Dr Nicholas Gonzalez has a clinic in New York and treats cancer patients with a cancer diet Therapy that includes pancreatic enzymes and a host of vitamins and natural compounds as part of a total cancer nutrition package. He also has Clinical Trials behind his cancer diet therapy.

The Pancreas Strikes Back

In ´The Coming Cancer Cure´  Chris Woollams explores the Beard, Kelley and Gonzalez therapies in an extract from his new book, Conventional Cancer Cures - What´s the Alternative? *

Dr Nicholas Gonzalez has been investigating nutritional approaches to cancer and other diseases since 1981 and has been in practice in New York since 1987. He has worked with Dr Linda lsaacs since 1985. Uniquely, the National Cancer Institute is sponsoring and monitoring a full three phase clinical trial on the clinic´s work. For the test they have chosen to study one of the hardest cancers to treat, pancreatic cancer.

Cancer of the pancreas is rarely curable and five-year survival rates are only 4 per cent in the USA.

Cancer of the pancreas is rarely curable and five-year survival rates are only 4 per cent in the USA

The $1.4 million trial is supported NIH´s National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. NIH and NCCAM are collaborating to ensure this trial is conducted with the proper scientific rigour. Why the fuss?

Gonzalez has developed an approach to pancreatic cancer using pancreatic enzymes, which have cancer-killing properties. This work originates from Edinburgh University in the early twentieth century, and Gonzalez´ interest was heightened during his period of work with William Kelley DDS, who developed a general cancer treatment and recorded it in a book called "One Answer to Cancer".

The 5-year trial uses a nutritional therapy of supplements (from vitamins to animal glandular products), plus coffee enemas and pancreatic enzymes on 90 people with Grade II, III and IV pancreatic cancers. In the earlier tests submitted in 1993 to the NC, Gonzalez had treated a variety of cancers in a variety of patients. The NCI felt the results were not clear-cut. So they worked on a study just with pancreatic cancer patents, and incredibly patients on the Gonzalez regime lived on average 17.5 months - or three times longer than those taking conventional chemotherapy. So this is political dynamite.

Dr. John Beard

In 1906 a Scottish embryologist Dr John Beard proposed that pancreatic enzymes represented the body´s main defence against cancer.

First he noticed that in the womb, the placenta stopped growing on the precise day that the pancreas of the foetus became active and started to secrete its own enzymes (around day 56).

Since there was no logic to a foetus needing pancreatic enzymes for digestion - nutrition is provided via the placenta in a pre-digested form - he concluded pancreatic enzymes might have another function.

Orally digested pancreatic enzymes are, in fact, acid stable

Beard also noted that placental cells (trophoblast cells) looked somewhat like cancer cells and hypothesized that if pancreatic enzymes could stop placental growth maybe they could do it with cancer cells too.

He then took trypsin (a pancreatic enzyme) and injected it into mouse sarcomas noting a tumour regression in every case. At the time Beard believed the enzymes had to be injected to bypass the stomach´s hydrochloric acid, but in recent years it has been demonstrated that orally digested pancreatic enzymes are, in fact, acid stable.

In fact, Beard developed what is called the ´Trophoblast Theory of Cancer´. The theory runs that some undifferentiated stem cells can be stimulated by oestrogen to form "healing cells" in normal animals. These cells act as a normal part of the healing process in animals. The other time is in the development of the placenta.

However, at the end of their action, sometimes the trophoblasts are not ´switched off´, and continue to produce more and more undifferentiated cells.

In some theories the body does not then attack these through the immune system because the cells are basically cells of the host anyway. In other theories the cells protect themselves by forming a protein coat around them, preventing the immune system from recognising them.

Beard believed pancreatic enzymes could attack the cells enabling the immune system to recognise and neutralise them

Either way, Beard believed pancreatic enzymes like trypsin or chymotrypsin could attack the cells, enabling the immune system to recognise them and neutralise them.

Foetal cancer, where the foetal pancreas has not developed property by day 56 and so produces no enzymes, is the most malignant of all cancers. Furthermore some cancers develop from injury or shocked tissue, believed to be a result of healing cells not fully differentiating.

In 1911 Dr Beard published The Enzyme Therapy of Cancer, but after his death in 1923 the theory was basically forgotten, especially with the advent of Marie Curie and her radiation work.

Dr W D Kelley

Gonzalez himself became interested in this theory when he was at Cornell University Medical School in 1981. Gonzalez had met a Dr William Donald Kelley, a dentist, who had actually been treating cancer patients for 20 years. As part of his fourth year´s work he reviewed the work of Kelley, a man much attacked by the establishment for his theories, and this turned into a formal 2-year research project. In this Gonzalez reviewed 50 of Kelley´s patients initially given a poor prognosis but all of whom enjoyed long term survival and cancer regression with Kelley´s regime.

