The conspiracy deepens.
What conspiracy? You ask. Haven’t you heard? Big pharma is out killing alternative medicine doctors! Or at least that’s what you’ll be told if you venture towards the deep dark underbelly of quack websites. Up until now, the most prominent “victim” was autism quack, Jeff Bradstreet, who, according to police, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest in the woods of North Carolina but who, according to antivaccine advocates and “autism biomed” quacks, must have been assassinated by a big pharma black ops team. Or something. After all, as we know, the FDA had raided his clinic the day before, and it looked as though his empire of alternative medical autism treatments was about to fall. He might even have been facing jail time. As much as I feel for his family (suicide truly sucks), when it comes to Jeff Bradstreet, the main thing that saddens me about his suicide is that he will never face justice now.
But Bradstreet is not alone. If you listen to über-quack Joe Mercola’s significant other, Erin Elizabeth over at HealthNutNews.com, you’ll find that there have been at least five alternative health practitioners who have died recently, allegedly under suspicious circumstances, and that there are five more missing. The most recent “casualty” of this big pharma black ops is Baron Holt, a 33 year old chiropractor, who died suddenly on Father’s Day. Naturally, Elizabeth is “terrified” for Joe Mercola’s safety. Who wouldn’t be?
Then, just a couple of days ago, a doctor who has been featured on this blog on multiple occasions for his cancer quackery, Nicholas Gonzalez, died suddenly on July 21. The news was announced first the day after his death by Ty Bollinger, someone whom I really need to do a post on some day given his promotion of bogus cancer cures:
It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I write this memorial tribute for one of the greatest medical doctors of all time.
The world has lost a true hero….
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, a prominent alternative cancer doctor, died last night of an apparent heart attack at his home in New York City. Dr. Gonzalez was probably the world’s foremost expert on cancer, often recommended by other alternative doctors as the “go-to doctor” with the best results for supposedly “terminal” cancers like pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Nick was my friend. He loved helping people with cancer. He loved sharing his knowledge about how to treat cancer; and he loved talking about God and discussing Biblical topics as well as politics and current affairs.
After we became friends last year, he sent me several books, including a Companion Bible. We shared the same Christian faith, the same distrust of the “mainstream media,” and the same desire to spread the truth about cancer.
My condolences go to the family and, yes, even to Ty Bollinger. The sudden and unexpected death of a loved one is always devastating. However, it is inaccurate to characterize Nicholas Gonzalez as a “pioneer” in anything medical, other than cancer quackery. As you might recall, Gonzalez was best known for his claim that he could treat advanced pancreatic cancer (and a lot of other incurable malignancies) with a regimen that strongly resembled the Gerson protocol and, more closely, the variant of the Gerson protocol advocated by William Kelley.
Basically, like the Kelley protocol, the Gonzalez protocol was based on a belief in “detoxification” as a cure for cancer and the cause of cancer being a deficiency in pancreatic enzymes. Like the Kelley and Gerson protocols, the Gonzalez protocol involved frequent coffee enemas, which he rationalized as causing the smooth muscle in the bile ducts to relax, thus allowing “toxins”—isn’t it always “toxins”—into the small intestine through the common bile duct. Also, like the Gerson and Kelley protocols, the Gonzalez protocol involved taking lots of supplements and pancreatic enzyme capsules, up to 150 pills a day, as well as a vegetarian diet. Where the Gonzalez protocol differed from the Kelley protocol is that Gonzalez dispensed with the spiritual components and the neurologic “stimulation” advocated by Kelley. Also, Gonzalez would perform hair analysis and determine from that the patients’ “nutritional, mineral, and biochemical patterns and clinical status.” Based on this, he would determine a “hair analysis CT test score” and taylor the patient’s diet of “all-natural poison-free food” to prevent new tissue intoxication and to reestablish the body’s balance. Like Gerson and Kelley, Gonzalez claimed miraculous cures of advanced cancer and much better survival rates than anything conventional oncology could claim.
The main reason that Gonzalez became famous outside of alternative health circles is that he was one of the cancer quacks who craved legitimacy, like Stanislaw Burzynski. He actually published a case series in 1999 comparing eleven patients with advanced pancreatic cancer treated with his protocol with historical controls and concluding that his patients did much better. This tiny, poorly designed single arm case series was riddled with selection bias, questions about the correctness of diagnoses in several patients, and numerous other deficiencies that called into doubt the promising results reported. In spite of these problems, the NCI funded a randomized trial of the Gonzalez protocol to the tune of $1.4 million. The trial ran into trouble immediately with randomization, clinical trial ethics, and a lot of other issues. When the results were finally published in 2009, it was a disaster for Gonzalez. Patients with advanced pancreatic cancer treated with the Gonzalez protocol did significantly worse than those treated with conventional chemotherapy, a result that led me to characterize the protocol as worse than useless. Gonzalez’s only response was a litany of disingenuous complaints, the pharma shill gambit, and special pleading. He remained a believer and even said after Steve Jobs’ death that “if only he had come to see me first” he might have lived.
Gonzalez was at least as high profile as Jeff Bradstreet, just in a different area of alternative medicine, but his death is clearly way less suspicious than that of Bradstreet. Of course, Bradstreet’s suicide doesn’t appear that suspicious to anyone but conspiracy cranks, either, but what’s so unusual about a guy in his late 60s dying of a sudden cardiac arrest? Sadly, nothing. It’s an all too common cause of death. None of this stops everybody’s favorite alt-med conspiracy wonk, Mike Adams, from speculating (while claiming he’s not speculating, of course!) about a conspiracy:
With respect to Dr. Gonzalez and those close to him, there are certain details of his passing which shall remain private. The things we believe are appropriate to share publicly include these facts:
- He passed away alone, and his body was discovered some time after his passing.
- An autopsy has not yet been performed. We are not aware of whether an autopsy is being requested.
- Everyone close to him is shocked of his passing, knowing that he was in excellent health.
There is currently no evidence of foul play in his death. I am aware that a number of people are reporting on what appears to be a sudden wave of seemingly mysterious deaths among alternative medicine doctors and industry pioneers. There will no doubt be a tremendous amount of speculation that asks whether Dr. Gonzalez has somehow been deliberately killed. Such speculation is entirely premature, as none of us are aware of any facts which would support such a notion at this time.
We can’t rule it out, but there is presently no evidence that foul play is to blame here.
Out of respect for the partners, family members and close friends of Dr. Gonzalez who are devastated by this tragic loss of such an extraordinary human being, I am personally asking the natural health community to allow these people the time and space to grieve this devastating loss without the interference of trying to deal with “assassination theories” and similar discussions.
In other words, give it a few days, and Adams will be spewing conspiracy theories about assassination, even though it appears pretty clear that Gonzalez was just unfortunate enough to die alone of a sudden cardiac arrest. Indeed, Adams makes it explicit by following up the passage above with, “There will be an appropriate time for that analysis, and I will be personally involved in the investigation.”
I can hardly wait.
His readers, however, can’t wait. Just scroll through the comments, and you’ll find speculation about the neuromuscular blocker succinylcholine as a way to mimic a heart attack, while another mentions that the CIA “has admitted they have a frozen dart that will put someone in cardiac arrest.” There is also considerable consternation expressed over Gonzalez dying suddenly even though he was claimed to be in perfect health. Unfortunately, sometimes ventricular fibrillation or another fatal arrhythmia is the first manifestation of heart disease.
So, I guess Gonzalez is number 6.
I’m sure Erin Elizabeth will soon be adding him to her list, along with Baron Holt, who she notes, quoting an account of his death, “had been struggling with recent health issues, none were thought to be life threatening by loved ones.” Sadly, families are frequently wrong in their assessments of these things.
So, according to Elizabeth, here’s the toll thus far, not counting Nicholas Gonzalez:
- June 19th, 2015 – Dr Bradstreet, formerly of Florida, now practicing in Georgia was found with a gunshot wound to his chest in a river.
- June 21st, 2015 – Father’s Day: We have two dead chiropractors, Dr. Baron Holt and Dr. Bruce Hedendal (both reported to be fathers), in Florida; both found on the East Coast, both were presumably healthy, and both were described as very fit. We still have no cause of death listed in the articles we can find on either one. A few people have contacted me about Dr. Hedendal, 67, but admit that they were surprised by his death and still find it shocking.
- June 29th, 2015 – The beloved holistic Theresa Sievers MD was found murdered in her home. Also, On this very same day, June 29th, Jeffrey Whiteside MD a pulmonologist went missing , vanishing when he simply “walked away” . On the same day, Dr. Whiteside, known for his successful treatment of lung cancer, disappeared in Door County, Wisconsin, while vacationing with family.
- July 3rd, 2015 – Dr. Patrick Fitzpatrick MD goes missing.
- July 1oth, 2015 – Lisa Riley DO (Doctor of Osteopathic medicine) is found in her home with a gunshot wound to her head.
If you want to get an idea of just how far Elizabeth is reaching, check this out:
Interestingly, Dr. Holt (33), lived in North Carolina; which is the state where Dr. Bradstreet’s body (the first doctor to be found) was discovered two days prior. Dr. Holt was visiting Jacksonville, Florida, though, when he died there. Dr. Bradstreet (see story #1) was living in Georgia, at the time of his death; and before that, he lived in the neighboring state of Florida.
And there were a lot of coincidences between John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, too! I mean, seriously, those “coincidences” that Elizabeth dredges up are pretty pathetic. Even the birthday problem is more convincing. I wonder how hard she had to look to find them.
Here’s the problem. There are currently approximately 320 million people living in the US. When you look at large numbers with a conspiratorial eye, you can always find small series individual cases of people belonging to a group (alternative medicine practitioners, for instance) who appear to share some trait in common if that trait is defined vaguely enough. For instance, there are approximately 60,000 chiropractors and close to a million physicians in the US, some proportion of the latter being into alternative medicine, and the most that the alt med conspiracy mongers can come up with are three violent deaths (Drs. Bradstreet, Theresa Sievers, and Lisa Riley) and two—now three—deaths from what are almost certainly natural causes in a month. That’s not very many, and very prone to the clustering illusion. One thing for sure, now that cranks like Erin Elizabeth have latched on to this conspiracy theory they’ll never let it go.
It would be entertaining if it didn’t serve their paranoid narrative so well.
485 replies on “Nicholas Gonzalez: The latest victim of the pharma assassins?”
I’m not sure how the conspiracy theorists are going to explain away the arrest of Riley’s husband for her murder.
@shay,
Oh that is too easy. Of course Big Pharma was worried it would be too obvious if the same hit man squad took out all the altmed doctors so they found out which loved ones could be bribed, blackmailed or brainwashed (probably with microchips embedded in the Prozac) into doing one or more of the hits on the list.
This could be the inspiration for a great mystery novel or medico-political thriller. I’d read it at the beach.
what’s really puzzling is why, if the conspirator’s have the ability to commit murder either undetectably (in the case of Drs. Holt and Hedendal) or make the murder appear to be the result of cardiac arrest (in the case of Dr. Gonzalez) they sometimes find it necessary to it their target over the head with a blunt instrument instead.
“The assassination drugs? I thought YOU brought the assassination drugs!” (looks around, rummages through tool box) “Here, try this instead.”
KayMarie — big pharma actually went to the trouble of getting Mr Riley implicated in the shooting of a former girlfriend, then, so the cops had a previous history to work from.
Kind of like how George Soros managed to time travel back to Hawaii in 1961 to insert a fake birth announcement in the Honolulu newspapers, I guess.
@shay: No need for time travel, the Illuminati plan for the long term.
@JGC: Oh, that one’s easy. The different MOs are a red herring to throw off the investigation, like the Hercule Poirot case where the murderer was both left-handed and right-handed. Besides, if there were too many suspiciously convenient “heart attacks” in too short a time, people would realize that something was amiss, so you’d have to throw in the occasional garden variety murder or apparent suicide. And if there is nothing suspicious about a death, that is itself suspicious.
(In case it isn’t obvious, that’s not what I think, but dollars to donuts somebody out there actually does think this.)
Vulture much? Having researched cancer in total, meaning the gold standard allopathic teachings on cause and treatment as well as the many alternative views, I find your comments to be mere name calling. Saying something is not scientific is not being scientific. Or thorough. I had no notion about the topic going in as a writer whose mother in law had so confusingly and quickly wasted away to death in what I now know to be a pretty typical timeline of a year to a year and a half after diagnosis when treated with the current standard of care for cancer. It just didn’t make sense to me. So I began to research and discovered that there even was an alternative. In addition to allopathic books – although the selection was curiously small – I read James Beard’s book, all of Kelley’s books and Gonzalez’s books and that’s just on the metabolic therapies. I also read about many of the others. I am deeply saddened by Nicholas Gonzalez’s death. If there is one truth in this world that I have come to know is that it takes the titanic ship that is the mainstream a tragically long time to turn around: asbestos, vitamin C for scurvy, lobotomies, the world being round, lead pipes, cigarettes, Nazi crematoriums, Vioxx, Semmelweis etc. mortally etc. How does one know when one is confronted in the present moment with the hindsight that people will be shaking their heads to decades from now, saying, “how did they not know that?” That is the interesting question to me. Ever read about Marie Curie and her hubby? Radium bath salts anyone? How ’bout Radium for your acne? Marie was known to carry vials of radium in her lab coat pockets. If you do decide to read up on the french dwelling Nobel winners and want to consult their original notebooks, better invest in a great hazmat suit. Are you really sure you’re not on the world being flat side of the tracks?
Why is the actual importance of these cranks always ginned up to cartoonish extremes?
“Such speculation is entirely premature”
I had difficulty not spewing just-consumed fish taco out my nose reading this Mike Adams line.
Coming from the guy who routinely leaps into speculation about pharmaceuticals being responsible for celebrity deaths and murderous assaults, it’s as if Donald Trump started giving out advice on being cool-headed and respectful.
I’m not a psychologist, but I seem to recall that the first stage of grief is denial. Given that denial is the bedrock of alternative medicine, it’s not surprising that alt-med types would fixate on and rationalize their denial rather than moving on through the rest of the stages as a healthy person would (let me see how many I can remember without looking it up…I wanna say anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.) So come to think of it, they probably will/have progressed to anger as well.
Did anyone notice that Mikey ended his post with a plug for his new ( crappy) search engine?
( paraphrase) Learn more about Dr Gonzalez on Good Gopher.
I’ll leave it to Leela
Dr Gonzalez was a colleague of Null, lived in NYC and often appeared in the woo-meister’s films. I haven’t heard Grand Master Woo discuss his death yet but I imagine it will include full-tilt conspiracy mongering.
New readers of Orac may not have ever heard me narrate the set piece Null rolls out for his entranced audience so I will recount what I’ve heard many times with various permutations :
He was walking in downtown NY, years ago near Wall Street after finishing his broadcast when he was approached by a heavy, bald man- who was sweating profusely while crammed into a tiny yellow sports car – ” I need to speak with you”, said Fatty, urging the athletic nutritionist to get into his tiny car.
“No”, said the health choice advocate who agreed instead to talk around the corner where a police station was located. So they met there.
The obese man, dripping with sweat, confessed that he had been employed by Important Interests to tail the Truth Teller and investigate him, looking for dirt and illegality. He was being set up- Black Ops interfered with his career, deals fell through mysteriously. Shady ladies at parties were paid to entice him into decadence. The Dark Side, in full force, tried to get him on ANYTHING to dissolve his influence over the People.
But Heavy Boy felt the pangs of conscience because he could find absolutely nothing to report to his keepers- this Dr was a straight arrow: pure as the driven snow, he never consorted with those filthy tarts who were throwing themselves at his magnificent frame, he never did anything shifty or criminal. He was a shining light of Goodness and Truthiness.
So the Bad Apple left him with a warning- watch where you walk at night, be suspicious of women who offer you love and don’t be surprised if your career stalls whenever it seems ripe for blastoff. “You’re on their list. Be careful”.
As TBruce notes, woo conspiracies sound like cutrate detective novels and mysteries and as a matter of fact, at least two anti-vaxxers have written detective tales/ mysteries about the dirty dealings involving vaccines and autism ( Stagliano and Conte IIRC) both published by Skyhorse.
And if that were Orac had done you’d have the beginnings of an argument.
Unfortunately, Orac went on to discuss the clinical evidence demonstrating that far from being effective and beneficial the Gonzalez protocol generates outcomes far inferior to those obtained by conventional science-based chemotherapy.
Re: your research on metabolic therapies, what credible evidence indicates that any of those you researched generate outcomes equivalent to or superior to those which can be ealized by standard of care cancer therapies (e.g., chemo and/or radiation therapy)?
Another conspiracy is that someone is killing alternative practitioners to make it look like there’s a conspiracy to kill practitioners to hide the fact that the killer just wanted one particular practitioner dead, whose death would be immediately linked to the killer. Classic misdirection. Also the general theme of an Agatha Christie novel (The A.B.C. Murders, IIRC).
Peoples’ suspicions that something is up though is understandable. I’d be suspicious too if the deaths were of, say, climate scientists, or evolutionary biologists, or doctors known to provide abortions. It would take a bit of discipline to sit back and view things more dispassionately. Of course, probably far more alt-practitioners than any of the other example groups so a similar cluster in those smaller example groups may raise more suspicions due to sample size alone.
There’s an article on this at snopes.com, not only pointing out that it’s easy to see meaning in random clusters of events, but that one of the cases of “vanished on June 26” is of someone known to have been seen on July 2. So, maybe this person did die, probably of natural causes, during his most recent solo hike, or maybe he’ll show up tomorrow and be astonished that anyone was worried.
Dr Whiteside’s body has been found, yesterday apparently. A .22 cal handgun was found nearby, but no cause or manner of death listed as yet. Autopsy pending.
If Erin Elizabeth was so afraid for herself and Mercola, then why is she writing about it all over the internet? Wouldn’t she want to go into hiding or lie low at least?
I mean, if I thought I uncovered a sinister plot to kill people in my profession, and I was a very prominent name, the last thing I would want to do would be to call attention to myself.
To the extent I can judge her narcissism from her Facebook posts and blogs, calling attention to herself is the #1 priority of Erin Elizabeth and people like her.
Dan Andrews @16 — Tragically, abortion doctors have indeed been murdered, though as far as I know there’s no systematic conspiracy to do so — instead, antiabortion zealots whip up a frenzy of anger and hatred, with predictable results given the many heavily armed, unbalanced people in their audience. No elaborate conspiracy necessary.
So, maybe this person did die, probably of natural causes, during his most recent solo hike, or maybe he’ll show up tomorrow and be astonished that anyone was worried.
Or maybe that “solo hiking trip” is a cover story for some other activity he wants to keep quiet, like spending quality time with his mistress. This was the case with then-Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who claimed to be “hiking the Appalachian Trail” (on, as it tuned out, Naked Hiking Day) when he was in fact visiting a special friend in Buenos Aires. In Sanford’s case, local reporters in Columbia found out what he was really up to, and they were waiting for him at the customs exit in ATL when he returned to the US.
Evidently the Conspiracy does not regard Null, Adams or Mercola as threatening enough to require any action.
The problem with the Gonzalez protocol, gerson protocol, and others, is really in the coffee they use. Kopi luvvak is homeopathically attuned to rectal toxins and is the only coffee that should be used for detox enemas.
