Can You Survive Cancer And Cancer Treatment?

Alternative Cancer Treatment - A News Reporters Story

Dr Gerson Examined - Chapter 3

A quack, I felt, would do one of two things. He would refuse to see me, or he would do just the opposite — roll out the royal rug of welcome and charm me with stories of the wonderful things he had been doing with cancer, hoping that I would return to my office and write a glowing account of his accomplishments.

Dr. Gerson did neither. His secretary told me he was busy with his patients and could not talk to me. A few days later I tried again with the same response. I was impatient. Mentally I had Dr. Gerson pictured as a small, dark, ferret-faced man — the kind of cancer quack you see on television — who had a "good thing" going for him and was terrified that the press wanted a word with him about one of his patients. Naturally he wouldn't want me prying into his affairs.

But I was wrong. A week later his office called and informed me that Dr. Gerson would see me.

I was wrong again about his appearance. He was an old man! But he -was tall and spare, with blue eyes and white hair, and spoke with a German accent. He was neither eager nor reluctant to answer my questions. As a matter of fact, I asked very few questions. It was he who did most of the talking. Very early in our discussion I got the impression that Dr. Gerson had been all through this before. Not once, but many times. But kindly and patiently he endured my comments, many of which, I'm afraid, were not well-founded. I am not a medical writer and have never claimed to be, and Dr. Gerson was willing to go along with me — up to a point Then he exploded. "Can't you understand that this type of cancer has never been cured?" he yelled. "That never in the history of medicine has such a patient been cured!

That she is well now and working. Here, here are the X-rays. I will explain them to you!"

Later the 77-year-old doctor smiled. "They do not like for me to cure cancer," he said. "They say it is not possible. I say it is possible, and I do it!"

But why had he been reluctant to reveal the details of his treatment, as charged by the American Medical Association?

For reply, Dr. Gerson showed me letters of rejection from various medical magazines:

Samples: New York State Journal of Medicine, Feb. 9, 1943: "I regret to inform you that the New York State Journal of Medicine is unable to avail itself of your article entitled 'Cancer: A Deficiency Disease' for publication."

Medical Record, Dec. 7, 1944: "We are returning, herewith, your paper on 'Dietetic Treatment of Malignant Tumors' as we cannot see our way clear to publish it. I would suggest that you send it to one of the journals devoted to the subject of cancer, as it is more in their field than in ours."

The cancer research organization that I had called had told me that "there are accepted channels for a doctor to go through to publish a new theory." But here, these "accepted" channels had apparently been closed to Dr. Gerson. Why? Was the diet-cancer theory too unorthodox?

Nevertheless, he had published fifty medical papers and three books. It didn't sound as though he were reluctant to reveal anything.

"If they want to know any more about my diet," said Dr. Gerson, "tell them to look in their library. They have a copy of my book, A Cancer Therapy, in which the diet is plainly outlined!"

At this point I had on my hands a "quack" who had no mysterious drug to sell and no secret treatments — only a completely unorthodox cancer therapy.

Where did the 'ill-gotten gains" come in? Doctors who treated cancer the ordinary way certainly weren't starving to death, by any means. Why the need for a new method unless — unless he believed in it! And Dr. Max Gerson looked to me like a man who believed what he was saying. He was shy, a little awkward because the English words did not come easily to him, but a man of obvious dedication and integrity. I doubt if a quack would have shouted at me like that! He would have been too anxious to make a good impression on a reporter.

The story that I had already written in my mind about Dr. Gerson was coming apart. Now I was not so sure. I could not afford to jump to quick conclusions, especially since those conclusions would be read by many hundreds of thousands of people in my newspaper. I needed facts, many more than I had now. But one thing was certain: I was no longer on the smooth, the even, and the direct way to my story. I was chasing down one of the hundred by-ways.

"Five times,″ Dr. Gerson was saying. "Five times they sent a committee here to investigate my methods, the Medical Society of the County of New York. I let them see patients, X-rays, records, everything."

This was a break for me! Here were people who knew medicine. Their findings would certainly indicate one way or the other whether Dr. Gerson's treatment was of any value.

"What were the results of those investigations?" I asked eagerly.

"I do not know," he said. "They have not revealed them."

