A Hong Kong court on Tuesday acquitted a self-proclaimed doctor who offered natural remedies to three cancer patients of practising medicine without a licence, after a judge ruled the relevant regulations only covered Western treatments.

Rita Chiu Suk-yee, 63, had faced three counts of practising medicine without registration, spanning 2013 to 2016, over claims she could cure cancer through the use of magnets, an oxygen machine and following a special diet.

As the former head of beauty centre Painting International Limited, she had billed three patients more than HK$700,000 (US$89,600) each for the treatment regime.

Two of the three later died from cancer within months of signing up for the remedies.

Deputy Judge Bernard Chung Wai-keung of the District Count on Tuesday said the crux of the case had rested on whether the treatments Chiu had offered came under the Medical Registration Ordinance, which only applies to Western medicine.

“But the ordinance does not define what Western medicine really is,” he said.

The judge also rejected the prosecution’s wide definition of Western treatments as those considered “not Chinese medicine”, with professions such as chiropractors and pharmacists also falling outside the scope of the ordinance.

The patients were also aware that their treatments were not Western medicine as Chiu had told them she earned her doctoral degree from a Turks and Caicos Islands-based institution called St Clements University.

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Dr Kung Kin-hang, a principal medical and health officer at the Department of Health, testified during the trial that none of the defendant’s remedies came under the definition of Western medicine.

The court also heard from the daughter of Tao Bo-fu, a 65-year-old pancreatic cancer patient who died from the condition five months after starting the naturopathic treatments.

Tao’s daughter had said that Chiu asked her father to avoid taking any Western or Chinese medicine at the time, claiming the 65-year-old had lost his battle with cancer after giving up on himself.

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Chung Siu-king, 66, who had earlier recovered from leukaemia and sought the defendant’s help in alleviating her eczema in 2014, said during the trial that she was asked to stop taking her prescribed medications in favour of a supplement derived from bean extract.

But Deputy Judge Chung argued that he could not make an inference against Chiu based on the 66-year-old cancer survivor’s statement, describing her memory of the period as blurry and adding that she could have misunderstood the defendant.

After clearing Chiu of the three charges, the judge instructed all parties to submit a written response concerning the cost of proceedings.