Gonzalez then thoroughly analysed 22 patients, all of whom had visited Kelley between 1974 and 1982 with pancreatic cancer. He interviewed those still alive, relatives of the decreased and obtained full medical records.

It showed that Kelley´s nutritional and enzyme approach had delivered results far beyond those of orthodox medicine

Despite a thorough 5-year research study, the report was met with scorn and ridicule because, of course, it showed that Kelley´s nutritional and enzyme approach had delivered results far beyond those of orthodox medicine.

The Kelley Approach

Kelley believed each of us has their own personal metabolic code. His aim was to find this unique metabolism and stimulate it. Kelley took the work of Beard and theorised that the formation of cancer was clear. Excess female hormones were responsible for changing a stem cell into a trophoblast cell. In simple English, this means that cancer is the growth of normal tissue, but at the wrong time and in the wrong place. It progresses because of a lack of cancer digesting enzymes in the body and Kelley believed the pancreas, through its enzymes, was the primary cancer fighter in the body. So his solution was to get pancreatic enzymes to the cancer site and inhibit the growth, but control the rate of attack, otherwise toxins would flood the body and cause problems elsewhere. Kelley´s treatment was divided into five parts:

Kelley monitored a patient´s progress using his own Kelley Malignancy System. Over a 20-year period, he reputedly treated 455 patients with 26 different cancers and claimed excellent results.

In 1986, probably due to endless criticism and pressure, Kelley retired. However, Gonzalez took up the mantle in 1987. By July 1993 the then Associate Director for Cancer Therapy at the NCI invited him to present his work. What they saw proved interesting on a number of different cancers.

What they saw proved interesting on a number of different cancers

Pancreatic cancer was chosen for formal trials because the prognosis is so poor and so results could be obtained more noticeably and quickly. To put it in context, at the same time as the Gonzalez preliminary trial, 126 patients were treated with the FDA approved drug gemcitabine. None lived past 19 months. On the original Gonzalez regime, despite eight of his 11 patients starting out with Grade IV disease, five of the 11 survived 24 months, two actually surviving more than 48 months!

The Gonzalez Therapy

In fact, Gonzalez treats virtually all cancers and patients with MS to chronic fatigue. Each treatment protocol is individually developed. The therapy is complex and divided into three parts:

The supplements may number 120 - 175 per day, and are again tailored to the individual, including vitamins, minerals and trace elements. The aim is to improve overall metabolic function with nutrients. Every patient also takes large quantities of freeze-dried porcine pancreatic enzymes, which Gonzalez believes provide the anti-cancer activity.

Detoxification is essential as patients do go through a healing crisis and develop flu-like symptoms. Coffee enemas are used twice per day. Coffee enemas cause symptom relief for almost all patients.

Gonzalez doesn´t just want to cure people. He wants his work properly tested and FDA approved. If the tests prove positive, he then wants his work included in orthodox mainstream medicine.

Gonzalez wants his work properly tested and FDA approved

An interesting postscript to Beards theories was provided in 1995 when Professor Hernan ,Acevedo and his associates showed that ´the synthesis and statement of LCG is a common biochemical denomination of cancer´. Acevedo found LCG present in 85 different cancers examined.

So what is LCG? When a stem cell is stimulated by oestrogen it should produce a trophoblast according to Beard. A trophoblast in turn releases a hormone called chorionic gonado trophin (LCG). Pregnancy tests usually pick up on LCG in the blood, but a similar and much more sensitive test could detect LCG produced by cancer cells. If such a test could be developed - a sort of super pregnancy test kit - we would have a cheap and less invasive way to detect cancer via the urine.

(Apparently there is indeed now a test for a similar hormone HCG, human chorionic gonadotrophin (not LCG).  An American Laboratory called  American Metabolic Laboratories in Hollywood, Florida does this test and measures HCG in both blood and urine. A result greater than zero indicates active cancer. The blood test does present false positives though and the urine test is taken as a fail safe. A negative in the urine suggests any positive result in the blood test is a false positive. The test requires blood serum and urine shipped express.)

Interestingly when I was speaking on my UK tour, a lady told the room that she had felt so ill she thought she might be pregnant and did a test which was positive. It was only when she went to the doctor she found she had cancer instead.

Either way it looks as though Beard´s theory over 100 years ago has great merit. So why then is not more work underway? Could it be that pancreatic enzymes are cheap, or no drugs are required? Or could it be that no one receives a Nobel Prize for work that is 100 years old? Worse, when we contacted UK vitamin manufacturers to see if we could buy pancreatic enzymes we were told by a leading company that their sale was banned in the UK.

* Conventional Cancer Cures - What´s the Alternative? covers the best alternative treatment from all around the world. To order your copy now - Telephone 01280 815166.