APPENDIX 7
Memorandum submitted by the GersonTM
Support Group
1. INTRODUCTION
This memorandum is submitted by the GersonTM Support
Group, a registered charity dedicated to disseminating information
on the nutrition-based anti-cancer Gerson Therapy and to helping
cancer patients seeking recovery on this programme. Clinical experience
over fifty-odd years suggests that this therapy, developed by
the eminent German physician, the late Dr Max Gerson, offers a
novel and, indeed, revolutionary answer to the increasingly grave
cancer problem. Because its approach differs from that of conventional
oncology, it has never been allocated funding for research and
clinical trials; hence its lack of scientifically acceptable data,
viz. proof of the cause-effect relationship between a treatment
programme and its results. Our Group hopes that by drawing the
Committee's attention to the Gerson Therapy, we might kindle sufficient
interest in the right circles to have its potential investigated.
2. SUMMARY
In view of the rising incidence of cancer and
the escalating cost of existing treatments which unfortunately
often bring disappointing results, a truly fresh look at cancer
research must mean going beyond the conventional parameters. To
the informed lay person, much of current research can be described
by the dictum of Nobel Laureate Professor Albert Szent-Gyorgyi,
according to which "we know more and more about less and
less." Surely the time has come for the medical profession
to overcome its traditional hostility to any approach that differs
from its own. Over the past few decades a number of potentially
useful alternative and/or complementary therapies have been developed
outside the medical Establishment, many of them by physicians
disenchanted with the existing protocols. Unless these methods
are thoroughly researched and evaluated, there is little hope
for cancer medicine to move forward from its present unsatisfactory
state.
BACKGROUND
3. The aim of orthodox oncology is to destroy,
viz, eradicate the malignant tumour by the means at its disposal,
namely surgery, radio-and/or chemotherapy. It sees cancer as a
thing, ie the tumour itself, hence current research concentrates
on refining and reinforcing anti-tumour techniques. By way of
contrast the Gerson Therapy regards the tumour as no more than
the symptom of a deeper underlying disease that involves the entire
organism suffering from a deficient immune system, impaired metabolism
and high toxicity. In this light cancer is not a thing but a process,
and therefore the removal or destruction of the tumour is insufficient
to prevent a recurrence. For that the depleted organism must be
restored to optimum functioning, so that it can defend itself
against further malignancies. This is achieved by a precisely
constructed strict nutritional programme which both rebuilds and
detoxifies the body, and which must be followed for a minimum
of two years.
3.1 Dr Gerson (1881-1959) evolved his therapy
by trial and error as a practising physician, without benefit
of modern research facilities, and achieved remarkable results,
fully documented in his book, "A CANCER THERAPY—results
of fifty cases," in the last decades of his life. Today,
forty years after his death, some of his ideas are being rediscovered,
not only by alternative therapists but also by medical researchers
into the link between nutrition and cancer. Their findings are
largely in harmony with Dr Gerson's guidelines, but so far they
solely emphasis the importance of diet as a means of prevention.
They do not realise as yet that by fine tuning and intensifying
the input of anti-cancer dietary substances it is also possible
to cure existing disease. The intensive Gerson Therapy, with its
daily intake of 13 glasses of freshly made organic fruit and vegetable
juices, three square meals, a range of medications and a strict
detoxification programme has been described as a kind of chemotherapy—but
one that instead of poisoning both cancer cells and healthy tissue
only cleanses and heals. The destructive nature of chemotherapy,
which often brings no more than short-term palliative results,
has recently been causing concern even in official oncological
circles.
3.2 Professor D J Weatherall in the British Medical
Journal (Vol 309, p. 1671):
"Patients are often subjected to the most
intensive protocols of chemotherapy, some of which require them
to be taken to death's door in an attempt to eradicate their tumours.
One hundred years hence we may look back on all this in the same
light as we do on bleeding and cupping today. But this is what
is currently believed to be (added emphasis) the most effective
way to manage these diseases; in almost every field of modern
high technology patch-up practice, patients are pushed to the
extremes of their endurance, and not always for reasons that include
a careful appraisal of what is meant by the quality of life."