No newspaperman would like that last statement. Even less would he like it in view of the gravity of the problem. Why had they not revealed the findings? If they found that the doctor's therapy was useless, shouldn't they make this information public? Didn't

they have a moral obligation to do so? And weren't they as morally obliged to publish the news if Dr. Gerson was actually curing cancer? I did not like the unwarranted secrecy surrounding a matter that concerned every man, woman, and child living, a matter of desperate importance to cancer sufferers and their families.

I learned something else before I left Dr. Gerson's office. I learned that he had been suspended from the Society because of his appearance on the Long John radio program in New York, an appearance arranged for him by an over-anxious member of the Foundation for Cancer Treatment. The program is an all-night discussion program which uses no scripts. Therefore, it is easily possible to make a slip, to say something you will later regret. Though this makes for interesting listening, it can backfire on the speaker.

Long John, a well-known radio personality, has had many MD's on his program, but they have not been suspended, nor have they elicited the hundreds of letters and telephone calls that descended upon the station following and during the show.

"No, I don't regret the program," Long John Nebel informed me, "but that was two years ago, and I've learned a lot since then. Today, I would insist on another MD with the opposite viewpoint being present.″

I spent a Saturday afternoon in Kew Gardens, New York, talking with a very gracious and charming woman, Mrs. Johanna Oberlander, eldest daughter of Dr. Gerson and secretary of the Foundation for Cancer Treatment. I was inspired by her devotion to her father's ideals and by her cheerful courage in the face of opposition to the doctor's crusade. She explained that the Oakland Manor cancer clinic at Nanuet, N.Y., had been discontinued in March, 1958.

"My mother felt it was getting too much for the doctor,″ she said. "He's 77 now. Some of the best cases were started there, where the diet could be administered under professional supervision.

I asked Mrs. Oberlander about the special chopping and juicing machines which the American Cancer Society said were offered to the doctor's patients for sale at around $150.00.

"Dr. Gerson has nothing to do with the juicer. I do. He knows I can explain it to the patients and felt it would be helpful to demonstrate it to them. It's immaterial to him where they get it. Many get it from dealers in their own cities. We also have it for convenience, that I, knowing his work, can explain it to them."

She invited me to come into the kitchen and observe the machine in operation. I watched while vegetables were converted into a fine pulp, and then into juice.

"It seems quite a reasonable price for the machine," I said.

"It is when you consider that x-ray treatments run $25 and up. Many hospitals could not exist but for these treatments and the income they bring in. It takes the average person about $6,000 to die of cancer. This machine is useful and can't do any harm, while the X-ray is questionable at best."

I asked her if she expected a medical breakthrough from organized medicine in its war against cancer.

"There's always a ‘break-through' announced around cancer contribution time. It is almost as if it were more profitable to look for a cancer cure than to find one!"

She told me that Dr. Albert Schweitzer was one of the directors of the Foundation, which is today mainly educational, and that Dr. Gerson had cured Schweitzer's wife of tuberculosis of the lungs with his diet.

"She was just over 50 when she came to Dr. Gerson,"

she said. "The climate of Africa had given her the lung condition. Dr. Schweitzer was extremely grateful for what my father did. He said, 'My wife wouldn't be here today if it hadn't been for Dr. Gerson.' Mrs. Schweitzer died this January at the age of 79."

Being especially fond of salt, I asked Mrs. Ober-lander if a saltless diet wasn't most unappetizing.

"I have grown up without salt," she smiled. "When food is prepared the correct way, it retains the natural mineral salts. Taste is retained. You only taste food for a few seconds, but it stays in your body for days. Which is better?"

When I left Mrs. Oberlander's house I had a clearer picture of Dr. Gerson's work. Was cancer really not a disease, as she had told me, but a symptom of a disease Was it possible to cure cancer, not by cutting and burning the cancer itself, but by treating the whole body, by rebuilding it with fresh, natural foods? Did the diet work?

To prove or disprove it, I knew I had to have the results of the five investigations made by the Medical Society of the County of New York. If the findings were negative, I could continue my investigation of a "cancer quack." But if they offered promise that Dr. Gerson's cancer therapy did indeed have value — that was something else again. And if that was true, a legitimate question would present itself.

Why weren't the findings revealed?

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