Bob, coffee is meant to be drunk. Any other use is a mortal sin.
Jeez, Now I see Suzanne Somers has even shared about her articles publicly. Once the celebrities latch on??? I”m not sure what will happen.
I will say this- if they were being murdered (well some are murdered I see) I’d be writing about it personally though not sure if that is her agenda.
@ herr doktor bimler:
But you see, herr doktor,, that is EXACTLY the point!
The Illuminati/ Powers-That-Be/ ‘Our Thing’/ PharmaCOM in this manner diminishes their authority to the public!
Followers might say, ” Oh Dr Gonzalez/ Dr Bradstreet are *muy importante* SO they got DONE IN! They were threatening! Those woo-meisters/ Andy must be not be so wonderful”
Thus, not being obvious targets is indeed targetting them.
remember that Big Boy in the Little Car….Black Ops work in mysterious ways!
Decaf coffee is meant to be poured quietly down the sink.
Thus, not being obvious targets is indeed targetting them.
Ah, I see. Any death of anyone who is not Mercola or Adams or Null could be part of the conspiracy to undermine those name’ credibility by not assassinating them.
Exactly.
Hegelian black ops. Cool.
Oh, Bob @23: I see what you did there.
While I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of Big Pharma Hit Squads, I can speculate on how such hypothetical squads would appear.
In most such companies, employees and contractors are required to don appropriate protective gear when conducting potentially hazardous tasks. The same would apply to the hit squads. The assassination process could also involve exposure to potentially infectious bodily fluids, particularly if victims are unvaccinated. This would require BL-2 or possibly BL-3 protection. depending upon the infection.
As for the weapon of choice, I have not found any really good weapons in the corporate catalog–there are lots of different types of culture media and chemicals, even a few tools which could serve as blunt instruments, but no guns. Splashing chemicals around is frowned upon and requires getting too close, so let’s forget that. There is one chemical capable of longer-range delivery which would be undetectable and quite biologically active, especially to homeopathists–30C or greater aqueous dilutions.
Therefore, if you see a bunch of people dressed in lab coats, wearing protective glasses, & gloves (not latex of course) armed with squirt guns filled with pure water–beware!
Wait. Mr. Null met a guy at a police station who proceeded to elucidate all the ways in which he was being targeted, and he didn’t even file a police report? Even though he and the man giving the evidence were right there?
What?
Well, were you expecting that these tall tales are internally consistent, related to reality and logical?
‘Fraid not.
I mean seriously, if such a person did exist would he go up to his target, describe his activities, praise him and warn him?
I do love noir movies but this story- as well as those dreamt up by Stagliano and Conte- would have been laughed out of theatres even in 1942.
Tales like this are merely another way to enshrine one’s grandiosity by contrast to the villain’s unsavory appearance and means of supporting himself.
Bradstreet must have been up to something that was really pretty exceptionally damning if it justifies this much shouting and pointing in other directions.
Although I suppose the suicide suggests that by itself.
The cause of some of the deaths could also be unhappy patients. In my country probably the most prominent neurosurgeon had to retire prematurely because of severe burns. It turned out he had been extorting patients.
@Kristina: Many years ago, I was a guest on a radio show with Mr Null. The topic was an herbal tea and extract popularized as a treatment for cancer. After stating that the cases of remissions were anecdotal, remained to be followed up, and that studies had yet to be performed to determine the effectiveness or lack thereof for either the tea or extract, off-air, he scolded me for raising such cautionary facts. If I so much as mentioned the lack of scientific research again on the show, he warned that I would be dropped from the interview, which begged the question of who was responsible the content of the program.
@Lighthorse: A Tea Shill! That explains it. Tea Shills know better than to trust the police with things like crime reports. After all, police drink GMO coffee, and are the sworn enemy of herbal tea.
@Questioner #8 They laughed at Einstein.
They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
So long, and thanks for playing!
Snopes must be part of the conspiracy as well.
http://m.snopes.com/2015/07/21/five-holistic-doctors-dead/
I was curious about the yearly mortality rate for U.S. MDs, both quack and non-quack, but wasn’t able to locate any stats. .
I did find:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/23/american-doctors-are-killing-themselves-and-no-one-is-talking-about-it.html
So 33 or so MDs are killing themselves every month and and an additional number are dying from natural causes.
Given this information, 5 quacks dying in 4 weeks doesn’t strike me as being out of the ordinary or indicative of a conspiracy being afoot.
The conspiracy nonsense likely adds to the feeling of importance that many anti-vaxers seem to crave and marketers like Mercola and Adams know this and profit from it.
I guess being an anti-vax warrior battling the evil of
SauronBig Pharma beats being a real world nobody that most folks cross the street to avoid.Remember the infamous “Clinton Death List” ?
In any field of endeavor there will be members of that field who die. It is a statistical inevitability that some of them will die of violent causes — accident, suicide or murder. So, if you play 6 degrees of Dr Mercola, you’ll no doubt find several who died under what the conspiracy-minded will label as “mysterious circumstances” . This is a statistical certainty — ask any insurance actuary, if you can get one to talk.
Just scroll through the comments, and you’ll find speculation about the neuromuscular blocker succinylcholine as a way to mimic a heart attack, while another mentions that the CIA “has admitted they have a frozen dart that will put someone in cardiac arrest.”
Sort of. What they have is a tetrodotoxin derived from the puffer fish. It causes paralysis. This strikes me as a funny accusation because in 1948 my dad was a post graduate chemist under contract with Bruce Halstead, for whom he extracted puffer fish poison from thousands of fish for the “agency.” The crystalline product was picked up for synthesis when he finished. My dad is 90 years old and I just asked him about it – all he will say is, “I still can’t say much about that . . .”
But but but…look at the “list” of quacks who have been deaded. If it hadn’t been for a more notable crank like Bradstreet, then I doubt anyone would have noticed the others and made a “gonnection”. I certainly haven’t heard of the others beside Bradstreet and Gonzalez and I’m up to my elbows in woo practitioners.
The Questioner has the most brilliant response on here.
What profit do you get from this name-calling and insulting writing? Do you have a following? Do pharmaceutical companies pay you? Does the government pay you?
@Ernie Gordon: A shared dietary supplement would be too simple.
I visited Bruce Halstead many years ago. In between his work on marine poisons for the government, he visited China where he became engrossed in the subject of medicinal plants. I’ll never forget the many rows of shelves displaying large bottles of dried herbal medicines interspersed with preserved marine animals. Looking back, the evidence-based pharmacological research he wanted to conduct on Chinese medicinal plants was not without merit.
When is this woman going to stop? If she keeps adding every doctor in the US who dies of homicide, suicide or who dies unexpectedly from a medical condition, she’s going to end up with a long list.
She’s including doctors who weren’t connected to holistic medicine in any way. Dr. Riley was an ER doctor, Dr. Schwartz was a gynecologist and Dr. Whiteside was a pulmonologist. Dr Holt, based on everything I read, was your average chiropractor with no controversial views that would put him on anyone’s hit list. Missing Dr. Fitzpatrick was an ophthalmologist. Dr. Sievers practiced “integrative” medicine but I saw no evidence of any controversy connected to her or a reason why she should be a target. There are logical explanations for these deaths but who wants logic when you have a nice, juicy conspiracy theory to drive people to your website?
I see so many lies and half-truths on the internet – I usually just roll my eyes and move on but this one makes me very angry. This woman is clearly loving the attention she is getting from this nonsense; she brags about how she “broke” the story and how her website numbers are through the roof. How despicable is it to make a name for yourself by exploiting these tragic deaths?
She is not interested in the truth and has deleted comments about Lisa Riley’s husband being arrested for her murder. When someone calls her on it, she claims that she just now found out about it – which is a lie – or claims that he’s innocent and gets angry.
I didn’t realize she was Mercola’s wife. If he goes missing, someone might just cook up a conspiracy theory of their own.
@Beth Duggan – can’t you come up with something more original than the standard accusation about the author being on the payroll for Big Pharma or the government? Everyone who disagrees with you must be a shill for someone, right? It drives me crazy to see that every time!
Hey Big Pharma – show me the money! I promise I’ll split it with Orac!
@The Questioner: The dream of finding an effective treatment for malignancies where no one else had bothered to look is old one that continues to be applied by researchers to this day. Having studied the subject, I would suggest giving greater attention to the writings of those who are actively working in the field of tumor cell biology and making significant advances in the treatment of malignancies than the writings of those who have not provided evidence for effective treatments.
There are any number of promising areas to search. My personal favorite and the source of some of the most effective treatments to date is plant-derived substances. Many have been found to virtually cure laboratory animals of experimental tumors; however, relatively few have proven to be sufficiently safe or effective in humans. Nonetheless, despite what you may have been told or read, chemotherapy is far less toxic than in years gone by. I know patients who have recently gone through courses of chemotherapy without significant side effects or hair loss. Thirty years ago, the side effects were usually horrendous and the survival rates were dismal. Granted, little progress has been made against certain types of malignancies, but for others the rates have dramatically improved. Reducing side effects while improving rates of remission is the primary goal of any research oncologist you care to mention. I would add that very often, it is not big pharma, but little pharma where the breakthroughs are found. In turn, the new treatments are brought to bigger companies with the funds to take their discoveries beyond the initial stages of clinical research.
The Questioner @8: “..it takes the titanic ship that is the mainstream a tragically long time to turn around: asbestos, vitamin C for scurvy, lobotomies, the world being round, lead pipes, cigarettes, Nazi crematoriums, Vioxx, Semmelweis etc. mortally etc. ”
That statement shows you should do a lot more questioning. For instance, the Greeks had worked out that the world was round by the 3rdC BC and the cause of scurvy had been worked out by the 16thC. As for the rest of your list, I’ll leave it as an educational exercise for you to work out which ones are popular myths.
It is also possible that Erin Elizabeth is merely setting the scene for when she vanishes mysteriously, along with large amounts of Mercola’s money, never to be seen again.
you’ll find speculation about the neuromuscular blocker succinylcholine as a way to mimic a heart attack
About as much as morphine mimics the effects of a lightning strike.
@ Lighthorse
Halstead was well respected as an expert in marine poisons, also known for conducting meticulous research. Interesting that he branched out into medicinal plants. I wonder what became of his research? Was it woo-based or science based?
GCMAF The real reason? =====> http://www.bodymindsoulspirit.com/motive-disappearing-dead-holistic-physicians/
Perhaps the author of this article has their own agenda? I would personally believe the above over some guy saying it isn’t true…..and not providing complete information. Does this author know anything about GCMAF…..or the fact that this is the NUMBER ONE item the search warrant referenced? I think this story is very incomplete.
I will continue to do research, but would encourage others to do the same. This article is not the truth or this search warrant would have been mentioned. Apparently GCMAF is the reason they all died…..
This website is full of quack information and quack garbage. This website cannot be trusted since it is a QUACK website.
@ #55
This warrant and GcMAF are discussed in this post:.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2015/07/17/gcmaf-autism-and-the-apparent-suicide-of-an-autism-quack/
“Apparently GCMAF is the reason they all died…..”
The dead guys were treated with this crud? Mystery solved.
Marie – Was Dr. Gonzalez also served with a search warrant? Got a link for that?
@#55 No GcMAF wasn’t the reason they all died.
”For example, one doctor set up a company in Guernsey Island that markets containers allegedly containing the material. We bought one of his containers, and couldn’t find the molecule in it. We’re keeping our distance from these people. We just want to produce and test the material according to the rules” http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-cancer-treatment-developer-efranat-raises-45-million-1000987334 The company in Guernsey was First Immune/Immune Biotech. A Phase I with it is underway https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02052492
Worse still: ”Investigators from the MHRA carried out an unannounced inspection of a production site in Milton, Cambridgeshire, after the medicines regulator in Guernsey raised concerns in relation to the product. The blood plasma starting material being used to make this drug stated ‘Not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products’. It was concluded that the production site does not meet Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards and there are concerns over the sterility of the medicine being produced and the equipment being used. There are concerns that the product may be contaminated.” https://www.gov.uk/government/news/regulator-warns-against-gcmaf-made-in-unlicensed-facility-in-cambridgeshire
Are you just an ass or extremely naive. Watch a docu about operation Gladio. The docu/movie Dirty Wars speaking about JSOC and their killlist. The death/murder of over 100 scientists over the years dying in mysterious circumstances. Docu’s about how the secret police murder. Barrie Trower about microwaveweapons etc. etc. Many cancerpatients who were written off by regular medicine survived through alternative medicine and healthy eating. In the umbilical cord of a baby are over 200 toxins found. Are you dumb or just a troll.
It’s interesting how the “conspiracy” has evolved over the past few weeks. It started out as a purely antivax fantasy that Big Pharma was out to get opponents of SB277 because Bradstreet (who purported to cure “vaccine-damaged” children) happened to die under semi-mysterious circumstances shortly after the passage of SB277 – which is at least arguably an interesting coincidence, though you’d think the Pharma hit squad would have wanted to get him out of the way while the bill was being debated instead of waiting until it was a fait accompli. But now that the idea of “Big Pharma assassinations” has been introduced to the alt-med collective consciousness, the death of anyone who has any connection to alternative medicine, no matter how tenuous their connection to alt-med or mundane the circumstances of their death, gets woven into the conspiracy. Given that by chance alone there’s certain to be several such deaths per month for as long as alt-med exists, I wonder how long they can play this game before they get bored with it?
Still cynical about toxins, i suggest you read this. http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-study-falsely-claims-that-glyphosate-is-not-in-womens-breastmilk/?utm_source=Natural+Society&utm_campaign=3e75761971-Email_786_7_24_2015_GMO_labeling_Illegal&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f20e6f9c84-3e75761971-323142517
@#55 —
You’re right. That story is very incomplete.
What they’re not telling you is that GcMAF was being made out of blood plasma labelled ““Not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products”.”
IOW:
Dr Bradstreet might have been treating children for autism with a product that used blood plasma from HIV-positive donors, for all he knew. It wasn’t screened for human use.
That’s a very serious risk. You might not remember how many hemophiliacs died as a result of using HIV-tainted blood products back in the day. But the FDA evidently does.
The. deaths of the other doctors appear to me to be unrelated.
I hope that fills in the blanks a little for you.
When you use the term “quack” you automatically admit your ignorance of medicine, and science. Instead, why don’t you list scientific proof that these doctors are not effective- it’s because you can’t! You’re website is titled incorrectly- it should be titled blogsbyanidiot.com
ZOMG. Is… the Vatican involved too? IT’S JUST LIKE OPERATION PAPERCLIP. No, wait… IT’S JUST LIKE PROJECT MOCKINGBIRD.
Or the other way around, whatever.
Amy: “Instead, why don’t you list scientific proof that these doctors are not effective- it’s because you can’t!”
Except he did. Go back and read this bit, and be sure to click on the blue letters because they are links to more information, including discussions of some papers: ” The trial ran into trouble immediately with randomization, clinical trial ethics, and a lot of other issues. When the results were finally published in 2009, it was a disaster for Gonzalez. Patients with advanced pancreatic cancer treated with the Gonzalez protocol did significantly worse than those treated with conventional chemotherapy, a result that led me to characterize the protocol as worse than useless.”
It’s beyond sad that Dr Gonzalez passed before his protocol was validated in a fair trial. I knew him well as a patient for some 25 years and never have i known a man more brilliant or more dedicated.
I had metastatic cancer to the liver when I walked into his office in 1989 and here I am today. Of course I’m an N of 1 so i don’t count.
But to dismiss the trophoblastic theory of cancer without the slightest analysis, to ridicule his methods without any
effort at analyzing the science behind them, to dismiss his valid critique – requiring a 600 page book to lay out the disastrous management of the utterly flawed clinical trial – as special pleading and disingenuous is outrageous. There were so many fatal flaws in that trial that the results are meaningless. See
https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijcpr/v1-i1/1.pdf for a few of the irregularities.
I certainly would never subscribe to any conspiracy theory around his death. However there is little doubt in my mind, based on my many conversations with him that the many cruel and ignorant critiques of his work, along with the management of the trial wore heavily on the man, and may well have contributed to his demise.
What they’re not telling you is that GcMAF was being made out of blood plasma labelled ““Not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products”.”
IOW:
Dr Bradstreet might have been treating children for autism with a product that used blood plasma from HIV-positive donors, for all he knew. It wasn’t screened for human use.
More precisely, Noakes’ GcMAF business involved buying cheap blood plasma from the US, and having a mate of his (with previousl laboratory experience as a home-brewer) feed it through a chromatograph to extract a particular protein fraction of unknown composition.
This protein fraction went through a couple of weird subjective, magical tests — like seeing it re-write DNA and reverse oncogenesis in a test-tube (I am not making this up) — which was good enough for Noakes to call it “GcMAF”, albeit in nanogram quantities.
Did the product which Bradstreet was peddling actually contain any of the purported magic molecule? Didn’t matter to him.
In the umbilical cord of a baby are over 200 toxins found. Are you dumb or just a troll.
Now I understand. All these dead quacks were poisoned with umbilical cord.
I suppose getting strangled with umbilical cord is passe now.
I’m led to conclude that Gertrude has more than a passing familiarity with Herb:
“Respectful” Insolence my ass! You are a horrible person! I am so offended by everything you wrote! How can you call someone a “quack” when they have taken people from a death sentence of stage IV cancer to thirty-plus years later living in health and vitality? And who the hell are you, “Orac”???? Are you a doctor? Even a scientist? No just a blogger. You owe every single one of the deceased you mention an apology. Go to hell.
Gertrude has more than a passing familiarity with Herb:
Now now. Stupidity and incoherence are not always the result of marijuana.
What, if anything, does it mean that the (alleged) sterility to USP and Ph Eur sterility standards is “performed externally”?
If anyone is confused by the “goleic” that is talked about in the GcMAF websites:
The central group of medical scammers announced a few years ago that to work properly, their purported chemical needs to be mixed with olive oil (more specifically, with oleic acids). The oleic acids supposedly bind the magic molecule and stabilise its “intrinsically disordered domains” into the proper configuration. This was not, you understand, an admission that the plain GcMAF they had previously been selling didn’t work, more a case of “New, improved, works better than before.
This may also have been a reaction to the appearance of competition; anyone can cell a vial of pussy-looking fluid, call it “GcMAF”, and there’s no way of disproving the claim.
The discovery of the new wonder ‘Goleic’ product was reported in this poster:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z5pbU1vIXws/VQD93HEI0WI/AAAAAAAAQhw/dS0WZevzcG0/s1600/branca.JPG
[warning, contains eye-hurting tequila-hangover colour scheme]
In the same poster, the grifters claim that by using an off-the-shelf ultrasound scanner they can break down the blood-brain barrier and allow their product to reach brain tumours.
“the disastrous management of the utterly flawed (Gonzalez) clinical trial”
Yeah, like they sabotaged Burzynski. And Hoxsey. And Rene Caisse. And all those other times alt med cures were found to be invalid.
It’s remarkable how in _every single case_ cures were nowhere to be found because investigators made horrible errors, sabotaged the work, the patients didn’t do it right, Orac made a snarky remark etc. etc.