3.3 Professor Michael Baum in a letter to
The Times (28 March 1995):
"Many of us believe that the future lies
not in a blunderbuss attack attempting to eradicate all cancer
cells present at the time of diagnosis, but a more sophisticated
attempt to maintain a dynamic equilibrium controlling the disease
by the modulation of the body's natural defence system"
3.4 Modulating the body's natural defence
systems through nutrition is precisely what the Gerson Therapy
aims to do, and has been doing successfully in a very large number
of cases, including many apparently hopeless ones (see Appendix
1).[5]
What it lacks is the framework and the funding that would enable
properly conducted clinical trials to be carried out into its
principles, practice, results and cost effectiveness. Clearly,
it would need a radical change in the official attitude towards
unconventional and "unproven" medical approaches to
initiate this kind of research, but then, in view of the unsatisfactory
state of cancer medicine in this country, not to explore a potentially
fruitful avenue would be a luxury. There should be room for it
among the clinical trials of new anti-cancer drugs and treatments,
even if its philosophy clashes with theirs. To quote Professor
Baum's final argument.
"Pursuing this type of approach will lead
to more humane and ultimately more successful treatments than
the futile attempts to kill off all remaining cancer cells in
the body. More of the same has never been the answer to the intractable
problems of human disease."
FRESH APPROACH
4. In the light of this view, and moving
beyond our interest in one particular nutritional therapy, we
feel that a truly innovative fresh departure in cancer research
would be to concentrate on the potential, safety and cost effectiveness
of "food as medicine," first prescribed by Hippocrates
some 2,500 years ago but still waiting to be utilised in present-day
cancer medicine. Piecemeal research the world over comes up with
a wealth of congruent data, suggesting that dietary changes combined
with vitamins such as A,C,E and beta-carotene, not only offer
protection against a wide range of malignancies but can also bring
about a remission, or at least a slowing down of the disease process.
But as long as these findings appear in isolation, from centres
as far-flung as New York, Kerala, Copenhagen and Beijing, to mention
only a few, without a state-of-the-art centre to act as a clearing
house, there is not chance of evaluating, testing and ultimately
utilising them in clinical practice.
4.1 This neglect of a promising new approach
is all the more odd if we consider that, apart from air, food
and drink are the only cradle-to-grave substances that all of
us consume, and that their quality is bound to have a dominant
effect on our state of health. Perhaps because food lacks the
glamour of hi-tech medicine, its acceptance as a valid tool of
healing is exceedingly slow. The first official statement on the
sickness-promoting aspects of the modern Western diet, the McGovern
Report appeared in 1977, to vigorous objections from the American
Medical Association and the food industry. It took six years for
the British NACNE report to appear in 1983, with similar findings,
namely that too much fat, salt, sugar and meat, and too little
fresh fruit, vegetables and fibre contribute to the incidence
of cancer and other "diseases of civilisation". (A year
later the report was withdrawn from circulation and NACNE itself
was dissolved.) And it took another decade or so for the first
official exhortations to appear in the media, urging people to
cut down on animal protein, fats, alcohol, salt and sugar, and
increase their intake of fibre and fresh plant foods, as a means
of prevention. This lack of speed and intensity confirms the impression
that the direct link between nutrition and health viz. sickness
is woefully underestimated, hence neglected and under-researched.
4.2 To extend high-quality cancer research
into the field of nutrition would hold out, first of all, the
hope of at least one of the "more humane and ultimately more
successful treatments" advocated by Professor Baum. Their
clinical use would also lead to considerable savings if compared
to the astronomical cost of chemotherapy, which, alas, too often
turns out to be unsuccessful. Over the past fifty years or more
a number of nutritional approaches have been developed by medical
doctors, researchers, medical herbalists and homoeopaths; many
of them have a good track record, but in the absence of funding
and facilities, instead of scientifically acceptable data they
can only represent what is habitually dismissed as anecdotal evidence,
ie worthless.
4.3 However, reverting to the Gerson Therapy,
we are able to submit two pieces of non-anecdotal evidence in
its support. Appendix 1[6]
contains a report of the five-year survival of melanoma patients
in different stages of the disease, using the Gerson Therapy,
compared to a similar group on conventional treatment. This is
a piece of retrospective research but if the findings are confirmed
by more rigorous studies it would represent a quantum leap in
survival figures for this deadly cancer. Appendix 2[7]
however, offers the results of a six-year prospective study, in
a paper by Dr P Lechner, of the District Hospital of Graz, Austria.
