By Parris M. Kidd, Ph.D.
In recent columns I tackled many of the issues surrounding cancer
causation and treatment. I discussed the usefulness of certain nutritional
supplements against cancer including mushroom extracts and thymic
extracts, vitamins and minerals. Now I can announce that all the
really useful anticancer supplements have been put together in a
comprehensive program to treat cancer. This program I call the Gonzalez-Isaacs
Program, since it was developed and implemented by medical doctors
Nicholas Gonzalez and Linda Isaacs. These dedicated practitioners
have now received a $1.4 million U.S. government grant to compare
their program against the mainstream cancer therapies under strictly
controlled conditions and the political and medical implications
of this development are nothing less than enormous.
It's been no secret in the anticancer field that after more than
three decades of throwing money at conventional strategies for treatment,
almost no progress has been made. It has also been no secret that
so-called "alternative cancer therapies" were not being given a
fair shake. The U.S. government's bias against alternative cancer
therapies went so far that unconventional anticancer researchers
were often harassed and practitioners sometimes were hounded all
the way out of the country. Now, for the first time, an unconventional
anticancer program is being given a fair and balanced chance to
prove that it works. This amounts to a major positive turnaround
by the Feds - at last they are doing their jobs of serving the public
interest against the current cancer epidemic.
This groundbreaking controlled trial is for real: adequate funding
is being provided, the protocols are not being modified to fail
and the practitioners who developed the program are being allowed
to manage their part of the trial. The patients in the trial will
have to do their part. For the program to be fairly tested, they
will need tremendous discipline day by day, to do lots of scheduled
activities and take lots of capsules and tablets. But if they can
hang in there, the rewards may be markedly better - higher quality
of living AND an extension of one's life with cancer, hopefully
by years if not decades.
Doctors Gonzalez and Isaacs well deserve this chance to vindicate
their program. These two doctors are not like the others. They have
been reserved about their work from the beginning, not rushing to
claim they could cure cancer. They didn't produce wondrous mixtures
of herbs and vitamins for mass consumption. They didn't just assume
that the government would never listen to them. Instead, they worked
cautiously and conservatively, kept good records and opened a line
of communication with the authorities. After a while, the National
Cancer Institute (NCI) invited them in to visit at Bethesda, Maryland
and present their best case histories. An NCI official then suggested
they do what's called a "pilot study" - a kind of preliminary, explorative
study - then submit their findings for consideration. They secured
funding and went ahead with the pilot study.
Beginning in January 1993, for this pilot study Gonzalez and Isaacs
monitored eleven (11) pancreatic cancer patients treated in their
program. They picked a very tough cancer: patients with inoperable
pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Treated with the conventional chemotherapy,
such patients have 20 percent one-year and 10 percent two-year survival
rates. That is, of every 10 such patients only one will survive
more than two years. This cancer was chosen because definitive results
from the program could become evident after only a few years, since
currently only one percent of the patients survive five years. As
of November 1999, Gonzalez and Isaacs could report that nine of
their 11 patients (81 percent) survived one year, five (45 percent)
survived two years, four (36 percent) survived past three years
and two (18 percent) survived past four years.
So what do they do in this program that's so different? A wide
variety of things, all designed to help the body successfully fight
the cancer without itself becoming weaker. According to their report
on the pilot study findings that Gonzalez and Isaacs recently published
in the journal Nutrition and Cancer (Volume 33, pages 117-24, June
1999), the program consisted of (a) large doses of pancreatic enzymes
taken by mouth, (b) detoxification procedures, (c) a wide range
of dietary supplements and (d) an organic diet. The program did
not include any conventional therapies (chemotherapy, radiotherapy).
Let's consider these components of the program in more detail, starting
with the diet.