Herb,
Perhaps you could explain how specifically that clinical trial was so badly flawed that patients on chemotherapy lived three times longer and had a better quality of life than those on the Gonzalez protocol. The article you linked to does not explain this. Its main complaint is that patients who dropped out of the trial because they could not keep up with the Gonzalez protocol of taking tablets, juicing and taking coffee enemas were included in the statistics, but this is normal practice for clinical trials. It isn’t much use having a treatment that is so unpleasant or onerous that no one can tolerate it.
Gonzalez claimed his protocol was superior to conventional treatment of pancreatic cancer, putting forward a case series of 11 patients with mean survival of 25.2 months. In the clinical trial mean survival of the Gonzalez patients was 4.3 months, and those on chemotherapy 14 months. I struggle to see how the undoubted problems with the trial could lead to patients who were fairly well matched in terms of cancer stage and blood results having such different survival unless the Gonzalez protocol was in reality worse than useless.
the world is a safer place with Gonzalez gone
And the woo memorials for him are starting to pour in
“And no, Nick didn’t just treat cancer. He wasn’t just responsible for keeping stage 4 patients alive – thriving – under his care for years and even decades beyond their death sentence. He also resolved Lyme, chronic fatigue, and even a case I plan to publish for him, of end-stage diabetes treated to vitalism with a high-carbohydrate whole foods diet. I would sit in awe, my jaw literally agape, in his office reviewing his charts of cure after cure after cure.”
“Celebrating Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, A Legend In His Time”
Posted by Kelly Brogan MD
http://kellybroganmd.com/article/celebrating-dr-nicholas-gonzalez-legend-time/
“Agar,” perhaps “Gertrude” or “Herb” could help you out with the minimalistic competence test here.
There were so many fatal flaws in that trial that the results are meaningless. See
https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijcpr/v1-i1/1.pdf for a few of the irregularities.
It does not speak well of Colin A. Ross, M.D (of the Colin A. Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma) if he was reduced to extruding his magnum dopus as the first article in the first issue of one of the journal-shaped rubbish-bins operated by “Academicians’ Research Center”, a bunch of bottom-feeding Indian vanity-press grifters who are distinguished from other predatory publishers only by their unusual degree of illiteracy.
I should add that Colin A. Ross, M.D primarily specialises in Satanic Child Abuse — hence the Colin A. Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma — but he has interesting theories on CIA Mind Control, “brainwaves emitted through the eye”, and the non-fictional nature of the Manchurian Candidate. As well as his interesting theories on trophoblastic cancer.
The more I read of his work, the more disposed I am to credit his criticism of the Gonzalez clinical test.
Given the links to Colin A. Ross, and his expertise in the CIA creation of multiple personalities, I guess we should consider the possibility that Gertrude, Herb and Agar are all the same person but with alternative personalities.
I don’t think there’s a quack’s boot that Kelly Brogan hasn’t licked.
@Ernie Gordon: From my conversations with him, I wouldn’t call his research woo-based. Halstead was a reductionist who wanted to isolated active constituents from Chinese plants used is traditional medicine and translate Chinese texts into English to mine them for drug leads. Both goals were entirely laudable and ahead of their time. He had the cooperation of leading Chinese institutes and members of the Chinese government to move forward. At least one of his inspirations was the advent in the 1960s of camptothecin, an antitumor chemical isolated from a toxic tree (Camptotheca acuminata) used in crude form in traditional Chinese medicine in centuries past in the treatment of breast tumors.
At the time we met, he was working on a translation of the Ben Cao Gang Mu, an important text on Chinese materia medica from the 16th century, but that had never been fully translated into English. To this day, an accurate English translation does not exist.
If you thought that Mikey could not ever top his article on Gonzalez, you would have thought wrongly..
and he was certainly quick about it!
Today he goes even further and deeper into the irrational deep end with an entry that discusses the ways in which children are mistreated by leftists (whomever they might be)- organ harvest, abortion, vaccination ( leading to brain damage), forced chemotherapy, CPS abuse *y mucho mas*!
It’s a long rant and it is jam-packed with loads of horses’ manure, loose associations and pure balderdash..
I used to think that his madness/ stupidity/ inappropriateness was merely an act to court libertarian loonies who might buy his products BUT today I think that he just might believe his own nonsense.
There’s just TOO much going on there and he can’t seem to stop …
@Ernie: Please pardon the over-extension of italics in #86; it was not intentional.
Conspiracy skeptics get cancer, get chemo, and die quickly!
I’ve been lurking a lot, just enough time to read, but not to post lately. I do have to say that it was nice to see some truly unhinged, plucky trolls come charging in to fill up my AltMed Nutcase Bingo™ card in no time. Special kudos to “Agar” for his or her extra high dudgeon, righteous indignation and spirited flounce. Good times minions of the Scaly One. Good times.
Sad to see that so many people are being duped by our criminal government. Our black Muslim bastard in the white house is ruining our country. Another great man has been eliminated because he did not toe the part line. May all you assholes die of cancer.
A relative of mine was given 8 weeks to live with conventional therapy after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. Under Dr Gonzolez he was able to live a further 5 years of high quality life. I suspect you are being paid by Big Pharma in some way, or you would not be so rabid in your comments.
I also have met an individual with pancreatic cancer who cured it using Cannabis oil, and Chinese medicine. Who are you to say that alternative methods have no validity.
As a 12 year cancer survivor myself, I can clearly see the business of cancer is far too lucrative for any cures to be a desired outcome. Looking at the case of the American doctor who recently got caught poisoning his patients with chemo treatments they did not need, I say the patient should be able to speak for their successes, not a pharma pimp like you.
Regards
Conventional Corporate Medicine is a disgrace. Obviously alternative doctors that have the ability to cure disease are a serious financial threat to the Medical Mafia pill-pushers getting kickbacks from Big Pharma.
What the now-dead or missing alternative doctors apparently discovered was that Nagalase was intentionally being put in children’s vaccines in order to inhibit their natural immunity.
GcMAF was apparently able to help 85% of autistic children in a study that was done. Of course the study wasn’t funded by a huge pharmaceutical firm with lots of money changing hands, so the results really couldn’t be considered “scientific.”
@agar
It doesn’t speak well to your intelligence that you cannot figure out who Orac is, and your rant is utterly laughable. Thanks for the chuckles.
A comment for the ages from AoA’s Jeannette Bishop:
Dinner jacket. Breathe deeply. Like when you have a filling replaced without a local anaesthetic.
Erin of nutbag health also removes any posts pointing to the holes in her story and her unethical excuse for journalism.
Wow, did someone ordered a box of conspirationists?
I would love to hear why Steve Jobs failed to cure his pancreatic cancer with non-mainstream treatments. Someone like him should have had the financial means and information access to the true cure.
I have to admit, this one is new to me. Not the Pharma shill gambit, but the, what, CIA-shill gambit?
Need a bigger bingo card..
#56 – suggest you reset your web translator from Duck to English
Gertrude likes her false dichotomies:
Orac could be ALL FOUR.
Why bother? Aren’t the chemtrails good enough?
I should add that Colin A. Ross, M.D primarily specialises in Satanic Child Abuse — hence the Colin A. Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma — but he has interesting theories on CIA Mind Control, “brainwaves emitted through the eye”, and the non-fictional nature of the Manchurian Candidate. As well as his interesting theories on trophoblastic cancer.
There’s a bingo in there somewhere. I haven’t seen such an extensive collection of crank magnetism in a while.
@78 Krebiozen
It’s quite simple why the study was useless. 30 of the 39 patients in the Gonzalez arm did not properly follow the protocol. A lead in period to determine ability to follow the program would have helped insure that the appropriate patients were enrolled. Lead in periods are not unusual in studies such as this.
Dr Gonzalez always said that his protocol was not for every cancer patient. One needed to have a functioning digestive system as well as sufficient social support to undertake the rigorous program. The original intent of the trial was to see if motivated and functioning patients with advanced pancreatic cancer would be served by the Gonzalez protocol. That question was clearly never answered by the trial and thus the results should be dismissed rather than unfairly and cynically used in an attempt to discredit Gonzalez.
Orac has been cynically dismissive of Gonzalez without making any serious attempt at understanding or critiquing the trophoblastic science behind the program for years now and even continues to do so at the time of his death.
@Herb – that trial is the best data to date of whether the protocol works. The way to get it accepted is not to berate those who point to that data. You need to get a new trial.
Helianthus wrote:
Lord Draconis bought the government years ago. Do try and keep up.
Firstly, citation needed. Secondly, this is the old quack excuse. “The treatment works. You just didn’t do it right.”
@Atchinson: I can’t peak for everyone here, but so-called alternative medicines used in the treatment of malignancies can not be considered valid without first undergoing examination. So-called cannabis oil (a liquid, solvent extract of high-THC strains of Cannabis sativa tops) is a case in point. Anecdotally, I know of two cases of adult women who are apparently in remission of breast cancer and another two who died from cancer after taking the extract. What I don’t know in any of the cases is what they received in the way of treatment beforehand and whether that may have made a difference. It may be that constituents of cannabis are active against hormone-sensitive tumors; however, at this juncture, further research is needed to establish the types of tumors that respond and outcomes in humans. Otherwise, it’s just a gamble because no one can say with any certainty that it helps or hinders any particular type of malignancy.
Stories (anecdotal evidence) of cancer remissions in people who used plant extracts are legion. Because case reports are rarely published in peer-reviewed journals, they remain anecdotal and without controlled clinical studies, they can not be evaluated. In the meantime, people will experiment and take whatever happens to be popularly claimed effective at the moment.
In the 1960s in South America and the 1980s in North America, it was “pau d’arco” – the inner bark of tropical American hardwoods, Handroanthus impetiginosus and H. heptaphyllus; syn. Tabebuia impetiginosa and T. heptaphylla, respectively). I witnessed a number of cancer patients who died despite their use of extracts and decoctions of the inner bark. Millions of dollars were made from its sale, but not a single human clinical trial of the inner bark alone has shown it to be effective in the treatment of any disease, let alone cancer.
In the 1990s, it was the inner stem bark or root bark of cat’s claw (Uncaria tomentosa); a woody vine from Peru that also grows in other parts of tropical America. A fortune was made from its sale, but no cancer remissions were ever reported in the medical literature. A recent clinical study in patients with terminal cancer found that while it may reduce fatigue, tumor responses were absent: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25495394
And the list goes on. The latest, apart from the liquid extract of cannabis, is yet another tropical American plant (Annona muricata). Alcohol extracts of the leaves are widely promoted on the Web for the treatment of cancer, but no one is certain of their effectiveness or safety. Popularization of the plant for cancer was not based on traditional use, but research in the U.S. on the antitumor activity of a related species growing on a university campus. A randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial on an extract of the leaves of the tropical species (A. muricata) in patients diagnosed with colorectal carcinoma was recently completed in Indonesia, but the results have yet to be published: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02439580?term=acetogenin&rank=3.
Further placebo-controlled trials in the U.S. on acetogenins derived from the genus in the treatment of patients with malignant carcinoma of the breast and patients with prostate cancer are, respectively, not yet recruiting and ongoing. One of the principal investigators happens to be a naturopath.
Each month in the U.S., millions of dollars are made from the sale of cannabis. That’s more than enough to pay for clinical trials, but I have yet to see them.
Exactly, quacks love to “blame the victim.” Gonzales did it, Burzynski does it, and a number of others are active participants in the sham as well.
It is easy to say – well, you didn’t do it right, that’s why you aren’t getting better…..
@Andy: That’s also true of Mercola’s site. Do you suppose there’s a conspiracy against facts? Naaaah. Can’t be. After all, they claim to be revealing the truth.
@Lawrence: Or, they say you didn’t have the right product. The marketing goes in before the science.
One notes that I have written on more than on occasion about the paucity of evidence that cannabis oil is a highly effective treatment for cancer of any kind.
Given Mike Adams’ knowledge of what constitutes evidence I would truly pity the police if he were involved in an investigation.
@Herb: Here’s another take on the treatment proffered by Gonzalez and the so-called science behind it:
http://edzardernst.com/2013/07/the-alternative-cancer-cure-of-nicholas-gonzalez/
@Lighthorse – it appears from the comments that Herb saw that.
As for the claim that the Gonzalez trial didn’t adequately evaluate effectiveness: Any medical or pseudo-medical regimen that is so onerous, unpleasant and degrading that patients cannot or will not follow it to the letter has failed right there.
@114 Dangerous Bacon…So by your logic bone marrow transplants, chemotherapy, and virtually all other mainstream treatments are ‘failed’ treatments as they are dramatically more onerous and unpleasant than swallowing supplements and eating a healthy organic diet – which is the essence of the Gonzalez program. Interesting perspective.
Denice Walter @12: Not heard of the Health Deranger’s new search engine before, so I immediately tested it out, with “astrology”. Amusingly, a Mark Crislip SBM article on fraudulent pseudoscience was at at number 9 in the results.
It still needs some fine tuning, I think….
“May all you a******s die of cancer.”
Sorry bud, ain’t gonna happen. All us minions of Big Pharma get access to the seekrit cancer cure they’ve been hidng from the sheeple.
Herb sez:
Let’s look up ‘onerous’:
Sounds like a perfect description of the Gonzalez woo protocol, and quite distinguishable from the ‘come in, lie back, and get treated’ medical protocols.
I’d would have guessed that the “leftist” crunchy granola crowd … or at the very least the anti-vax contingent of that crowd … might comprise a reasonably significant segment of Mike’s business.
Guess I was wrong.
Either that or Mike doesn’t care if he alienates the “leftists” in his audience.
Mike Adams said these quacks were ‘pioneers’. I don’t think he knows what the word actually means. The word jumped out at me. Pioneers Mike, really? I shake my head.
@ Herb
So, the ideal Gonzalez patient should be able to hire a medical staff and be free of ailing conditions which could be upsetting his/her digestive system.
In short, be rich and cancer-free.
Herb: have you seen the Gonzalez protocol? You make it sound like its just a matter of eating healthily and swallowing a few vitamin pills, when it’s nothing like that.
The diet varies from “nearly vegetarian” to red meat 2-3 times a day – all of it organic, of course – and bans any “synthetic” food such as white sugar and white flour. The patient also has to drink large amounts of freshly-made fruit and vegetable juices – again, all from organic fruit and vegetables. Additionally, the patient has to buy and swallow 130-175 supplement capsules a day and undergo two coffee enemas daily.
So, a Gonzalez patient has to cough up for the cost of all these supplements and organic fresh foods; they have to ensure all food is fresh, which generally means daily shopping Then there’s the time required for juicing – every juice drink has to be made from scratch, no making up bulk drinks in advance. Add to that the time, expense and sheer inconvenience taken up with twice-daily enemas, and I’m surprised that as many as three patients made it to the end of the trial!
Mrs. Grimble – Funny, innit, how the tinfoil hat brigade is convinced that Big Cancer is suppressing treatments like González’ because it would cut into their profits.
@ Mrs Grimble:
Heh.
He’s put up another post including an interview with Gonzalez.
Uncle Cecil, the worlds smartest man, had a recent column discussing cannabis oil.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3238/can-weed-cure-cancer
Money quote –
If you google scienceblogs.com you find it is run by a company called Seed Scientific. They are a consulting company “With a track record of disruptive innovation in areas ranging from scientific publishing to science and design to data visualization, and a portfolio spanning technology, consulting, and digital media, Seed exists to catalyze universal science literacy. ” Gee, I wonder which of their clients benefits from a blog like this (big pharma maybe??). If their “science” is so bulletproof, why do they need to spend money convincing people?
Herb: “@114 Dangerous Bacon…So by your logic bone marrow transplants, chemotherapy, and virtually all other mainstream treatments are ‘failed’ treatments as they are dramatically more onerous and unpleasant than swallowing supplements and eating a healthy organic diet – which is the essence of the Gonzalez program. Interesting perspective.”
Arguing that “virtually all” mainstream treatments are more unpleasant than having to drink a ton of juices (with attendant bathroom trips), undergo coffee enemas and scarfing down enormous numbers of pills etc. has a very warped idea of modern evidence-based medicine (which also comes with a built-in incentive that Gonzalez/Hoxsey therapy does not – it has been shown to work).
@ DGR:
I don’t think that he means *those* leftists- the humble crunchy folk like organic momsters, in fact he tries to court them
Instead he means the CORPORATE Elite Left, those leaders who seek control of the UNIVERSE.. i.e. Mr Gates, Mr Clinton, Ms Clinton, Mr Obama, Mr Soros, Liberals On Television, Evil Senators and Congresspeople., Bono, Celebrities, Hollywood Gays etc etc etc.
Mike, like the other idiot, must walk the razor’s edge in order to not alienate ANY potential customers, so they don’t decry cannabis ( altho’ they themselves would NEVER indulge), alternate lifestyles**, multiculturalism** on the surface at least.
This outward show is interesting to watch. I suspect that both of them espouse more conservative agendas- esp in regard to women’s rights- which occasionally leak out but they need to keep a lid on that because hippies/ feminists/ minorities/ LGBT folk might buy not their product lines and/ or their alt media news.
** except when they DO by insinuating negative stereotypes about LGBT, women, black people, teenagers, poor people, those who live in cities, the educated elite etc
Believe me, I’ve heard/ read boat loads of it.
e.g. Wasn’t life better in the Traditional home? Simple, godly folk living on the farm/ in rural Italy/in small towns/ in 1900. Harping upon greater spirituality and religiosity in the past. . Life was better then.
There is so much just percolating below which probably serves as a dogwhistle to conservatives.. Both reiterate about their origins in folksyville 1950s/ 1970s ,in traditional homes with evangelical roots. Farms were in their families as well as hard work, honesty and goodness.
I fortunately have a strong constitution and am not affected by their malarkey and never vomit at all.
#113 Mephistopheles O’Brien
It appears that Questioner may have read the same link, “I read James Beard’s book”.
I have been an admirer of James Beard’s work for years. I must say, though, I had not realised that he had done work in the area of cancer. Hors d’Oeuvre and canapés yes, cancer no.
Louise Lubetkin seems to have made a naming mistake that is continuing. I think she and Questioner meant “John”, not James. As several people have been trying to point out to Eric H in another thread, “Check the source”.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1107920
This just in: Now a “holistic” dentist has been added to the death list. He was only 41 and supposedly the picture of health, and he just dropped dead. Some of the conspiracy fans are speculating it may have been one of those CIA heart-attack guns that did him in. You know the guns I’m talking about. The CIA is using them on truth tellers everywhere.
Erin the Health Nut is on the beat as usual, with an attitude of concern that she is framing as objectivity. (She took Snopes severely to task the other day for claiming that she is feeding into the conspiracy story. She says she’s not; she is only REPORTING.)
http://www.healthnutnews.com/holistic-fit-dentist-41-dies-suddenly-of-massive-heart-attack-while-jogging/
As for this post about Gonzalez’ death… amusingly, the infinitely stupid “Dr.” Leonard Coldwell linked to it on his own Facebook page today (July 26). He may have been attracted by the headline, not recognizing the sarcasm. My sense is that had he discerned that the post is actually very critical of the conspiracy theory, he would have made a nasty remark about it and/or the blogger, or he wouldn’t have linked to it at all.
