TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) - Clinics offering unconventional and often dubious treatments draw desperate and dying people from around the world to the Mexican border.

But worried about potentially dangerous therapies and Tijuana's reputation as a capital of quackery, health authorities are cracking down on unregulated clinics.

Within the last few weeks, officials from the Baja California state government shut down one alternative medicine clinic and restricted another. They closed a third general practice clinic for operating in substandard conditions.

More closures are likely as the state hires additional inspectors and sends them to evaluate every medical facility in Tijuana and the nearby towns of Tecate and Rosarito, said Dr. Alfredo Gruel, the director of the health department division that regulates clinics.

``We are not against alternative medicine, but we are against dangerous practices,'' Gruel said.

The planned series of inspections is part of a reorganization of the state's health department that officials hope will improve the image of medicine in Baja California, where many Americans also seek conventional medicine that costs less than it does in the United States.

Even Gruel admits that a crackdown faces enormous hurdles. Tijuana, a city of about 1.4 million that borders San Diego, has an estimated 400 medical facilities, ranging from cramped doctors' offices in private homes to modern, well-equipped hospitals accepted by U.S. insurance.

The alternative medicine clinics, offering such things as vitamin solutions and magnet therapy for cancer, have flourished in the poorly regulated environment of the border.

``Maybe one or two are legitimate, but the vast majority are just there to take advantage of dying people,'' said Dr. James Grisolia, editor of the San Diego County Medical Society's magazine.

An entire economy has grown up around the clinics. Several offer packages that include a room at a San Diego border motel, meals and round-trip transportation on minibuses. Some advertise on the Internet, have 800 numbers and distribute glossy brochures.

While U.S. and Mexican health authorities say a crackdown is long overdue, patients fear they could lose access to their treatment of last resort.

Delilah Miller, an Amish woman from northern Indiana, has taken her 19-year-old daughter, Lorma, to a clinic in Tijuana since 1993. The younger woman, whose brain cancer is in remission, receives an intravenous vitamin and mineral mixture that costs dlrs 3,900 for a 20-day treatment.

``They finally told us in the states they couldn't help her any more,'' Miller said in San Diego after a day in Tijuana. ``We were just desperate.''

They know the treatment is regarded as without merit in the United States but make the annual trip to California by train each year because they believe it helps keep the cancer in remission.

``I hope they don't start closing those clinics, because we need them,'' Miller said.

Baja health authorities said there are no plans to shut clinics en masse. The state expects to more than double its number of inspectors - there are now six - over the next three months, and the process of checking licenses and locating clandestine clinics is expected to be a lengthy one.

``The purpose isn't to close businesses, but to make sure they are complying with the law,'' said Dr. Alberto Escalante, the chief medical inspector.

They closed a small doctor's office because it had no permit, did not maintain adequate patient records, and the operating room had no running water, Escalante said.

Century Nutrition, an alternative clinic operated by an American from the bottom floor of a pink stucco house near the border, was closed because it had no license, Gruel said.

A spokeswoman for Hulda Clark, the operator of Century Nutrition, declined to comment on the closure or the Mexican government crackdown. In the past, Clark has claimed that cancer and other diseases can be cured by removing toxins and parasites using a low-voltage electrical charge.

In 1999, Clark was arrested in San Diego on a fugitive warrant from Indiana, where she faced a charge of practicing medicine without a license. But a judge dismissed the charge, saying the nearly seven-year delay in prosecuting her violated Clark's right to a speedy trial.

A third clinic, operated under contract for an American company called BioPulse International, was prohibited from continuing an unauthorized treatment in which it used insulin to induce a coma-like state that it believed could work as a cancer treatment, Gruel said.

Loran Swensen, president of the publicly traded company based in Salt Lake City, said he is applying to the Mexican government for permission to continue the treatment.

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