Individualized Diet for Autonomic System Harmonization
The Gonzalez-Isaacs program has no one magic diet. Different diets
are worked out for the different patients, except that the foods
must always be organically grown and free of toxins. Procedures
are in place by which patients are evaluated according to their
individual metabolic patterns (genetic, biochemical, physiological)
and the type of cancer they have. Some patients function better
with a plant-based diet, as from vegetables, whole grains, fruits,
nuts, seeds and with minimal or no animal protein. Other patients
do best on an animal-based diet with minimal to moderate amounts
of plant-based sources. Gonzalez and Isaacs are convinced from their
clinical experience, and from other lines of research, that cancer
is linked to imbalances in the autonomic nervous system, the hard-working
"automatic pilot" circuitry that runs our basic functions without
our having to consciously participate. They found they could use
customized diets to normalize each individual patient's balance
between the sympathetic and parasympathetic arms of the autonomic
system. The vegetarian diet, for example, tends to reduce sympathetic
activity and increase parasympathetic; the animal diet does the
opposite. As the autonomic system comes into greater balance, the
immune system and all the physiological systems tend towards more
optimal function.
Pancreatic Proteolytic Enzyme Therapy
The use of pancreatic enzymes against cancer was pioneered by James
Beard of the University of Edinburgh nearly 100 years ago. He proposed
that the pancreatic proteolytic enzymes, in addition to their known
digestive function, represented the body's main defense against
cancer. Several case reports of success with this therapy were reported
in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 1907-8.
Beard believed the enzymes had to be injected rather than taken
by mouth, but research since then has proven that when taken by
mouth such enzymes resist stomach acid, pass intact into the small
intestine, and are absorbed into the bloodstream. Just how they
work is unclear, but animal experiments in the 1960s confirmed their
anticancer effect.
Each patient may be prescribed up to 40 grams of freeze-dried porcine
pancreas daily, taken in capsule form, away from meals and spread
evenly throughout the day. The Gonzalez-Isaacs formulation is thoroughly
vetted for freedom from contamination and for potency tests out
at 30-80 USP units of proteolytic activity per milligram with 15-40
units of lipolytic activity per milligram.
Coffee Enemas, Maligned but Proven Beneficial
Perhaps the most difficult part of the program to get people to
accept is the coffee enemas. Yet the coffee enema is a long-standing,
proven medical protocol in the United States. Coffee enemas were
a feature of the orthodox medical literature for the better part
of the twentieth century. Nursing manuals routinely recommended
the coffee enema, and the prestigious Merck Manual advocated its
use in all the additions from 1897 through 1977, when it was dropped
for lack of space. The contemporary literature featured articles
in such first line journals as JAMA/Journal of the American Medical
Association, New England Journal of Medicine, and at medical clinics
of North America. There is no "high" or other caffeine-type effect
from the enema; rather, people tend to fall asleep while having
it and wake up energized with an increased sense of well-being.
During the 1920s and '30s coffee enemas were prescribed for a variety
of conditions and studies from the earlier part of the century indicate
that they stimulate gallbladder emptying and more efficient liver
function. Gonzalez and Isaacs believe this is the main means by
which the coffee enema supports detoxification, as cancer is well
known to increase the burden on the liver. As the body attacks tumors,
enormous amounts of toxic debris can be produced, much of which
must be processed by the liver. Gonzalez reports seeing the benefits
of the coffee enema in thousands of his patients and has been doing
it himself since 1981.
Nutritional Supplements, Lots and Lots of Them
Likely the most challenging feature of the program for the patients
is the huge mass of nutritional supplements they have to take by
mouth on a daily basis. I've never heard of anything like it - each
patient is expected to take a total 130-160 capsules per day, taken
with and away from meals. The supplements are carefully picked one
by one from a number of sources, with the emphasis being on purity
and potency. In addition to the freeze-dried pancreas as source
of proteolytic enzymes, the supplement regimen includes vitamins,
minerals and trace elements, providing support over and above any
strictly anticancer effect. This simple reality is all too often
ignored by mainstream oncologists who scoff at their patients taking
vitamins with "I guess they won't do you any harm."
The strategy of prescribing so many and varied nutritional supplements
is to do everything to support the cancer patient's organ systems
so weakened by the presence of cancer. Survival-level functions,
energy for well-being and daily living, the immune system's ongoing
attack activity against the cancerous tissue and the repair of the
ensuing tissue damage, all must be supported nutritionally by diet
and supplementation. Glandulars other than pancreas are also recommended,
such as thymus and liver from beef or lamb, as additional nutrient
concentrate sources. I suspect other subtle benefits also accrue
from taking these glandulars.