As for this post about Gonzalez’ death… amusingly, the infinitely stupid “Dr.” Leonard Coldwell linked to it on his own Facebook page today (July 26)
Ah…that explains the sudden influx of drive-by trolls.
Please stop calling alternative doctors quacks! Seriously. Alternative care doctors have helped me FAR MORE in my 62 years than ALL western medical doctors I’ve seen, combined! To me, in my experience, these are the real questionable ‘healers’….mainly because THEY DO NOT CURE….they treat symptoms.
I will never trust someone who uses their forum to discount alternative doctors and call them ‘quacks’. Get real!
Here’s another resource for the GcMAF factor.
@125 I have 2 friends who used cannabis oil and have ELIMINATED their cancers….prostate and skin cancer. So YES rubbing in on your skin, or taking it orally IS truly medicine.
Ah…that explains the sudden influx of drive-by trolls.
I suspect it is more that David Noakes of First Immyne — the main GcMAF pimp / profiteer — has been pushing the Nagalase-conspiracy Bradstreet-murder ball of paranoia through Facebok:
https://www.facebook.com/FirstImmune?fref=nf
I suppose that depends on whether Spotify acquired Seed Media along with Seed Scientific, which I tend to doubt.
Time to adjust your colander, Peaches.
Julian Frost @105:
Herb did provide a citation. Just that it was written by Colin A. Ross (who can shoot laser beams from his eyes) and published by grifters.
Herb also mentioned “a 600 page book to lay out the disastrous management of the utterly flawed clinical trial”, but I suspect that he was thinking of another of Ross’ publications, possibly one of his tomes on Satanic Ritual Abuse / Multiple Personalities / CIA Mind Control.
mainly because THEY DO NOT CURE
No argument there.
I find this article really quite disrespectful.
You seem to be enjoying this as much as the conspiracy theorists with little thought to those who have lost their lives. Perhaps a bit hypocritical to accuse the alternative crowd of using this to further their own agenda, no?
Your poking fun at these dead doctors seems to be built on the premise that they were harming and extorting people – something which of course has never existed in mainstream medicine has it?!
Regardless of whether you are right or wrong, it still shows bad character to use a jovial, mocking tone when talking about people who are no longer here to defend themselves.
This week’s Oglaf is appropriate:
http://media.oglaf.com/comic/nostrum_xkZi53y.jpg
I have no doubt that alt med might work better for hypochondriacs than science based medicine.
Probably works better for Munchhausen by proxy type parents as well.
Prove it.
@Joe…He’s mocking the conspiracy loons, you dolt. Work on your reading comprehension.
weapon of choice:
Grow legionnaire in a Petri dish.
Grow VMRSA in a Petri dish full of methicillin and vancomycin.
Spray the dilute on surgical mask using a syringe and let dry.
Source: death round suspense book by Peter Clement, MD.
Al
Herb,
Where did that come from? It certainly isn’t reported in the published paper. What constitutes properly following the protocol? How many coffee enemas are you allowed to miss?
If the Gonzalez protocol is truly so onerous (he himself stated that it required a complete change of lifestyle) that only 9 out of 30 patients who elected to follow it were able to do so, that makes it of limited use, even if it does have any beneficial effects, which I don’t believe it does.
Remember that Gonzalez claimed that previous conventional treatment rendered his protocol useless, so the dismal results of this trial could well represent how it performs in the real world.
Gonzalez also claimed that he had a 75% success rate with all cancers using his protocol, so you would expect at least six of the only nine patients that supposedly did properly follow the protocol to have been cured. However, the two longest-surviving patients were both on chemotherapy – both had survived 40 weeks after diagnosis at the time the paper was published, by which time all patients on the Gonzalez protocol had died. It would be interesting to know if the 25 Gonzalez patients who died during the first 10 months followed the protocol “properly” or not.
A lead-in period would have resulted in only 9 patients in the experimental arm, too few to give meaningful results. I don’t believe lead-in periods are common in clinical trials of cancer drugs, but I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise.
I suspect this criterion is responsible for the apparent success of Gonzalez’s case series, effectively screening out the sickest patients, leaving only those who would survive the longest. If you are well enough to give yourself repeated coffee enemas, take 70 or more capsules every day and spend the rest of your waking hours juicing or cleaning the juicer*, you are likely going to survive longer than someone who is not as well. There are always outliers in cancer – my mother-in-law lived with metastatic breast cancer for two years longer than predicted on a diet of cigarettes and whiskey, but I’m not about to claim this as a miracle cure.
The “trophoblastic science” is nonsense, based on the eccentric beliefs of William Donald Kelley, yet another crank dentist. Even back in 1909 it was known that pancreatic enzymes such as trypsin are useless against cancer here’s a refutation of Beard’s work (PDF).
* I remember reading a heart-breaking account of a man who spent his remaining days like this, instead of with his loved ones.
@marie
Thanks for thelaughs at your publicly announced gullibility. I had a few chuckles at your stupidity. Hopefully, you haven’t lost too much money from the scam, we all so do need a few laughs at your incoherent postings.
Dr Gonzalez always said that his protocol was not for every cancer patient.
How many customers did he turn away?
herr doktor bimler,
Just the ones that were unlikely to make good testimonials, I imagine. I don’t normally speak ill of the dead, but I make an exception for those who exploit the sick and desperate.
I don’t normally speak ill of the dead,
You’ll never get invited to decent parties with an attitude like that.
Lacking your scruples, I am comfortable with speculating that Gonzalez never turned away anyone who turned up waving money. It’s not like someone else was tracking survival rates.
And who designed the trial and selected the subjects? Some incompetent grifter called Nicholas Gonzalez.
Somebody needs to stop the pharma hit squad™ http://www.healthnutnews.com/holistic-fit-dentist-41-dies-suddenly-of-massive-heart-attack-while-jogging/
Ad nauseam, ad infinitum!
This site is simply further proof that conventional medicine devotees are the bullies on the playground. We all know what makes a bully – insecurity. That is why the sane individual runs from the “industry”, because your words are as bitter as your “treatments”. Stop being so childish, and accept the fact that your model of treatment is not superior to any other. Your standard of care is designed to make billions, not to cure. You just happen get it from the pharm and insurance industries. Instead, you attack anyone who strives to actually help humanity. Endless studies are not required to see the failures of allopathy. All you have to do is look around. Think about this…maybe, just maybe, you might want to think about getting along with others who are trying to clean up the mess that you made.
Instead he means the CORPORATE Elite Left, those leaders who seek control of the UNIVERSE
Is he talking about the Bavarian Illuminati, or the Trilateral Commission, or the Freemasons, or what? And while I’m asking, what combination of the following political/religious traits is Obama claimed to have this week: Fascist, Communist, Muslim, atheist? (Choose at least three.) Mike needs to adjust his tin foil headgear.
Nurse…… Nurse….. Mike is off his meds again! https://illuminutti.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/mike-adams-straight-jacket-021.png?w=627
[…] on July 27, 2015 by Take a Look in "Debbies Window" Posted by Orac on July 24, 2015 Share on emailMore […]
@Marie: Preying on the uneducated and gullible is very lucrative. If I had dime for the number of times I’ve heard or read that doctors of western or conventional medicine don’t cure, but only treat symptoms, I could have retired years ago.
mike-adams-straight-jacket-021.png?w=627
I am DEEPLY OFFENDED by the misspelling of ‘straitjacket’.
Lighthorse, you’d go broke around me. However, if you had written that if you had a dime for everyone who’s ever said that doctors of western medicine don’t look for etiologies but only treat symptoms, I probably would have bought you lunch by now if not a beer at least.
“I am DEEPLY OFFENDED by the misspelling of ‘straitjacket’.”
herr doktor bimler, maybe we could grow this into a class action suit.
Of course, Mr Lund, you *would* feign ignorance of the identities of the perpetrators,
nicely played!
Always?
^^I don’t seem to see any mention of it there. Looks like he’s talking about all patients with inoperable pancreatic adenocarcinoma.
Doesn’t it?
The last time I went off my medication, I surprisingly did not lose my conscience and become a fear-mongering grifter; I did spiral down into a pretty severe depression, though, and came pretty close to suicide. It
wasis extremely unpleasant.@JP:
“Depression is sometimes an invaluable harbinger of the need to slow down, to drop interiorly into a place that at least allows us to restore and recharge, and at best unfolds into our deepest intuitiveness. One recurring gift that typically comes cloaked in depression is an invitation to grow that necessitates relinquishing a formerly treasured job or relationship that has now become obsolete or moribund.”
Pete Walker, MA. Managing Abandonment Depression in Complex PTSD.
The most STUPID TIME WASTING ARTICLE ON THE INTERNET, CALLING ITSELF ‘scienceblogs’, while ONLY BULLYING THE REAL HEALERS!
Some other Chris: ” ONLY BULLYING THE REAL HEALERS!”
Aw, poor baby! You are so upset that you hit the CAPS key and it stuck! Deer upset person, perhaps you would like to share the “science” used by Dr. Gonzalez. You can start with the rhyme and reason of shooting coffee up the bum.
@marie
Ahh, more whining without any substance. How very disingenuous of you. Pray do tell, have you ever read the title of this blog? And why you and your ilk are so very deserving of the mockery heaped upon you?
Probably cause she’s really stupid enough to actually believe that coffee (of all things) up one’s bum could cure cancer.
I stopped reading this rubbish after a couple of paragraphs purely based on the amount “of times the word “quack” was used. You have no argument and so you resort to name calling, you are obviously are very frightened or the working for the very frightened pharms companies. Look at survival rates using conventional medicine, look at how much money is made and it’s not difficult to see what is going on here!
BTW, the quack you are referring to was trained in conventional medicine and turned his back on it when he saw it was killing people and he didn’t charge $10,000.00 per month as he could have if he was still peddling poison.
@143 Krebiozen
The only argument you make to support your claim that the trophoblastic theory of cancer is nonsense is one article using trypsin on mice. In fact Dr Gonzalez writes extensively about the problems with processing enzymes that retain their potency.
So in all likelihood it was poorly processed enzymes that led to treatment failure. Modern processing leads to much more potent enzymes. But I am sure you will find a way to discount what I have just written as you and everyone here are determined to find fault with the treatment.
@Ivan bradshaw – since you stopped reading after the first two paragraphs, your comment can be summarized as “I don’t like it when you call people ‘quacks’.” I’m sure Orac thanks you for your feedback.
If you’d like to read the rest of the post and make comments of substance, please do.
BTW – as Orac has pointed out before, being a doctor does not make you immune to believing in or promoting treatments that are not justified by evidence.
Oh, and since you bring it up, how much did Dr. Gonzalez make a year? Thanks.
Herb,
The onus is on you to provide evidence to support it. Please feel free to post a link to the extensive animal experiments that demonstrate the trophoblastic theory’s veracity. I can’t find any. Why would pancreatic enzymes preferentially digest proteins in cancer cells instead of normal ones anyway?
No, the paper clearly states that the enzyme activity was checked and it was found to be potent:
So, the enzymes were just fine.
I don’t believe you. I have carried out experiments assessing the potency of proteolytic enzymes, and they are very robust, working at a wide range of temperatures and pH. They are among the enzymes used in biological washing powders, BTW. (Could biological washing powder be a cure for cancer? You heard it here first!).
I’m not exactly finding fault with the treatment, I just can’t find any reason to even suspect that it might be effective. It is based on a theory that makes no sense and has no evidence to support it. I can’t find any animal or even in vitro studies that show this protocol works. Similar protocols, like Gerson’s, have dismal results for cancer, even for the type of cancer it is supposedly most effective at curing.
Wouldn’t any reputable doctor have solid evidence that a new treatment was effective before foisting it on patients and advising them to reject treatment that is proven to increase lifespan, reduce pain and improve quality of life?
There are no meds that would ameliorate Mike’s problems:
he’s a money-grubbing, self-aggrandising, sociopathic con artist who understands people well enough to bilk them.
@Krebiozen
Here’s the conclusion in the abstract of a trial of Gonzalez’s enzymes (PPE for pancreas pork enzymes) in mice from the top tier journal Pancreas:
The treatment with PPE significantly prolongs the survival of mice with human PC xenografts and slows the tumor growth. The data indicate that the beneficial effect of PPE on survival is primarily related to the nutritional advantage of the treated mice.
Pancreas, 28(4):401-412, May 2004. PMID: 15097858
He died at home in his NYC apartment in his wife’s arms.. not alone. not “discovered later”.. u are all a bunch of conspiracy freaks on this blog.. get a life!
Denice, I would cite my late father’s cure for stupidity which was to run a dead heat with a 30.30 — but then I would be putting myself in Mikey’s class.
I can only hope that some day he pokes a toe over the line and one of his victims/customers sues the pants off him.
Here’s a description from Dr Gonzalez of the trial of his enzymes in mice. This is taken from an article he wrote:
http://www.encognitive.com/node/17963
In addition to these clinical trials, we have collaborated with basic science researchers to test our enzyme approach in animal models of pancreatic cancer. In May, 2004, the results of these studies were published in the peer-reviewed journal Pancreas. In these experiments, a very aggressive form of pancreatic cancer was induced in mice, then half the animals were given our pancreas product, half were given no therapy. Those treated with our pancreas product showed a significant improvement in survival and behavior compared to animals not receiving the enzymes. In a second experiment, tumor growth was substantially reduced, and survival prolonged again, in animals receiving the pancreas product. (13) (Abstract of article on enzyme therapy in mice) We want to emphasize that the results were particularly significant for a first attempt, since the investigators were using only the pancreas product part of our program, and did not use a variety of doses to determine the most optimal for a mouse. As the principal investigator of the study wrote in the conclusion of the article: “In summary, PPE (porcine pancreatic enzyme) is the first experimentally and clinically proven agent for the effective treatment of PC (pancreatic cancer). The significant advantages of PPE over any other currently available therapeutic modalities include its effects on physical condition, nutrition and lack of toxicity.”
To remind Herb: the alleged “advantages” of PPE therapy reported in nude mice have not been demonstrated in humans:
“CONCLUSION Among patients who have pancreatic cancer, those who chose gemcitabine-based chemotherapy survived more than three times as long (14.0 v 4.3 months) and had better quality of life than those who chose proteolytic enzyme treatment.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19687327
I don’t see where anyone apart from Gonzalez et al has even reproduced his findings in rodents.
Let’s see how Orac rationalizes the results of the mice study quoted above with his vitriolic condemnation of Gonzalez as a quack and worse….That is if he chooses to comment at all on this inconvenient truth.
I want to quote again from the article:
As the principal investigator of the study wrote in the conclusion of the article: “In summary, PPE (porcine pancreatic enzyme) is the first experimentally and clinically proven agent for the effective treatment of PC (pancreatic cancer). The significant advantages of PPE over any other currently available therapeutic modalities include its effects on physical condition, nutrition and lack of toxicity.”
We’re not the ones who are conspiracy freaks. This post is making fun of the conspiracy freaks like Mike Adams who insinuate that Dr. Gonzalez met his end due to the nefarious activity of…well, it’s not exactly clear whom.
Again, I do not see anything in there along the lines of “The significant advantages of PPE over any other currently available therapeutic modalities include its effects on physical condition, nutrition and lack of toxicity– but not for everyone. Just for patients with a functioning digestive system as well as sufficient social support to undertake the rigorous program.”
So I still don’t know about that “always.”
Are you sure you didn’t mean that except when he was confronted with a treatment failure that he needed to explain, he always completely omitted to mention that the protocol was not for everyone?
-btw-
Mikey has a new post today about the conspiracy to take down alternative doctors compleat with ‘citizen journalists” reports and videos.
OBVIOUSLY the mainstream will never report it!
Ah.
Opinions are kinda like assholes…..most everybody has one and many of them are full of shit! Results speak for themselves, no matter what you may think, and Dr. Gonzales was a brilliant and innovative, not to mention very successful man. I really don’t think he would have a heart condition and not realize it as attentive as he was to all areas of health. Something is DEFINITELY fishy here.
#140
Your comments mean nothing….you think you are being cute. But guess what? You are completely out of line and grasping to hold onto your “opinion”. You don’t know me at all and to call me a hypochondriac? People who do this are just a joke and arrogant to boot…..someone who likes to hear himself/herself talk. …but offers nothing but hot air!
And I don’t have to prove ANYTHING to you about the cannabis oil. My friends are both happy and HEALTHY now. You have only proven you are completely clueless……and classless.
#144 and #154, you must be FAUX Entertainment watchers! Now please note this: THERE IS MORE THAN ONE MARIE POSTING ON THIS THREAD.
And just because you have the “opinion” that conventional medicine cures, does not mean you have a clue. They do not. They treat symptoms, period. Surgeons are a different thing. I’ve had a couple surgeons who are fabulous. But the average PC doctor is just making educated guesses and doling out the poison put forth by Big Pharma (and most likely getting a kickback).
Alternative cure doctors are far better and treat the whole body, mind and spirit…. and it’s really sad that you are so clueless you don’t know this….hey but you just go right ahead and go get your next dose of Big Pharma poison. So many completely clueless people in this world right now, it’s very sad. I’m done with this thread….too many in the dark, but time will show the truth. Peace out!
Herb:
I’m an engineer in the aerospace industry. Making a conclusion based on speculation as to why a test failed is extremely bad practice. If I see a stress test fail one time out of a hundred, I don’t get to just say “in all likelihood, it was electromagnetic interference in the test environment; the more sophisticated cable harnesses used in the flight environment will be fine” and then go shove it into an airplane like that.
Ann,
if you look at the Gonzalez website it is clear that
1 He does not accept every patient who wants to see him, which is why he requires sending in a whole lot of info which he evaluates for free before deciding whether to accept a patient
2. Among the information he requires is info on one’s digestive abilities and social support amongst a bunch of other stuff.
And he will not take anyone who is doing chemo or radiation
So your supposition is completely without merit.
So basically, you’re saying he cherry picked the patients with the best functional status and prognosis. That’s exactly what I said he did when I discussed his “best case” series from 15 years ago and why it was so worthless. Gonzalez’s results are a fiction based on his having chosen patients who weren’t that sick yet from their advanced cancers.
Technically, you are correct – you don’t have to prove anything. However, before somebody must prove that it’s safe and effective before it can be considered a treatment that can be prescribed to cure disease. If you’re not interested in that happening, why did you bring it up?
What are their cure rates? How do you know? Please be specific. Thanks.
Could it just be that this article was written for no other purpose than to indoctrinate the public with nothing more than politics? My question…..why is it that the author of this article is so quick to reveal “all the bad” about someone who is dead while hiding himself behind a sudo name? What does he have to gain by discrediting a dead person while he stands behind a veil to protect himself?
Dr. Gonzales was a brilliant and innovative, not to mention very successful man.
At scamming people out of thousands of dollars, yes.
And I don’t have to prove ANYTHING to you about the cannabis oil.
Yes, you do. You make the claim, you back it up with proof — that’s how science works.
@Janet – I’m sure if you were to look closely at the top of the page you’d be able to find that Orac is not hiding particularly well. You could also put Dr. Gonzalez’s name in the search this blog box and see that Orac repeatedly discussed his issues with Dr. Gonzalez’s work and medical research long before he was dead.
I’m not sure what you’re suggesting by the question, “Could it just be that this article was written for no other purpose than to indoctrinate the public with nothing more than politics?” What political ends would he be trying to accomplish? What is his platform? What’s he advocating for or against that falls into the realm of politics?