He ran the trial of a somewhat modified Gerson Therapy on cancer
patients who were also receiving chemotherapy and/or radiation,
comparing their progress with that of a carefully matched control
group. The Gerson patients made better progress, enjoyed greater
well-being and survived longer than the members of the control
group. Away from the Gerson method, in Appendix [8]
we present an article, originally published in the International
Journal of Biosocial Research, Vol 10, pp. 17-33, 1988. This paper
reports on an analysis conducted by the University of Victoria,
Canada, showing that cases of cancer with supposedly "spontaneous
regression" had mostly used a dietary and often detoxifying
approach to their disease. (One cannot help wondering why "spontaneous
regression" is only mentioned when a patient gets well by
unconventional means.)
CAUSES OF
MALIGNANT DISEASE
5. It seems strange that no research appears
to be conducted into the causes of the ever-escalating incidence
of malignant disease. The statistics are chilling. In the USA
in 1900, one in 27 people developed cancer. In 1960, it was one
in seven. By 1990 the figure rose to one in five. Today in the
UK doctors mention one in three—or worse. The extraordinary
thing is that this Domesday scenario is accepted, as if it were
an Act of God, which it clearly is not. The usual official response
from the medical profession is a call for more oncologists, more
centres of excellence for research into the treatment of cancer,
better organisation, and above all, more money. But no significant
research is carried out to discover just what has changed in the
past few decades to account for what is often referred to as today's
cancer epidemic. The usual excuses—we live longer, hence
have more time to develop malignant disease, and improved diagnostic
methods turn up more cases—don't hold water. Younger and
younger people contract the disease; in the USA, cancer is the
first cause of death among teenagers, with accidents as a second,
and other countries are not far behind. It would stand to reason
to make every effort to find out what changes in our environment,
lifestyle, dietary habits, methods of food production and manufacture,
&c., are contributing to our worsening cancer statistics,
and what should be done to correct the situation. Admittedly,
this kind of research is widely based and goes beyond the medical
remit, but surely the medical approach to the cancer problem would
be greatly helped if doctors were enabled to make the link between
cause and effect, not just limited to trying to deal with the
effect in isolation.
NECESSARY DIALOGUE
5.1 The objection might be raised that enough
is known already about those factors in the developed world that
are harmful to health. True—but there seems to be no dialogue
between researchers into environmental causes of ill health and
the medical profession. Perhaps the time has come for such a dialogue
to begin, and for medicine to look beyond its strictly guarded
boundaries to other disciplines concerned with health.
PSYCHO-NEURO-IMMUNOLOGY
6. Another potentially fruitful area of
research would be psycho-neuro-immunology (PNI), the latest medical
speciality which promises to become a valuable complementary tool
in cancer medicine. Linking, as it does, the patient's prevalent
emotional states with the functioning of his or her immune system,
this, too, points beyond the strictly body-centred medical model
and thus may evoke strong objections. However, if top quality
research were to prove the value of PNI in oncology, as it has
already done in the USA, we would gain and inexpensive extra tool
of healing with no harmful side effects.
CONCLUSION
7. All in all, we welcome the opportunity
to submit our ideas on how the boundaries of cancer research should
be expanded and taken beyond the search for more efficient anti-tumour
measures. Important though these are, they are not sufficient
to improve patients' survival rates and quality of life. It is
our hope that adequate funds and goodwill can be raised to examine
with proper scientific rigour unconventional approaches, such
as the Gerson Therapy or other nutritional programmes that have
produced many remarkable cures but are as yet unrecognised and
unexamined by the medical profession. We who work as volunteers
in this field know their worth from personal experience and should
like others to benefit from them. It is our hope that the Committee
will consider our suggestions favourably, and we look forward
to learning about its conclusions.
7.1 The GersonTM Support group (Registered
charity 1063646) exists to provide information, support, and training
to those who are interested in, or wish to undertake the Gerson
Therapy. Enclosed with this document is a booklet[9]
which gives fuller details of our work.
March 2000
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