's client, following a trial without Carpenter and her attorney.
"That is an unconstitutional trial. That is a ridiculous judgment. There is no support in the kind of law," Carpenter said.
She claims she couldn't afford a lawyer with previous legal costs.
And the judge said since she missed a deadline to get an attorney, the plaintiff would win, with no trial.
"This thing has been a farce from day one," Carpenter said. "They are misleading the public and keeping them from an inexpensive thing that is an actual solution."
"You can't make these representations that are untrue and baseless and get away with it," Bond said.
As for the $2.5 five million dollars in damages, Bond says he doesn't expect Carpenter to pay that. He says for his client, winning the case in federal court is good enough.
Carpenter gave us no official word Thursday, but says paying these damages makes no sense since she was not represented at the trial.