Nobody asked, but my sudo name is “root”.
Herb,
Thanks for that. Sadly, I don’t have access to the full text and I can only find one other animal study on pancreatic enzymes and cancer (says it has free full text but does not, even if you register for the journal – grrr). The results are interesting, though I would have liked to look at the protocols used, how many animals were used and the statistics etc.. I won’t have access to a medical library for a while so I can’t currently do that. I did notice that the second study (part one) reported a large drop in blood pancreatic enzymes, including insulin, in the control group of hamsters pigs, which seems a bit odd, and a little worrying. Also, I think it’s true to say that most treatments that work on animals turn out to be ineffective or unsafe in humans.
The bottom line is that this is thin gruel to justify treating thousands of patients, as Gonzalez claimed to have done. Several well-qualified people have expressed the opinion that even the human clinical trial was unethical and should never have been carried out. That includes our esteemed host, who has said this clinical trial should be, “the last nail in the coffin of the misbegotten magical, mystical hodge-podge of woo known as the Gonzalez therapy, which turned out to be worse than useless”. I agree.
It is very easy for humans to fool themselves into thinking they have seen a pattern or association when they haven’t. The only way to be sure is to use some kind of randomized clinical trial to eliminate cognitive biases. I think that Gonzalez and others who supported him have been taken in by their own cognitive biases.
Andy @96
I was actually thinking about posting a complement on Erin’s site about how refreshing it was that she wasn’t automatically silencing contrary points of view at HealthNutnews, only to find this morning that I had been banned from posting further comments…
A “sudo name”? I wasn’t aware that “name” was a ‘nix command.
Palindrom beat me to it.
“hamsters pigs”? just plain hamsters, that I initially mistook for guinea pigs, which they were, but not literally.
^This does not work in real life.
“sudo name”? Quite coincidentally I was fighting with Linux over sudo just yesterday. I should have waited and asked Janet about it.
I’m sure she just left off the trailing d.
Janet: “My question…..why is it that the author of this article is so quick to reveal “all the bad” about someone who is dead while hiding himself behind a sudo name? What does he have to gain by discrediting a dead person while he stands behind a veil to protect himself?”
Orac’s identity is the Internet’s worst kept secret. One reason we don’t tell out right is that discovering that “secret” is an informal intelligence test on this site. You can probably guess how well you are doing.
Say, Herb, were you also repetitively posting this as “oderb” five years ago at SBM?
I can’t look at the acronym PPE without thinking personal protective equipment. And who opened the floodgates for the awakened? Geez.
weapon of choice: Grow legionnaire in a Petri dish.
Only if he looks like Gary Cooper.
Personally, my weapon of choice would be a Marine Raider, but chacun a son Force spéciale.).
The treatment with PPE significantly prolongs the survival of mice with human PC xenografts and slows the tumor growth. The data indicate that the beneficial effect of PPE on survival is primarily related to the nutritional advantage of the treated mice.
So if you take mice and destroy their pancreases (pancreata?) with an injected xenograft, they die of diabetes and digestive disorders (” All mice in the control group showed steatorrhea, hyperglucosuria, hyperbilirubinuria, and ketonuria at early stages of tumor growth”), but this can be delayed by supplementing their water supply with pancreatic digestive secretions, whereupon they die of the cancer instead.
Well done Dr Gonzalez! This is the breakthrough that we in the Rodent Extermination Department have been waiting for!
I suppose the mice were lucky not to have received the coffee enemas as well.
Sudo make me a sandwich.</A.
@marie
Ah the old pharma shill gambit, a sure sign that you have no argument to speak of and speaks to the lack of intelligence you possess.
Also, let’s see of you actually stick the flounce, because your stupidity and gullibility is such an amusing sideshow to watch. We all do need some fools here for a few good laughs, and you and your ilk are just so entertaining with your foolishness.
THERE IS MORE THAN ONE MARIE POSTING ON THIS THREAD.
Inquiring minds are wondering how many Maries are commenting, and if they are using the same body.
“PPE (porcine pancreatic enzyme) is the first experimentally and clinically proven agent for the effective treatment of PC (pancreatic cancer). The significant advantages of PPE over any other currently available therapeutic modalities include its effects on physical condition, nutrition and lack of toxicity.”
“Clinically proven” is pure hyperbole.
Incredibly, Mike Adams is claiming that ‘Cancer doctors [sic] would be shocked to learn the true history of chemotherapy’, a subject that Mr. Adams has apparently not studied in any depth himself. Not only that, but he’s posting interviews of Gonzales in which one quote, emblazoned on Adam’s site, reads: ‘Very few people realize the whole program of chemotherapeutic drugs that are being used today – and there are over 100 of them – really developed from nerve gas developed for warfare.’
While I didn’t check to see when Gonzalez made the statement, it conveniently overlooks the sources of chemotherapeutics in current use; some of the most important and first-line agents being plant-derived chemicals (e.g., paclitaxol derivatives from Taxus species, such as the Pacific yew tree). I confess to not being a visitor to Mr. Adams site until I was recently alerted to his outrageous claims by this site. Not that it should come as a revelation to anyone here, but he’s using the same technique of weasel wordings practiced by Mercola.
For what it’s worth, here’s a couple of articles for the trolls who might visit with the notion that cancer chemotherapy drugs used today are not being derived from plants and other natural sources – not that it should matter where they come from if they are effective and reasonably safe:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16009521
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22316239
I cannot believe the coldness in some of your comments. Especially the females like “sciencemom” your nothing but a bunch of cold heartless bastards. You want to Crack jokes and call people quacks, take sides to just fit in. Its not about alternative or allopathic it’s human lives of people who stood for something they truly believed in. Unlike you guys who just jump on the first bandwagon group who says the earth is flat. You have no personality, you think you know but are only regurgitating information you heard or read. You guys think your following the science but have no idea or creativity to form your own opinion. You lost your critical thinking, investigative thought, critical reasoning, and compassion. I really hope you know how horrible it is to rejoice and joke about people dieing.
Well, pin a rose on him.
(That was his job, IOW.)
Not as far as I can see. I mean, where is the part where he said he only took people who had a functioning digestive system as well as sufficient social support to undertake the rigorous program?
He didn’t say it on his website. He didn’t say it when promoting that protocol as superior to all other treatments for inoperable pancreatic adenocarcinoma.
For something he always said, it seems to be surprisingly elusive.
Well you would have had to pay consult and exam/testing fees to have that told to you duh.
I cannot believe the coldness in some of your comments. Especially the females like “sciencemom” your nothing but a bunch of cold heartless bastards. You want to Crack jokes and call people quacks, take sides to just fit in. Its not about alternative or allopathic it’s human lives of people who stood for something they truly believed in. Unlike you guys and girls who just jump in with the first bandwagon group who says “the earth is flat”. You have no personality, you think you know but are only regurgitating information you heard or read. Quick to point the finger when you havent even picked up a book or really looked into anothers perspective and even quicker to argue in the name of science just to hear your own selves talk and make a point so you can be acknowledged as “smart”. Your sick and the world doesnt have time for people like you. The world needs forward thinkers who can weed through the nonsense and actually help change the things that arent working not just contribute to the status quo. You think your following the science but have no idea nor the creativity to think outside your square head and form your own opinion. Therefore your input is worthless and whats most sad about that is you know it. Have you looked at the death toll for chemotherapy? Doesn’t look that appealing. Yet you are the ones who advocate that your community and family members be treated this way only adding more into this unnecessary nightmare you call medicine. You lost your critical thinking, investigative faculties, critical reasoning, and most importantly compassion. I really hope you know how horrible it is to rejoice and joke about people dieing.
it’s human lives of people who stood for something they truly believed in
Dr Gonzalez, like all quacks, truly believed in making money.
Just out of curiosity, are women supposed to be easier on charlatans than men are? Why?
You’re an idiot. Or maybe you’ll understand it better if I put it this way: your an idiot.
Shay,
That’s good you have curiosity hopefully you can use that wisely and be curious for the facts of truly innovative methods in the realm of medicine instead out just spitting out your own biased and aloof opinions of who and who isn’t a charleton. Obviously these people made great strides in their research and to dismiss someones life work as solely a ploy to get money is flat out ignorance. The research is moving as fast as it can and in 10 years from now every sector of society,especially medicine, will be transformed. There is no doubt that many parts of the medical system are ineffective and obsolete. It is people who are courageous and intuitive enough to shed light on the misunderstood or not yet understood parts of science that are the pioneers. They are the ones who are working to salvage and integrate these broken pieces of a medical system and into a conducive system that operates in accordance with research and the hippocratic oath, especially the central tenet of “first, do no harm” and for that are heroes. Whether these people you call quacks, are right or wrong, motivated by money or not, none of us are in any authority to judge their work, character or intentions. So shut it.shay.
@Krebiozen:
Try this.
comment number 183 is proof positive that Dr. Francesca Happé’s theory of mind disability regarding autistic peoples is deader than dead, actually, it sank down to the centre of the earth. If I have to generalize, I’d wager that everyone on this planet is wrong about everyone’s theory of mind. Only thing that isn’t constant is the level of wrongness which separate the people doing their best to be absolutely id10t, the natural id10t and the peoples doing the best Socratic questioning to improve their knowledge about theory of mind.
Al
Oh, and there is 4 294 967 296 zone of grey between absolute id10t and best Socratic questioners.
Al
Sox… Gonzales’ own research, which he published, proved that his therapy did not work. Yet for years he kept peddling it to the desperate. That’s not innovative or ground-breaking or intuitive. It’s fraud.
@sox
So where is the evdence that gonzales’ protocol was effective? Because it was shown that it was not effective and actually caused more suffering for cancer patients?
Sox @214:
“Something they truly believed in.” Sincerity is meaningless—you don’t have to be correct to be sincere, and sincerity is no guarantee that someone will do good, or even avoid doing great harm. Pol Pot was sincere. David Koresh was sincere.
In a video interview titled “Nicholas Gonzalez, MD reveals the truth about cancer chemotherapy”, the late Dr. Gonzales stated: “The main anticancer element in our program are [sic] large doses of these pancreatic enzymes, which are derived from the pig pancreas.” Yet, at 29:12 minutes in the same interview, he admitted he made the following statement: “We’ve never had the billions of dollars [as if it would cost remotely near that much] in research funding to do the elaborate molecular biology, but we’ve had some funding to do some animal studies, and they seem to just directly attack cancer.”
Question: how would the pancreatic enzymes from pigs show any antitumor activity by the oral route when they are destroyed after ingestion?
Well, that would be negatory, Sox.*
Red or White, by the way?
* Do try to make your way to “There Is More to This Story.”
Cancer research is a billion dollar ‘business’. It surprises me how you (meaning most people above) are blindly following mainstream medical ‘science’ but never raise any questions when cancer researchers rake in billions a year, while the number of cancer patients only increase every year. You call others (even though you have never met them) conspiracy theorists, idiots, stupid and throw insults at them, but never wonder about that. I really don’t have to do much research to figure out that both the big pharma and cancer research are money hungry and don’t like their milk goat to be taken from them. If someone came around with a sure cure for cancer (with scientific evidence) both of the above would lose their precious goat. I don’t know enough about Dr. Gonzalez, but I believe the few on here that said they knew him and that he helped them. Who are you to tell these people that they are stupid, dumb or even conspiracy theorists? To me, those who have to throw insults at others in order to get a point across, are on the same level as high-school bullies (were you one maybe?) and I’d say there were a few people just like you who burnt ‘witches’ at the stake and prosecuted human beings for their beliefs and knowledge throughout our history. @Shay: I’m really not sure if and if so, why women would be easier on ‘charlatans’. What I do know, is that we are still living in a men’s world and that women are often not taken seriously when men are (in the same field). In Ireland for instance, lives a midwife who has a clean sheet for 30 years. Then, after a couple had a perfect home birth, with perfect outcome, the mother was referred to the hospital when she didn’t feel well. The mother and baby were dismissed the same day, happy and healthy. The file, however, mentioned a ‘dangerous situation’ and the midwife had her license revoked, until further investigation was done, leaving more than 30 women without a midwife. In the same country, two obstetricians who were present at births that became fatal to either mother or child, are still working while being investigated. The medical world hasn’t improved much and medical students are not stimulated to think for themselves. They learn what they learn from books written by others and from what others tell them. They are not urged to do their own research. Medical doctors, in my opinion, should be scientists in their own right, but when they finish medical school, they have stuffed so much information from others in their brain, that most of them don’t even go as far as use their own brain to form an opinion. And why would they? They are slaves in a system that has everyone fooled. Well paid, but slaves nevertheless. I have no respect for people who tell others that they are stupid, idiots, just for having different opinions, and I am sure that one day, you will find that really you were the idiot(s). Until then: Live and let live and show a little bit of respect for those who sadly passed away. Charlatan or not, he was still a human being.
I cannot believe the coldness in some of your comments.
Incredulity is just one of the many services we offer.
Especially the females like “sciencemom” your nothing but a bunch of cold heartless bastards.
I’m taking that as a challenge to my capacity to be colder and more heartless than Sciencemom.
@Helianthus
Well, what else would you expect from credulous marks like sox? Hypocrisy becomes them.
Narad,
Thanks. Currently perusing…
Charles X – It surprises me that you can hold two such wildly different standards for evidence at the same time. You seem to believe that anything in mainstream medical ‘science’ is tainted by greed, and therefore untrustworthy. However, any statement by someone posting in a chat that an alternative treatment helped is taken at face value. Why is that?
Is there some reason that you don’t believe this?
Or this?
^^Those are the results of a study that the NIH funded because it also believed that the Gonzales protocol had the potential to help people.
It turned out to be a mistaken belief. People lived an average of three times as long on conventional treatment, with better quality of life. One patient lived ten times as long. The patients on the Gonzales protocol didn’t do better than they would have with no treatment at all.
Gonzales and his defenders claim that the explanation for that is that the patients in the study didn’t have enough of a a functioning digestive system and/or sufficient social support to undertake the rigorous program.
But the truth is that:
Or, in other words, people who were in relatively good shape when they started on the Gonzales protocol were dead in about four months, on average. Those who received standard treatment lived more than a year, and in a few cases, several.
And yet, Gonzales continued to claim that his protocol was a better bet than all other options. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?
Delightful though it is to see so many new people commenting at RI, I would be more inclined to read their comments if they would use paragraph breaks. It is as if everyone is using the same broken keyboard.
That is all very well, but remember this from Herb a few years ago:
In other words Gonzalez had his own special set of results from the trial; all his collaborators on the trial were lying when they published survival plots in which the Gonzalez patients died early; in Gonzalez’ own results, his patients lived longer, but for some reason he never published those results, preferring to keep them in his office and show them only to patients.
And Herb found Gonzalez to be a personable, sympathetic individual — as successful con-men tend to be — so Herb believes him, because Herb’s intuitions into other people’s integrity cannot be mistaken.
Charles X, let me put that to you a different way:
Even if you believe the people here who say Gonzales helped them, that would be (by my count) one person. But just to be on the safe side, let’s make it four people.
There were 32 patients in the Gonzales-protocol group for the study I just summarized. All of them died more quickly and with poorer quality of life than those who received standard care. And all of them were in good enough shape to sustain the protocol when they started it.
That would suggest that for every one of the people treated by Gonzales that you believe, there are a minimum of nine who are too dead to tell you about their experience. And possibly many more than that.
And yet, Gonzales continued to claim that his protocol was a better bet than all other options. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?
@Charles X, have you ever talked to a doctor? Ever even met one? Doctors tend to be, by their own admission, pretty determined people who want to go their own way. They are not, in general, scientists but that is something this blog would like to correct.
But doctors do die of cancer — I’ve known several who have — and they do lose family members to cancer — again, I’ve known several who have — and they are just as capable of doing online research as you are. If there were real cancer cures on the Internet, such as the Gonzalez protocol purports to be, doctors would find them and use them. Doctors are not going to sacrifice themselves or their loved ones or their friends for the greater good of Big Pharma, and once they started using such cures, if such cures really worked, there is no way they could be suppressed.
Your conspiracy theory only works if doctors are androids. They are not.
Why would all but a handful of terminally ill people who voluntarily elected to undergo experimental treatment because they thought (based on the then-extant research) it would give them a better chance of surviving longer then refuse to comply with it?
(That “the patients sent to him” is a masterpiece of disingenuous rhetoric, btw.
They were patients with pancreatic cancer in relatively good shape who elected to seek treatment from him rather than undergo chemo. They sent themselves to him, same as his paying patients.)
@ Charles X
If Gonzalez cure was working, Big Pharma will copy it and sell it, not hide it. Like it did with every wonder drug since aspirin. Precisely because they are money hungry.
Big Pharma is already selling vitamins. Re-purposing the end product of a line of production would cost peanuts to them, if the product could be oversold to a completely new market.
As for cancer researchers, if one type of cancer suddenly had a good treatment, there are still so many cancer types left to do science on…
Actually, if anything, studying how the new wonder treatment is working is by itself worth decades of research. Cancer researchers would love to hear about new lines of inquiries to go hunt along. Maybe along the road, they will find a new combination, even more effective. Or a new application. Starting with a protocol to shut down uncontrolled cell proliferation (cancer), someone may take a U-turn and stumble into controlled cell proliferation, a.k.a. organ regeneration.
In science, even the sky is not the limit.
So, same as Big Pharma. If Gonzalez’ protocol was working, researchers would make money out of it, too.
Charles X,
I call BS. Show me a single researcher in any field who “rakes in billions”. ANY field.
Not a very good start, and not helped by lack of paragraphs and punctuation either.
I’d say this is an excellent reason to increase funds for cancer research – but it also means whatever those doing medical research in the past has worked; people live longer, and die less from other causes. As the risk of cancer increases with age, those staying alive longer – and those who survive longer with cancer increase the number of people with cancer. I call that a good trend, especially as they keep surviving longer and longer, with and without cancer.
You can insist that “The medical world hasn’t improved much” but saying it doesn’t make it so – point a single discipline of medicine where improvements haven’t been made in the past 20 years, for example.
In the same post you argue that medical research is money hungry to the point of ignoring or downplaying “cures”. Aren’t you worried the medical doctor scientists you pine for would become part of what you obviously feel is the problem?
Why do you think cancer or pharmaceutical research isn’t today done by trained researchers, many with doctorates, and why do you think those people wouldn’t have a conscience? All those billion-dollar paychecks? Riiiight….
And by what process do you think all the nasty drugs were pulled from the market? Any suggestions?
For dessert, there’s also this…
Shot yourself in the leg with that one, imho.
No argument from me there.
I concur with HDB when he suggested that any benefits of the pancreatic enzymes in those unfortunate mice were due to complete pancreatic failure, meaning replacement enzymes improved digestion, which is essentially what the authors of this study concluded:
I’m not clear on whether the control mice had a signiificant decrease or an increase in steatorrhea, ketonuria, hyperglucosuria, and hyperbilirubinuria. They presumablty mean an increase, since an increase in steatorrhea would suggest poor nutrition. However, why would an increase in hyperbilirubinemia, or glycosuria for that matter, suggest poor nutrition? Jaundice in pancreatic cancer patients is usually due to mechanical obstruction of the bile duct or to liver metastases, IIRC, and glycosuria is due to either hyperglycemia or to changes in renal threshold, neither of which are nutritional in nature, unless you describe insulin deficiency as ‘nutritional’. I suspect the glycosuria is due to type 1 diabetes induced by destruction of endocrine as well as exocrine pancreatic function.