This, then, is the Gonzalez-Isaacs program. It owes a substantial
debt to William Donald Kelley, D.D.S., a practitioner active in
the cancer underground from the '60s through the '80s. Dr. Kelley
said that his inspiration for developing a nutrition-based anticancer
program was his own pancreatic cancer. It was Kelley who blazed
the trail for this later, more sophisticated program. Dr. Gonzalez
came onto the Kelley trail in 1981, while a student at Cornell Medical
College. He became more deeply involved in the project while on
a postgraduate fellowship with the famed immunologist Robert Good,
formerly director of the Sloan-Kettering Research Institute. By
the mid-1980s he had reviewed 1,306 of Kelley's case histories which
had not been previously reviewed. By 1987 he was using the basic
Kelley program on his own patients.
This history exposes the sad consequences that can result from
political suppression of any medical procedure. Had Dr. Kelley received
the degree of tolerance that Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs are now experiencing,
even as he was coming to the end of his work in the mid-1980s, surely
the chances would have been greater that he would have been allowed
to publish these case histories. Consider the consequences for victims
of pancreatic cancer alone. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma killed 27,800
people in 1996 (the last year of good records). With the roughly
15-year delay we have now experienced since Kelley stopped and Gonzalez
and Isaacs made their report, we can now estimate that more than
400,000 people might have had better quality of life and longer
life span after their diagnosis of inoperable pancreatic adenocarcinoma.
This is a heavy burden for the government bureaucrats and prejudiced
mainstream physicians to bear. Maybe that's why the system finally
decided to give Gonzalez and Isaacs a chance to prove the worth
of their program.
I had positive, hands-on experience with Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs
during the formative years of their program. During the early '90s
I was supervising quality control for the company that provided
the many specialized dietary supplements and ancillary products
to the patients in the program. I gained a very good impression
of the program, especially after doing my own review of the 25 best
case histories that Gonzalez and Isaacs had provided to the government's
cancer experts to review. I observed that they were highly professional
about their practice and they imposed rigorous standards for my
client to meet concerning the purity and potency of the supplements.
The proteolytic enzymes especially had to be prepared to very high
potency under strict organic conditions. Other commercially available
proteolytic enzyme products are unlikely to match the Gonzalez-Isaacs
enzymes and cancer patients should be clear that they cannot expect
to self-medicate with such products off the street.
The trial to come will be conducted at Columbia University's College
of Physicians and Surgeons. They are currently recruiting between
70 and 90 newly-diagnosed pancreatic adenocarcinoma patients (Stages
II, III or IV) for the study, half of whom will be given the best
conventional chemotherapy currently available and the other half
placed on the Gonzalez-Isaacs program. The patients must be 18-65
years old and not have received chemo- or radiotherapy prior to
entering this trial. A crucial feature of the trial is that the
nutrition-only group will actually be seen and managed by Gonzalez
and Isaacs, rather than by physicians who don't know as much about
nutrition and may harbor biases against this type of cancer management.
While the trial proceeds Gonzalez and Isaacs will continue to offer
their lifesaving program for patients with other kinds of cancers.
I've recommended this program to friends of mine and there is no
doubt in my mind that if I am diagnosed with cancer, this is where
I will go. The program is not a cure for cancer; they're the first
to state that after a patient decides he's cured and stops the program,
the cancer is likely to come back. But patients who go into remission
and stay on the program have a good chance to stay in remission
for a long time - the case histories indicate for as many years
as they can maintain the discipline that the program requires.
Readers with pancreatic cancer interested in being considered for
inclusion in this upcoming trial may contact the office of the principal
investigator, Dr. John Chabot, who is vice chairman of the Department
of Surgery at the Columbia University College of Physicians, by
calling 212-305-9468 (Michelle Gabay). Please do not try to contact
the Gonzalez practice directly. They do have a Web site available
to provide general information: www.dr-gonzalez.com. I wish all
the best to Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez and Dr. Linda Isaacs for their
dedication, staying power and wonderful accomplishment of bringing
us to the brink of nontoxic cancer management at the outset of the
21st century.
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