There are a few sloppy pieces of writing in this paper, for example:
Huh? Such slips being missed by authors, editors and peer reviewers does not fill me with confidence. But I digress.
More to the point, since pancreatic enzyme supplementation is a part of conventional care for pancreatic cancer patients with pancreatic exocrine insufficiency, I struggle to see this as a revolutionary discovery.
You’re on. Or should I say your on.
“I cannot believe the coldness in some of your comments.”
It’s cheaper than air conditioning.
“big pharma and cancer research are money hungry and don’t like their milk goat to be taken from them.”
Stop staring at my goat!
How about letting the cancer patients decide what treatments they want and have the government and the FDA can take a hike. Dont tell someone dying of cancer how YOU think they should be treated. When 1 in 3 are diagnosed every year, it`s most likely one of you will make that decision for yourself.
Great idea twinny! If I can convince people to spend ungodly sums of money for untested & unproven treatments, that should be my right, dammit!
Actually, my retort to twinny is that I’m a cancer doctor. Recommending the best science-based treatment for cancer is part of what I do for a living. Why should I do any differently when blogging for a general audience. So, yes, of course, without giving specific medical advice to individuals I tell my readers in general how I think breast cancer should be treated. That’s part of the mission of this blog. If twinny doesn’t like it twinny doesn’t have to read it.
That’s already the case for adults with cancer. They can choose or refuse any treatment they want to.
But I personally believe those with cancer deserve honesty about their options – and that means verifiable evidence. Cancer patients don’t deserve to be lied to, or presented with promises that can’t be kept. I’m sure you agree.
But sadly, most people promoting “natural” or alternative treatments and “cures” are doing just that. They dismiss requirements of evidence and promote individual, usually unverifiable and almost always prettied up anecdotes instead – they promise cures, while all failures are swept aside with “if only they’d come to us sooner” or “if only they had not had so many negative thoughts and doubts”.
And when there is evidence, like for the Gonzalez protocol, it’s bad, and it’s again dismissed by those promoting it.
While some argue FDA or CDC or any and all governments are corrupt and evil and suppress all manner of cures, there are universities, NGOs and foreign governments and agencies, some of which would have real incentives to damaging the US (or western) government(s) or pharmaceutical companies. The fact that they don’t isn’t proof of the omnipresent power of the pharma conspiracy, but of the fact that the evidence is there, and it shows that a combination of surgery, chemo and radiation as well as traditional medicine like nutrition and palliative care offers the best chance for the patients.
tl;dr, I personally don’t have any problem with somebody choosing whatever treatments they want for themselves, but I hope they do it knowing, really knowing, what they are getting into and what they are refusing. If you disagree with this, I would like to hear why.
@twinny
Umm, the government and FDA (isn’t that redundant?) don’t tell cancer patients what treatments they can/can’t/want/don’t want. Cancer patients, as gaist noted, already can decide what treatments they want. FDA simply tells producers of treatments what they can and cannot claim (i.e., they can only claim to treat those things for which they have evidence). Would you like this overturned? Is your mantra that if a patient gets conned, it’s their own damned fault?
One person in three is diagnosed with cancer every year? How is it that any of us are still alive?
Apparently, the REAL “quacks” forgot to mention that the Georgia guide stones CLEARLY indicate a motive to “maintain population under 500,000,000 an in accordinance with nature”. How do you get a population size of in excess of 6.5 BILLION down to 1/2 BILLION? You simply kill 10 out over every 11 people—using any means possible, EVEN nagalase laced vaccinations!
Oh, by the way, I happen to know a VERY conscientious individual at the shop where I work, who succinctly stated that his daughter (who is now 16) became autistic immediately after having been vaccinated.
The problem is that these “authorities” who refer to reputable alternative professionals as “quacks” are UNWILLING to allow any kind of testing of these alternative medicinals because they already know what the results will show. No, sir, these “sickos” would rather use new generations of World War I nerve gas agents to “cure” cancer, The “quacks” would rather use modalities that strengthen the body’s only “natural” immune system (which the Almighty God perfected within the human body–but these sickos probably believe that man came out of some little pond) to restore quality of life.
Don’t worry folks, Jesus Christ himself will, one day, “throw the ‘trash’ into the incinerator (a.k.a. ‘The Lake of Fire’) “, and Godly believers like the late Nicholas Gonzalez will have the last laugh!!!
“Peace”
gaist,
My own father underwent chemotherapy, and I saw the results. It was horrific. I SAW how the chemo ripped him to pieces, turning him from a strong-muscled former roofing contractor to such a weakling that he needed his two sons to hold him up because he did not have the strength to carry his own weight. And the cancer “cartel” has the audacity to say that alternative practitioners are making false promises? How “genuine” do you “drug dealers” expect cancer patients to think YOUR promises are when all you offer is bone-cancer triggering radiation and bone-marrow-destroying chemo? More and more people are getting disgusted with the horrendous track record of Pig Pharma, and that’s why you guys are playing dirtier than every in your desperation to keep control over a multi-billion-dollar industry.
That, or one third of the population bravely and quietly soldiers on despite the immense bad luck of contracting cancer once a year like clockwork.
Twinny: Thank you for standing up for the right to defraud people with cancer.
This article is about as biased and ignorant of finding novel WORKABLE alternatives to lethal poisons and radiation as the quack sites…like maybe working with immunity instead of waging war with bombs. I thought I might find some intelligence here, but what I see is superiority based on “science” cronyism ..BS and egotistical…. meaningless! Radical ideas are the leaps mankind has always grown from, and you only need intellect and reason, not a college education or degree or association with some perceived superior group. You are sheeple of a different stripe!.
That’s sad. I’m sure he would have been fine if he hadn’t had chemo and just let the cancer proceed naturally.
The problem is that these “authorities” who refer to reputable alternative professionals as “quacks” are UNWILLING to allow any kind of testing of these alternative medicinals
Didn’t read the article, did you.
Stephen K. Weber,
So far the nefarious they haven’t been very effective in their culling schemes, have they? Surely that large and powerful a corporation would have noticed that life expectancy has gone way up and child mortality way down where ever vaccines were introduced? I mean, somebody would have said something already.
You wouldn’t mind asking which vaccine and what he meant by ‘immediately’? If autism manifests itself around the time the child was vaccinated, it’s easy to assume one is related to the other even if that is not the case – and we know autism often manifests itself at 2-4 years of age, vaccines or no vaccines.
That’s patently and blatantly untrue.
Firstly, alternative modalities have been studied, over and over again. Hundreds of them, from all over the world and by all sorts of organizations, many without any ties to governments or pharmaceutical companies even. For most alternative therapies there are more ongoing studies done as we type. Promoters of alternative therapies often ignore vast majority of these studies because they don’t end up showing what they wanted.
Secondly, why don’t the alternative practitioners do their own studies? It’s not like there is a government monopoly. And even if you thought every single medical journal was in the pocket of the great culling conspiracy, just publish the study online, so anybody can check it. Censorship you say? Bah, there’s a ton of pages ‘exposing’ the great culling conspiracy online (I bet you came across it there somewhere). If they can’t censor that they can’t censor sh!t.
If you don’t believe in evolution, could you help me with something. I’ve asked it before and I’ve yet to receive a thoughtful answer. Do you think God created dogs, or are the breeds just man-made abominations corrupted from pure godlike wolves?
My condolences. I know from similar experience that chemo can be painful and straining and hard, but so is cancer – and to me it seems more so. What you blame chemo for may be due to the cancer itself.
And when my loved ones were offered chemo, the doctor explained the odds. They promised nothing they couldn’t keep – gave the likelihoods of various outcomes, answered questions and detailed what the treatments were like. Contrast that to for example the Gonzalez protocol, where advocates promise much much more than any studies give them right to, and all the failed treatments and terrible deaths are brushed aside – they didn’t stay with the regime, didn’t believe enough, were too late in coming to them (the fault always likes somewhere else than the treatment itself).
If you believe Gonzalez protocol or some other alternative cancer treatment is superior to current medical cancer treatments, please explain why, and present what you think is the most compelling piece of evidence for it. Disagreement with medical practice isn’t evidence for the alternatives, but I’ll settle for a single study, to get the dialogue going. I’ll happily see where the evidence leads me.
This is going to sound terrible, but have any of these depopulation conspiracy types ever considered the practical issues with the whole idea? Humanitarian considerations aside, killing people isn’t a particularly effective way to achieve long-term population reduction – it’s just a matter of time before the population bounces back (think the baby boomers after WWII.) Not to mention, corpse disposal was a problem even during the Black Plague, which “only” killed about half the population of Europe – if someone was really planning on killing 10/11 of the world’s population, there’d literally not be enough people left alive to dispose of the bodies, let alone keep the rest of civilization going. And why would they be killing people off with cancer of all things, which mainly kills older people who have likely already reproduced? If these shadowy Illuminati types have so much power, why not a few nukes? Bonus: no bodies to dispose of, and you can consolidate your control over what’s left of humanity by directing their grief and anger against the imaginary perpetrator. Of course, there’s the radiation to deal with, but you could probably use that to your advantage since it would force people to live in relatively small, “safe” areas, limit travel, etc. (Wow – I’m really thinking waaay too much about this…)
In reality, of course, we already know how to achieve a sustainable population because many developed nations have already done it – not by killing off their citizens, but by decreasing childhood mortality – you don’t have to have 10 kids to ensure 2 or 3 will make it to adulthood anymore. Of course, the availability of birth control and the general recognition of women as human beings rather than baby-making machines was an important factor as well.
If 10/11ths of the population were gone, it’d be almost impossible to get up a golf foursome.
I wouldn’t think corpse disposal would be the major issue (it will take care of itself in a couple of years, after all). There’d be a bigger problem with demolishing derelict properties and beautifying the neighborhood.
Apparently, the REAL “quacks” forgot to mention that the Georgia guide stones CLEARLY indicate a motive to “maintain population under 500,000,000 an in accordinance with nature”.
They also forgot to mention the graffiti in the toilets at The Old Entomologist, which are every bit as meaningful as the Georgia guide stones.
I happen to know a VERY conscientious individual at the shop where I work, who succinctly stated that his daughter (who is now 16) became autistic immediately after having been vaccinated.
At least he succinctly stated. Imagine if he had been prolix while spouting his gibberish! You dodged a bullet there.
EVEN nagalase laced vaccinations!
I’m still wondering why the Illuminati would put the nagalase into vaccinations; what’s wrong with chemtrails as the delivery vehicle?
EVEN nagalase laced vaccinations!
Ice cream, Mandrake! Children’s ice cream!
HDB, you have undoubtedly achieved cold heartless bastard status in no time. A hearty congrats to you.
You weren’t joking were you?
I thought Stephen was a Poe with the Georgia guide stones lead-in but sadly I’m mistaken.
Stephen @251:
I will assume (though you don’t actually state) that your father’s painful chemotherapy didn’t save or prolong his life, and for that I’m sorry. But at most, what you observed is an argument against the kind of chemotherapy your father had.
It’s not an argument for the Gonzalez protocol. Suppose your choices are something that might save your life but that will be unpleasant even if it works; something that won’t save your life and will be unpleasant, expensive, and time-consuming; palliative care; or nothing at all. I would understand choosing palliative care or doing nothing at all–thanking the doctor for the diagnosis, going home, and arranging to spend your remaining time with people you love, on your favorite hobby, maybe cash in your pension and spend the money a luxury vacation.
What doesn’t make sense is choosing the thing that is proven not to work and will be expensive, time-consuming, and unpleasant. Which describes the Gonzalez protocol.
So . . . if tens of thousands of patients die each year in the U.S. from properly prescribed medications (that seems to be a well-known fact), then who’s really the irresponsible ‘quacks’? (Besides, you have not silenced someone because you call them a name; and this name-calling is immature; a lot of people on this site need to grow up; it’s the juvenile ‘herd instinct’ in full color). . . . Also, science-based medicine as the Holy Grail seems to be the watchword here. But no science tests every combination of prescribed drugs. So every person taking 4 or 5 prescription is operating outside the bounds of science-based medicine. Whoops!
You know, I’m getting the feeling that someone posted a link to this post to a cancer quackery Facebook page or discussion forum with a lot of fans of Dr. Gonzalez. 🙂
Orac,
Have you checked your referring URLs?
The 10/11 cull has already occurred. There used to be 80 billion people on Earth. The chemtrails were used to reprogram the rest of us with false memories. But I was wearing a gas mask at the time so I know the truth. Wait, what’s that noise…gotta go before they find me.
Chemtrails won’t do the job. You can make them go away by spraying vinegar. Seriously. Look it up on youtube if you don’t believe me.
Vinegar, who knew? Thanks for the tip; I used to just close my eyes.
On a serious note, my siblings and I were often strafed by crop dusters while playing outside during 1970’s. I can still taste the bitterness of the insecticide or fungicide or whatever it was when I think about it. If something as straight forward as that didn’t cause me to panic, you can imagine how little concern I have for chem trails.
Also, science-based medicine as the Holy Grail
Monty Python trigger warning!
@Not a Troll #270
I have had great success with a 1:1 mixture of bleach and ammonia, in a squirt bottle, pulsed at random intervals (to catch them off guard). Huzzah! No more chemtrails. No drones neither.
@rs #268
I knew it, I knew it: wife and children really were killed off and replaced with skinbots programmed to behave identically while the Koreans were herded back over the 16th Parallel.
@neall
So, have any evidence for your assertions, because they fly in the face of actual evidence.
@Orac
Well, you have to admit, it’s always good to see the trolls and quacks post their screeds here, showing the world how truly out-of-touch they are with reality. And besides, it’s good to have a few laughs at their expense. Of course when who have tiresome trolls that repeat their nonsense ad nauseam (aka thingy, mjd, apv, etc.) it can get annoying. But some fresh dingbats are always welcome.
You are a real fool. A true troll.
Go haunt a house.
rs:
Are you my mummy?
😉
As a senior citizen, I am comforted by the thought that I’m only young once, but I can be immature forever.
Dimwit.
With your mastery of statistics, no doubt you can compare that number to the number of patients who survived because of properly prescribed medications.
And what makes you think it was the drugs that killed them, rather than the underlying cause?
@ Stephen K. Weber
Real researchers do work on cancer treatments based on the immune response, you misinformed fool. There was a lot of buzz a few months ago about either using cancer-killing viruses or creating anti-tumor “vaccines” – actually picking up the patient’s own white cells and activating the anti-tumor cells before re-injecting them.
The difference with quacks like the late Gonzalez being, these researches are based on a scientific understanding of the immune system, not on some fairy tale version of it.
Those quacks we are deriding here talk a lot, but their treatments have been weighted and found wanting. Their decoctions do nothing to “boost” the immune system or help cancer patients, aside from providing false hope. And taking away the little time and money they have left.
Look up the “Wellness Warrior”, Jessica Ainscough, for an example of someone going the alt-med road, if you like.
*Sigh*
Can all the recent drive-bys who seem to know so much about “Big Pharma” and its “conspiracies” and pay offs and how they work, please get in touch with the accounts department and ask them to send my cheques on? ‘Cos my wife would be able to retire if we get all the money I must be due, of which I haven’t seen a sodding penny.
Also, is there some correlation between being a woo apologist and not understanding the very well defined and widely published concept of informed consent?
FFS, over here we have policies and procedures and protocols and laws coming out of our ears about it and have to document stuff and have patient signatures on documents indicating that they understood and agreed to particular treatment modalities…
it’s the juvenile ‘herd instinct’ in full color
In my day we only had the juvenile herd instinct in black and white but you try telling that to the kids today.
“…please get in touch with the accounts department and ask them to send my cheques on?
You’ve obviously picked the wrong racket to be involved in. I suggest getting into selling Vit C drips and oxygen therapy. Maybe foot pads and “electric acupuncture” while you’re at it.
Speaking of trigger warnings: thanks Calli @275. Now I’m creeped out!
@ Sheepmilker / Cali
Ditto.
I haven’t seen many episodes, but this one I did, and it made a lasting impression.
Sarah A@258: Honestly, the looney woos should consider themselves damned lucky that it’s the comically inept and inefficent Illuminati who are running the world. If it was me in charge, they’d already be recycled into tiger kibble as the one positive contribution they can make of their otherwise wasted, pointless lives. Bums and parasites the lot of them, without even the good grace or humility to admit it, never mind the basic civility to keep the hell out the way of those who are trying to do better.
1. An unknown person or persons, call him/her/them “GG”, paid to have a monument erected in the 1980s.
2. ????????
3. Therefore, an international cabal exists; they have been plotting to establish a New World Order for decades since long before the 1980s (since vaccination has been a high public health priority for a long time prior to that); and their philosophies are exactly in accordance with GG’s.
I can’t quite figure out what goes in 2., Mr. Weber; could you clarify that?
Whew. Well, I’m glad you specified that he was conscientious and that his statement was succinct. If those things hadn’t been true, then there would be other possible explanations for what he reported, such as that he actually missed signs of autism which preceded the vaccination (as Michelle Cedillo’s parents missed signs that showed up in their own videotapes). But everyone knows that succinct and conscientious individuals cannot be fooled by the “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” fallacy the way the rest of us poor humans can.
This, of course, would be why the NCI spent $1.4 million to test the Gonzalez protocol.
1. An unknown person or persons, call him/her/them “GG”, paid to have a monument erected in the 1980s.
2. ????????
Using the Georgia Guidestones as support for one’s interesting and challenging perspective on geopolitics is akin to using the photocopied sheet that one found stapled to a power-pole.
Dr Gonzalez a “quack”? but then you would say that wouldn’t you being a mainstream shill. His results against cancer speak for themselves, but then you wouldn’t know anything about this as you have already dismissed his work because of a preconceived and biased mindset.
Nothing to say on the quackery of pharmaceutical oncology or radiation or the surgical intervention on cancer? which do nothing to address the causes of cancer and only treat the results of cancer development and growth?
Nixon declared war on cancer over 45 years ago but the incidence of cancer increases and the death rate soars. I have known 10 people close to me who have followed the orthodox oncology route and they all died within 4 years of treatment.
Hypocrisy par excellence.
272 “I knew it, I knew it: wife and children really were killed off and replaced with skinbots programmed to behave identically while the Koreans were herded back over the 16th Parallel.”
Or, you might have been killed and what was left was poured into a skinbot. That’s why things seem so odd to you.
I also just realized that the 80 billion cull thingy could be a massive distraction from the reality. There might really be only 500 million people left. I haven’t counted them, so it could be true. Clever. THEY know that no one person can tally, one by one, the world’s population.
When I retire I think I’ll become a conspiracy theorist. It sounds like great fun.
What are his results? How do they compare against current standard of care for cancer? What independent researchers replicated his work? How does that square with the trial Orac discussed where the results were so abysmal that they may well have been worse than leaving the cancer untreated?
Mr. Beckett: “His results against cancer speak for themselves,…”
Please post the PubMed indexed studies that show those glowing results, and then compare to the one’s cited in the above article. Thank you.
And how do you know what you claim to know?
Regarding “The Empty Child”….
Probably the most amazing thing about that two-part Dr Who story is that it is *exceptionally* creepy, downright nightmare-inducing, and yet has an intensely upbeat ending where exactly nobody dies, and in fact in many cases end up healthier than they started, even though it’s set in the Blitz.
Moffat knows how to yank our emotional chains is what I’m saying, I guess. 😉
That was my favorite Eccleston Doctor story. Of course, it helps that I’m a long time WWII buff as well.
Classic Doctor quote: “Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives!”
@ Orac:
Your quote of “Basically, like the Kelley protocol, the Gonzalez protocol was based on a belief in “detoxification” as a cure for cancer and the cause of cancer being a deficiency in pancreatic enzymes.” is completely inaccurate, which is typical for what you write.
The pancreatic enzymes are the heart of the treatment, not the coffee enemas.
There was a study done by some researchers showing the benefits of pancreatic enzymes in mice with cancer. Of course, this does not translate necessarily to humans but it is in line with Gonzalez’ beliefs and methods.
I came across this site again after “googling” dr. nicholas gonzalez, and once again I am disappointed by this site’s “members” black and white attitude….allopathy or bust, etc. This is not a site that stimulates true thoughts, counterthoughts, etc. It is about mudslinging towards anyone and everyone that challenges the status quo. This site is a joke.
It always amuses me when a Gonzalez devotee argues it’s not the coffee enema quackery but the pancreatic enzyme quackery that cures patients. Both are equally quacky, which makes the Gonzalez protocol two quackeries in one. Actually, it’s a lot more that two.
Indeed they do: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2009/09/14/the-gonzalez-protocol-worse-than-useless/
From the link:
@Calli Arcale – indeed, it was mostly about miscommunication.
Didn’t bother reading the comments first, did you?
His results against cancer speak for themselves
They certainly do — they were far worse than the results with patients using the conventional treatments. The people who convinced the NIH to fund a study of the Gonzalez protocol did him no favors.
Junk Science, Quackery, blah blah blah.
From the NIH:
“Another animal study looked at the effects of pancreatic enzymes on survival rates and tumor growth in rats with pancreatic cancer. Rats receiving the enzyme treatment lived longer, had smaller tumors and fewer signs of disease, and were more active than the rats in the control group, which did not receive the enzyme.”
Jim K, provide the PMID of that study so those words can be seen in context.
By the way: rats are not human. Remember mice lie and monkeys exaggerate.
the effects of pancreatic enzymes on survival rates and tumor growth in rats with pancreatic cancer
You might want to look for a more accurate summary of the paper… from someone who knows the difference between rats and mice.
Or you could look upstream in this thread, where the commenters you are trying to convince have already read and discussed it.
I cannot believe all the comments here trashing him for “claiming” his protocol. Chemotherapy “cures” 3%. That is 97% failure!!! I literally know hundreds of people dead after (read from) their chemotherapy treatments. And that is what you are all defending. Those doctors are not quacks!
Wrong. That’s an old trope that I refer to as the “2% gambit”:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2011/09/16/two-percent-gambit-chemotherapy/
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2011/12/07/so-chemotherapy-does-work-after-all/
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2013/10/30/so-chemotherapy-does-work-after-all-revisited/
As for leukemias and lymphomas, almost no one survived them before the discovery that they could be treated with chemotherapy.
That’s an amusing choice of source, given that it contradicts your original assertion,
To wit, “The pancreas secretes enzymes, proteins that help digest food. The Gonzalez regimen is based on the theory that pancreatic enzymes also help the body get rid of toxins that lead to cancer. The coffee enemas are added because they are believed to improve the liver’s ability to remove toxins from the body.”
I’m sorry for your loss. It must be terrible to have seen so many acquaintances (at least 200 by your statement) die from cancer.
Deanna — go find someone to explain to you what why “post hoc ergo propter hoc” is considered a logical fallacy.
I literally know hundreds of people dead after (read from) their chemotherapy treatments.
Deanna sounds like a dangerous person to be around.
I suppose she might work in or near a cancer ward somewhere.
From the NIH
Also from the NIH, immediately before the garbled description of the 2004 mouse study:
Christopher Beckett: “Nixon declared war on cancer over 45 years ago but the incidence of cancer increases and the death rate soars.”
What planet are you on, Chris?
“Progress in the war against cancer has triggered a 22 percent drop in U.S. deaths over the past two decades, translating to about 1.5 million lives saved, a new American Cancer Society report finds.”
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20141231/falling-cancer-death-rate-means-15-million-lives-saved-over-20-years
True, the animal study involved mice, not rats. The NIH info was wrong.
Anyway, there is the work of Beard in the early 1900s, Kelley years later, and the studies involving mice and humans that are the basis for the legendary Dr. Gonzalez’ treatment.
The pancreatic enzymes are there to break down the tumors and the coffee enemas are used to help with the detoxification resulting from the toxins released as a result of the “attack” on the tumors.
As far as the Columbia “trial”, the results were considered to be useless by one investigator and if was not just flawed, but a fraud.
http://the-moneychanger.com/articles/the_truth_behind_the_clinical_trial_of_the_enzyme_treatment_of_cancer
Jim K, from that page: “An interview with Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez (July 2012)”
Really? You think we’d really think that was an educated unbiased source?
@Orac 296.
I’m still waiting for you – or anyone – to provide a scientific rebuttal for the trophoblastic/pancreatic enzyme theory of cancer causation and treatment. I’ve yet tor read a rigorous rebuttal from anyone. Of course It’s just allot easier to throw around the word ‘quack’ as you do with great alacrity.
I’m still waiting for someone to provide a scientific rebuttal to the witchcraft theory of cancer causation and treatment. Just sayin’.
@ herr doctor
From the breast cancer in rats study:
“The results of this laboratory animal study suggest that to show effective inhibition of metastatic dissemination of the R13762 tumor by PPP, lower doses of PPP and larger numbers of animals, to account for the high variability in the model, will be required.” So, the lowest dosage of PPP with the Mg++ supplement showed the best results….does that debunk the pancreatic enzyme therapy?
@herb
Good point!!!
Indeed (PDF):
@ Chris.
After the criticism of Dr. Chabot in the Columbia study by Gonzalez and others unrelated to Gonzalez, do you think that the results that were published were from an UNBIASED source? Gee, let’s do a study of my stuff versus your stuff and I’m the director of the study and you have no part in it!!!!
Jim K, so what? How do you think Gonzalez’s opinion will be treated here? Think about it real hard.
Herb, Jim K – before you ask for proof that cancer isn’t caused by misplaced trophoblasts, shouldn’t you be able to show that they might actually cause cancer?
@ Chris
Not very highly!!!
Here you go, cupcake: http://www.docdroid.net/SkYP9nd/integr-cancer-ther-2008-moss-229-51.pdf.html
Have fun.
Link fail…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2860407/
The facts are this:
1) Gonzalez’ pre-clinical resume was very good, including his work with Dr. Good at MSKCC
2) He was involved in a successful study involving mice with pancreatic cancer treated with PPEs.
3) He was involved in a successful study involving humans with pancreatic cancer treated with his therapy….selection bias most probably but still impressive.
4) He was involved in the Columbia study that appeared to indicate that doing his therapy was worth less than doing nothing when it came to treating humans with pancreatic cancer, (which I find totally not believable).
5) He was somewhat vindicated with regards to that Columbia study when an investigator wrote in a peer reviewed journal that the results of the study were “meaningless”.
5) I spoke with one of his patients (did not get his name thru Gonzalez) who lived, but eventually died, 4 years after he was supposed to while following the Gonzalez therapy.
6) Last, and probably most important, he was vindicated by the MD that investigated him, on the dateline program of a few years, that said he believed that there was a place for Dr. Gonzalez’ work in the treatment of cancer!
I met with Dr. Gonzalez one time, and although I believe the success rates that he quoted are inflated, I do believe that Dr. Gonzalez did help and cure many people, just like the ketogenic diet has, etc and I believe that the world lost a truly great man.
3) He was involved in a successful study involving humans with pancreatic cancer treated with his therapy….selection bias most probably but still impressive.
11 cherry-picked success stories out of however many hundred cases he had treated by then? Impressive!
“11 cherry-picked success stories out of however many hundred cases he had treated by then? Impressive!”
You don’t understand, herr doktor bimler. Those were the only 11 who managed to swallow all 150 pills every day without vomiting. All those other patients who died within months – there own fault, obviously.
I love this blog. I having been reading it for several months and appreciate a blog that presents the facts always backed up by objective evidence.
Although, I am woefully lacking in any kind of scientific background (criminal justice major); I appreciate solid evidence.
It is so heartbreaking so many people believe in alternative medicine quackery. I have seen this happen to family members who then push this “new religion” on me.
The advances made in evidence based medicine in the last century are truly amazing and have saved many lives, including mine. I feel very sorry for those who have posted here ranting about altmed sorcery. You can’t reason with fanatics.
And by the way I see a lot of criminal thinking errors with these folks and their quacks.
So, the lowest dosage of PPP with the Mg++ supplement showed the best results….does that debunk the pancreatic enzyme therapy?
It appears that there was a negative relationship between PPP dosage and tumor metastasis. I am happy to extrapolate that relationship down to zero PPP being best.
The authors imply in the Abstract that they were unable to find any statistically-significant benefit from PPP, and they can only suggest ways in which the search for positive evidence might continue:
They sound rather like True Believers, with the unquestioned assumption that effective inhibition must exist and it is only a question of looking hard enough to find it. But I haven’t read the paper. Do you recommend it?
Stick around, Sandy! And please continue to comment. I’ve learned so much from comments here over the years precisely because of the variety of experiences folks here have had.
I don’t see why it’s absolutely OUTRAGEOUS to think that the same body that is creating the cancer is also capable of breaking it down and get rid of it under the right conditions. Cancer very obviously doesn’t stop growing even when chemo, surgery and drugs are employed. Nobody sees this???
One mildly humorous element to this is that Herb/oderb, Jim K, et al., are so lazy or routinized that they can’t even find different papers to cite that might help to salvage something from their output. I mean, it’s slim pickings, but this isn’t exactly a difficult exercise in Pubmed search.*
O’Herb, at least, doesn’t even seem to be familiar with Gonzalez’s own ouvre:
SRSLY? Gonzalez himself had distanced himself in primt from the “trophoblastic ‘theory’ of cancer” by last fall at the very least and tried to substitute something more hip & happenin’.
Get working, y’all; I’ve given you enough clues,
* “Vitasearch” notwithstanding.
2) He was involved in a successful study involving mice with pancreatic cancer treated with PPEs.
The study was “successful” in the sense that it showed that when you destroy the pancreas of a mouse it will die of diabetes and protein deficiency… unless you supplement its water with PPE. If, however, Gonzalez et al had set out to test whether PPE will treat the pancreatic cancer itself, the paper was an abject failure because they designed such a fecked-up experiment.
This was discussed above.
Nobody said it was.
Nobody sees that because it’s not true. While it can be difficult to put cancer into remission – or cure it altogether – there are known success rates with surgery, drugs, and radiation. Why do you not see that?
As far as the Columbia “trial”, the results were considered to be useless by one investigator and if was not just flawed, but a fraud.
Since Gonzalez was an enthusiastic collaborator with and beneficiary from the study (until his patients kept dying, when he refudiated the project and blamed the results on the substandard care that his patients were receiving), doesn’t this make him a party to the alleged fraud?
IIRC, all the parties involved in the Columbia study were enthusiastic believers in Gonzalez’ treatment. They wanted it to work; they would not have wasted their time if they were expecting negative results, and they could not have ethically recruited patients. They were looking for evidence of success… but most of them were honest enough to admit that the treatment was a failure.
Gonzalez approved of the study design. For him and his fanclub to then turn around and accuse his collaborators of designing the study to fail, and conspiring right from the start to sabotage the results, is rather rich, though not entirely unexpected.
@ xtine
Our immune system is actually killing abnormal cells left and right all the time. So yeah, nothing outrageous here.
The problem is, when a cancer arises, it’s because our body’s defenses have been overwhelmed, tricked or compromised, and the initial nest of a few dozen tumor cells is now a mass of many thousands.
So asking the immune system to break a tumor is like asking a bunch of cowboys to run to and stop a stampede they were unable to stop happening in the first place. Oh, and the cowboys’ horses have joined the stampede, sans the cowboys.
Not exactly impossible, but definitively a challenge. If the cowboys are lucky, the cattle will run in the right direction, get tired and stop running. A spontaneous remission, if you like.
If they are not, the cattle will run themselves off a cliff, taking the cowboys with them.
the coffee enemas are used to help with the detoxification resulting from the toxins released as a result of the “attack” on the tumors.
Could someone explain to me — preferably in a gentle soothing voice — exactly what these toxins are, and why they require coffee enemata to detoxify them? I don’t imagine that apoptosis of these trophoblastic tumour cells produces tetrodotoxin, say, or ricin, or α-amanitin. But I am willing to change my mind.
Some of my staff would probably state that I require coffee to make me less toxic, but it has to be administered through the other end.
When do we start calling the FDA and the people who burry their heads in the sand, the “QUACKS”
twinny, I recognize most of those words as English, but not the way they are arranged. Please try again with more coherence.
@ Mephistophales the success rates are abysmal and the suffering, enormous. If there is another way, it’s worth exploring, and it looks as though there are many, many people who have found another way.
I actually spoke to a man who had done a lot of research due to the fact that his father had cancer, and he told me that German clinics have a far higher success rate than USA Cancer Doctors and are cheaper as well. The thing to do is to go to them FIRST. His father had been cut and burned by USA doctors first so that by the time he got to the German clinic it was too late for him. People with the means to do it, are now heading to German cancer clinics IF they have the means.
First, I’m going to modify your question so that it doesn’t stray so far into fallacious “straw man argument” territory:
Now that’s done, I want to talk about what we might call the “insightless” perspective. (That’s a clunky term that I just made up, but if I used the existing technical term, you would surely find it offensive.) The insightless perspective is what you have when you can observe things from the outside, or can examine the end results, but do not understand the workings that lead to those results.
We all have at least a fair grasp of how cars work, so we don’t approach it from an insightless perspective. If you tell us that the reason the car doesn’t go is, respectively, “the gas tank is empty”, “the fan belt broke”, or “the piston block cracked in half”, we’d all have a fair idea of just how badly things went wrong, and whether the car’s likely to be good as new as soon as new gas goes in, or unlikely to ever move under its own power again.
The insightless perspective only sees “the car doesn’t go”. The person with the insightless perspective hears “the piston block cracked” and thinks “Hunh. Well, last time the car stopped, the problem was ’empty gas tank’ and that was fixed in five minutes once we pushed the car to the service station. So maybe this problem will be fixed in five minutes, too.” That is completely logical and reasonable from that perspective – but it’s simply not correct.
From an insightless perspective on the workings of the human body, “cancerous tumor” may seem indistinguishable from “cyst” or “bone bruise” or any number of other maladies. (For that matter, it seems as if all the maladies which fall under the heading “cancer” are pretty much interchangeable, which they are not.) So it seems reasonable to think “The body has self-repair mechanisms; under the right conditions, they clear up a bone bruise so well you’d never even know it had been there. So why is it implausible to think that it might have self-repair mechanisms that would clear up cancer?”
And the answer is, it is plausible – from an insightless perspective. When we learn more about the human body, we learn that “cancer” is in large part what happens when the self-repair mechanisms themselves go out of whack. We want new cells to be created, to replace the cells that have died during the course of our normal life. But if one of those cells that gets the instructions “make new cells” misses out on the part of the instructions that says “… and then stop when you’ve made enough”, it’s going to keep replicating without stopping – even if the new cells end up harming or killing the body, that cell is just following the (corrupted) instructions it’s received.
Okay, so we’ve established that cancer is a different kind of problem than the kind we know the body has self-repair mechanisms for. But, is it possible that the body has self-repair mechanisms for its self-repair mechanisms? That stopping a malfunctioning cell and clearing away the tumor created by its uncontrolled replication might just be a matter of finding the right signal to the body to say “Hey! cleanup on aisle of Langerhans!”?
Possible, yes – at least we can say it is, because we simply don’t know everything about the body, and probably never will. But when we ask how probable it is, we have to ask, “Why on Earth would evolution successfully produce such a sophisticated biological facility and then leave it unused?” It’s the same objection to the common claim that “we only use 10% of our brain, and some simple method exists by which we can access that other 90% and become greatly more intelligent!” Wouldn’t that simple method have been discovered? Wouldn’t the obvious huge advantage thus conferred have led its practitioners to out-compete those without it, and thus establish the usage of that method as the new normal? Looking at the same problem from the opposite direction, if the facility existed but the means to activate it was known by almost no one, then why wouldn’t the facility be lost to mutation? We once had tails, and we had a use for them. When we came down from the trees and no longer needed the tails, they didn’t stay around; they left only vestigial traces.
So, it may not be “absolutely OUTRAGEOUS” to speculate about such a ready-made cancer cure waiting to be activated by some simple protocol – but that’s not the right question. The question is, is it LIKELY ENOUGH to justify aiming our research efforts in that direction? Hopefully you now understand why the answer is “no”.
We don’t see it because it’s not true. If surgery excises an unmetastatized tumor completely, or chemotherapy or radiotherapy eliminates all the cancerous cells, then by definition it has stopped growing in the body. To deny this is simply to mark yourself as confused on basic knowledge of cancer. Now if we ask “will cancer ALWAYS be stopped from growing by these mainstream means?” then the answer is “no”, but once again it’s the wrong question being asked. The right question is “do mainstream means at least have a proven success rate better than zero, which is better than a ‘turn on a powerful but inexplicably unused biological function that currently is only speculated might exist’ protocol.
@ Antaeus – I think there is a point of diminishing returns in any conversation when a subject is belabored.
The truth is, that thousands of people have been helped or even what they call “cured” by these “alternative” measures against cancer. People have the right to use their own logic to decide the method of healing they would like to try. The low success rates of chemo/surgery/radiation have convinced a lot of people that they would be better off finding another way, and then at least they will die in one piece if they must.
Rather than rephrasing my question, why not deal with what I was actually addressing – the nasty, snarky attitude that is being pushed on this page that anything other than conventional treatment is OUTRAGEOUSLY STUPID, and that anyone who tries it or believes in it must be a TOTAL IDIOT. That’s just simply not true.
Xtine: “The truth is, that thousands of people have been helped or even what they call “cured” by these “alternative” measures against cancer.”
The plural of anecdote is not data. The above statement is only an opinion.
“Rather than rephrasing my question, why not deal with what I was actually addressing – the nasty, snarky attitude that is being pushed on this page that anything other than conventional treatment is OUTRAGEOUSLY STUPID, and that anyone who tries it or believes in it must be a TOTAL IDIOT. That’s just simply not true.”
Where is it stated in the article written above that those who try alternative treatments are idiots. Please provide a direct quote from Orac that he said this.
Plus the efficacy of alternative cancer treatment is not even the subject of the above article. It is about the irrational reaction from some (who are not cancer patients) to a string of unrelated deaths of certain health care practitioners.
What I see in the comments is frustration over some who repeat the same failed arguments, and who also bring up the same flawed “studies.”
Xtine,
You might find the SEER cancer database of interest. Five-year survival for all cancers has been steadily improving since 1975. You can put in different cancer sites to see how survival has improved for them too. Cancer has proved to be more complex than initially thought, and more difficult to defeat, but it really isn’t true to claim that chemotherapy, surgery and drugs are ineffective.
Conversely, none of the alternative cancer treatments that have been tested (and that is pretty much all of them) are as effective as conventional treatment. I often refer people to Dr. Peter Moran’s website where he assesses the efficacy of a number of alternative cancer treatments. By their own figures, they don’t do as well as conventional treatment does. You could also peruse the NCCAM and OCCAM websites to see how billions of dollars of US taxpayers money has been spent on testing alternative treatments that are essentially useless.
I’m afraid I find that amusing. I live in Europe, where people frequently say that the US has the best and most innovative treatments, and celebrities raise money to send cancer patients to the likes of Gonzalez and Burzynski. It seems that where cancer treatments are concerned the grass is always greener. More to the point I suspect that people in Europe will be less aware of the criticisms of these unconventional doctors, just as those in the US are unaware that the European clinics they are heading to are just as bogus. I wonder if the German clinic you are referring to is the Budwig Clinic , which is based on a discredited theory and has no convincing evidence to support its efficacy.
a man who had done a lot of research
This is not a particularly helpful form of citation.
5) [Gonzalez] was somewhat vindicated with regards to that Columbia study when an investigator wrote in a peer reviewed journal that the results of the study were “meaningless”.
Details please?
6) Last, and probably most important, he was vindicated by the MD that investigated him, on the dateline program of a few years, that said he believed that there was a place for Dr. Gonzalez’ work in the treatment of cancer!.
Jim K, back when he was “Jake”, March 2011:
Jake, October 2011:
I would like something more substantial than “Suzanne Somers claimed that NBC journalists reported that an unnamed MD (or possibly oncologist) investigated Gonzalez some time previously and did not condemn him”. But apparently this hearsay claim about someone else’s hearsay claim about someone else’s investigation is the “most important” evidence for vindicating Gonzalez.
Ah, I learn from Chris’ comment in 2011 that the MD was a retired oncologist, Julian Hyman, who wrote an affidavit for Gonzalez after Gonzalez lost his malpractice suit and responded by suing his lawyer.
In some versions of the story, Hyman had been tasked with investigating Gonzalez by the New York Board of Medicine only to experience a Road-to-Damascus conversation, but I see no sign of that in the actual court case (in which Hyman is simply a hired witness for Gonzalez). Perhaps someone has access to the affidavit itself.
Kreb #346 Re: German cancer “cures”
I’m sure you’re aware there’s an urban legend that Ronald Reagan eschewed the greatest care available in the US to sneak away to Germany (several times, apparently) to be cured of cancer.
In some stories, it’s the legendary “Dr.” Leonard (not my real name) Coldwell who claims to have been the German doctor who treated Ronnie. Or knows the doctor.
Apparently there’s some German clinic that “superheats” the patient to abnormal and presumably dangerous fever levels to “cook and kill” the cancer.
For reason Bob Marley comes to mind vis a vis German cancer quackery rumours, but I’m too tired (lazy) to even Google it right now. I remember having a conversation here a while back about Marley, the CIA and some poisoned boots. Another great conspiracy story.
Re: Gonzalez endorsement
Even Burzynski got one other real doctor to openly endorse and support him: the equally crackpot Julian Whitaker, the anti-vax loonie, anti-psychiatry Scientology/CCHR supporter. Great reference for Stan. Two of a kind.
Just ‘cuz it’s Friday night in my time zone, this popped into my mind as I was about to respond to someone:
“Cut, burn and poison” sounds like me in the kitchen…
I apologize for any frivolity.
Wow…I really AM tired. It’s only Thursday night here. I guess I have to go to work in the morning.
Woo Fighter,
Marley had Issels treatment (sounds like run-of-the-mill detox woo) in Germany. Farah Fawcett springs to my mind. Whch reminds me of Steve McQueen, who was treated with a version of the Gerson/Gonzalez protocol, unsuccessfully of course.
I am just so teed offf.
Dr. Ted Broer (the Christian Nutritionist, who has exposed chemtrails and warned us that eating margarine causes a plastic to form around our cells) was on a truth-telling radio broadcast a few days ago making mind-blowing revelations about the topic of this very thread – and I missed it!
“Speaking of the murder of the health doctors, Dr. Ted Broer will be appearing in the last half hour of the show and he will be making an earth-shattering revelation related to the specific medical reason that so many doctors are being murdered. The material is so controversial, that a special broadcast of the Hagmann and Hagmann report was taken off the air last night in order to prevent Ted from making these same revelations.”
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2015/07/26/css-special-broadcast-john-b-wells-and-jade-helm-dr-ted-broer-on-murder-of-dead-doctors-tonight-800pm-est/
I sure hope no one took Ted off the air before he could make the revelations on the Common Sense Show! Does anyone have a synopsis? Oh, and has anyone heard from Ted in the past few days?
Ted?
For those who would persist in believing that the animal study on porcine pancreatic enzymes supports the regimen of Gonzalez, the most thorough critical analyses I have seen to date were recently posted over at Edzard Ernst’s site by Björn Geir:
http://edzardernst.com/2013/07/the-alternative-cancer-cure-of-nicholas-gonzalez/
Dr. Ted Broer (the Christian Nutritionist,[…] was on a truth-telling radio broadcast a few days ago making mind-blowing revelations about the topic of this very thread – and I missed it!
Here you go!
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cfp-radio/2015/07/26/because-time-is-short-special-saturday-edition-with-dr-ted-broer
Would that happen to be, by what I’m sure is complete and total coincidence, the point at which a question you asked receives an answer that you don’t like, explained so thoroughly that you cannot find a loophole or purport not to understand the argument?
Oh, I see! I’m sorry; I thought I was treating you respectfully by removing the straw man from an otherwise intelligent question.
I didn’t realize that the straw man was in fact your primary goal in commenting, that you don’t want to engage with what we actually have to say when it’s so much easier to invent a position so extreme that it’s practically self-refuting, and then pretend we have something to do with that position because you claim it’s our “attitude”.
Can we play your game, too? I mean, it took quite some effort to compose a solid, respectful reply to the question you actually asked; it’d be SO much easier to simply jeer at you for believing that EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD is a cancer cure EXCEPT FOR anything that mainstream science concludes actually has anti-cancer activity. Of course, I have no grounds for concluding that that is your “attitude”, but you’ve already established that anyone can just declare what someone else’s “attitude” is without having to have any grounds. How can it be fair for you but not for us?
Speaking of nasty, snarky attitudes…
He lost two malpractice suits because his treatments left one patient blind and crippled and killed another.
How does that factor into your thinking?
Xtine,
Which cancers?
What were the “alternative” measures against cancer?
How many thousands of people were cured?
What were the cure rates?
How did those cure rates compare to current standard of care?
What independent researchers duplicated the results?
How do you know those things to be true?
Thanks.
I had no damn idea that this was a pl. form. It sounds so elegant and insidious like “illuminati”. I’d rather like it if this could be widely applied to the groups of people who incorporate this practice for really dumb reasons.
If I understand the timeline correctly, that’s where the whole “vindicated by the MD that investigated him, on the dateline program of a few years, that said he believed that there was a place for Dr. Gonzalez’ work in the treatment of cancer!” ball of hair came from.
1. Julianne Charell sued Gonzalez in 1993 for malpractice. This was after he talked her out of chemo / radio adjuvant treatment for metastases, instead prescribing the usual supplements and coffee per vas nefandum, while monitoring her condiiton with radionics and crank hair tests that metastasis-free. In the end, the tests turned out to be lies so she went into M Sinai for much-delayed, much more intensive therapy that f*cked her joints and left her blind.
2. Independently, the New York state medical board censured Gonzalez in 1994 for “departing from accepted practice”.
3. Gonzalez lost the case in 1997 though he talked down the damages to $330,000 by threatening to declare bankruptcy and pay nothing..
4. Gonzalez responded in his usual way, by blaming someone else’s mistakes — in this case, the lawyer who defended him. In 2004 he tabled various affidavits from people claiming they had been willing to testify on his behalf, so the lawyer would have won the case if he had called upon those experts.
In particular, Dr Julian Hyman would have been willing to testify that Charell was dying anyway and couldn’t have been saved so the coffee treatment was no worse than the alternative; that her blindness was purely the result of incompetent radiotherapy; and that hair-sample tests are a perfectly cromulent way of detecting metastasis.
http://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/other-courts/2004/2004-51518.html
5. The lawyer responded in 2005 by explaining that he had interviewed Gonzalez’ nominated experts and found them either evasive as to whether they would testify, or so bogus that they would damage Gonzalez more than they would help him, or both, which is why he did not call them as witnesses.
6. In 2011, after his Dateline appearance went wrong, Gonzalez explained that his would-be independent witness Hyman is “a strong supporter, defender, and close friend”.
http://blog.suzannesomers.com/?p=66
——————————-
Apparently this is vindication.
The truth is that thousands of people have died at the hands of cancer quacks who convince them to forgo surgery or chemo in favor of expensive “alternative” treatments, for which the quacks have made false promises of “curing” the disease. (Just type “Brain Clement” “Makayla Sault” or “Hippocrates Health” into the RI ‘Search’ field for starters…)
So I won’t assert that anyone who “tries or believes in” these scams “must be a TOTAL IDIOT”. Many of them are victims of highly skilled con artists who have exploited their weaknesses to live large over an ever growing pile of corpses. I mourn the loss of the prematurely dead.
I will aver that anyone who pimps for cancer quackery in internet forums is an accomplice to murder, and merits not snark, but straight-faced moral outrage and disgust.
____
Antaeus: IMHO #343 is brilliant — one of the most clear and engaging explications of how logic is connected to knowledge bases I’ve ever read. Honestly, IDK which “existing technical term” you refer to, but i like the concept of “insightless perspective” a lot, and I hope it catches on. I have the feeling I’ll wind up using it, and copying your post repeatedly in the future (if there is one…) to explain to ACTUAL REASONABLE PEOPLE how the limits of their knowledge can lead them to false conclusions.
I will suggest one edit though, as my most immediate reference is exactly related to an insightless perspective on how cars work — specifically the electrical system of a 2001 Honda CR-V. Perhaps, “A regular listener to Car Talk is likely to have at least a fair grasp of how cars work…”? 🙂
If “Hey! cleanup on aisle of Langerhans!” is original, Bravo! If you Banksied it from somewhere, kudos anyway, but can you cite the source, so I’ll know who might be annoyed when I attribute it to you. 🙂 🙂 .
All this dude did was throw shade.Listen…I don’t trust big pharma.They are evil!
@ Woo Fighter #350: German cancer cures and Ronald Reagan. Another legend has it that he went to Germany to receive an extract of Venus’ flytrap (Drosera muscipula) by injection. As I recall, the plants were harvested in North Carolina and prepared by a special, proprietary method of extraction for injection in cancer patients at a small, private clinic in Germany. We are going back a long time, but if my memory serves, the basis for the treatment was hypothesized to be a toxic napthoquinone (plumbagin) in the extract that, in small concentrations, was thought to (wait for it) stimulate the immune system. In vitro studies had shown that dilutions of the quinone were capable of modulating immune cells, but proved cytotoxic in higher concentrations. Two articles from the 1980s on the treatment, both in German and without abstracts, are cataloged at PubMed:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3375655
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3902598
A recent review on Venus’ flytrap – albeit, tainted with hyperbole – suggests to me that we have yet to hear the end of it:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23971004
I really hope you so called scientists. Following nothing but the data, the numbers, the “scientific proof”. I bet very few of you if even any have ever even conducted a scientific study. (Graduate school group assignment doesn’t count). You so called “scientists” don’t even follow the literature. Then when someone brings up one obvious claim of many alternative doctors have helped cancer patients you demand evidence and proof. Why don’t you pick up a book, subscribe to a journal and educate yourself in the vast data that has been done in the realm of CAM. The problem is with you so called scientist’s is you have no intuitive hunch, no capacity to think creatively and progressively. If you analyze the research, the trends, and data you would clearly notice that there are numerous non-invasive procedures and phytochemicals that have immensely beneficial effects in cancer cells. I personally would not say that pancreatic enzymes are the be all cure all for cancer. However, that is not to say that they be regarded as ineffective. Besides what is mainstream medicine pushing these days chemo, radiation, and surgery. Come on! Am I the only one who is questioning the approach to medicine in this country. You square heads outta open your minds and research nutraceuticals, functional medicine, and alternative therapies and bit more before you speak out pretending to be the voice of reason. I know now why you attention junkies speak out against “woo woos”. Because you want to pretend to yourself and others that you know best. When I’m about 85% sure all you “woo woo fighters” are just biased liars (especially to yourselves) who do this just to feel more secure that they know the absolute truth when in reality you know absolutely nothing about the truth of the integrative approach in medicine. Your probably all collecting some kind of income by some agency telling you what kind of disinformation you can spread about people who are actually doing research and are progressive in their fields. Sorry to end your sharades but your not the voice of reason you probably think “woo woo” thoughts in your head daily and if your friends found out your cover would be totally blown. Pathetic and disgusting. No I will not post any links for research for you to look at, so I can prove it to you. It has already been proven that majority of diseases can be treated in non conventional ways and have extraordinary results consistently. Why don’t you learn how to investigate this yourself. Stop trying to be woo woo police because your just beating up your ownselves and stunting true growth in society around you. There is no security in appearing intellectually smart with reason if you cant use other parts of your brain like intuition and the ability to judge something fairly without jumping to conclusions and assuming. Your not cool or smart because you put other people down. Lastly, quack has a negative connotation to it that doesn’t justify some of these doctors and medical professionals. Its like calling a particular sect a cult. Its wrong and automatically confers the meaning that this person is out to take advantage of people by intentionally selling them something that doesn’t work. When in reality you guys are probably collecting checks to fight quacks thus would truly be worse than quacks because your making money to intentionally hinder others that could otherwise help people. Good Job!
Sox needs fewer “so called scientists” and more paragraph breaks.
@Woo Fighter #350: Oops! The binomial is wrong. The correct name is <Dionaea muscipula. The articles cited at PubMed nonetheless apply. Both concern the use of a product named “Carnivora”. I expect they amount to little more than anecdotal case reports of cancer patients.
@sox: This may come as a shock, but phytochemicals with antitumor activity are of great interest to the, as you put it, “so-called scientists” here. The more active against cancer cells and the less active against healthy cells the better.
“Sox needs fewer “so called scientists” and more paragraph breaks.”
Be fair, he avoided ALL CAPS.
“Your probably all collecting some kind of income by some agency telling you what kind of disinformation you can spread”
He has found us out. 🙁
In reality, the pay is not so good but the hours are quite flexible.
#366
Many of us have read much of the “evidence” for the stuff we dismiss as woo, which is why we dismiss it as woo…
And, as you also appear to be in touch with the Big Pharma accounts department, can you get them to send my money on? I could use it. The NHS never paid that well, not for nurses anyway.
And for the sake of completeness, I should also point out that I have been over the years very critical of a lot of conventional medical research: I don’t automatically believe that either, unless there is convincing evidence, ‘cos I’m an equal opps disbeliever and requirer of evidence.
According to the ruling, those symptoms were due to the non-efficacy of the Gonzalez protocol:
Is that wrong?
(Also, just for the sake of timeline completeness:
In 2000, he was also held liable for the death of Hollace Shafer.
She died of Hodgkin’s at age 40.)
It’s a pity Jim Garrison isn’t still around, so he could write a followup book called “On The Trail Of The Pharma Assassins”.
Meanwhile, I see ORAC is being silent about the murder of holistic doctor Lisa Riley in Georgia at the hands of Pharma agents.
http://edgytruth.com/2015/07/15/another-holistic-doctor-found-murdered/#
The “authorities” are trying to pin the killing on her boxer husband (who goes by the name “Terrible Thomas The Punisher”), but I think you will all agree that it’s a frame job.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/georgia-boxer-terrible-thomas-charged-death-wife-article-1.2299817
When will ORAC speak out against this injustice?
No, sox. That’s very improbable, actually.
Not if that particular sect is a cult, do admit.
Yes, that’s the point.
If true, that would be a grave evil.
But it’s not true. Gonzalez is being called a quack because there’s abundant evidence that he was intentionally selling people something that didn’t work.
They included people who had curable cancers but died young because they opted for the Gonzalez protocol over standard treatment. Like Hollace Schafer.
How do you account for that?
@sox: Here’s one for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphorbia_peplus
@sox: They may not be approved for the treatment of cancer, but here are two “botanical drugs”, one from the latex of a South American tree (Croton lechleri) commonly used to treat diarrhea in Latin American ethnomedicine, and the other from leaves of green tea (Camelia sinensis). Both botanical drugs, neither of which are synthetic, are available by prescription in the US:
http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm333701.htm
@sox: If you know of any safe and effective plant for the treatment of cancer, I have no doubt that many here would be eager to know about it. My own interest is not by way of payment from the pharmaceutical industry, but the fact that more than a few effective treatments used to this day in chemotherapy began from studies on the antitumor activities of plants and their active “phytochemicals”. When derivatives of the phytochemicals proved more effective than the parent compounds and the crude plant extracts, they went on to be developed as drugs. Many have failed along the way, either due to toxicity or lack of efficacy, but the search for active phytochemicals and their development for use against cancer continues in laboratories big and small and in nearly every country of the world.
”. I bet very few of you if even any have ever even conducted a scientific study.
And you would lose your bet. Didn’t do your homework before you stopped in, did you?
@sox: Further examples of what “square head”, “so called scientists” get up to:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26175929
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26180000
I think you’d lose that bet (I for one have contributed to a number of pre-clinical trial and Phase 1 trials, as well as a Phase III trial for a biologic that successfully received FDA approval).
The nerve of us, not simply accepting extraordinary claims at face value!
Perhaps because it’s the responsibility of the person who’s making an extraordinary claim to provide evidence in its support, and not the responsibility of those he’s presenting it to to hunt for evidence which might argue the claim is accurate?
Isn’t the goal to achieve beneficial effects in cancer patients, not cancer cells?
I have. Extensively. For a period of decades. And after doing so I’m aware of no evidence that the Gonzalez protocol, or indeed any other alternative cancer therapy, performs as well or better, with similar or fewer side effects, than conventional standard of care science based medical interventions like surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation. If you’re able to identify any, I’d of course be happy to give it all due attention.
So—got any?
And you would lose your bet.
Ix-nay on the apers-pay until Sox ponies up and puts an ante on the table.
The “authorities” are trying to pin the killing on her boxer husband (who goes by the name “Terrible Thomas The Punisher”), but I think you will all agree that it’s a frame job.
Surely it is more likely that the agents of Big Needle used hypnotism to force Lisa Riley into the marriage, and then triggered the husband to kill her when the time was right.
Lighthorse #378,
No! Don’t say “latex”! It’ll summon that latex vaccine kook…
I’ve done my research, as Walt Whitman put it, filter for yourself. I find that there is no there is no greater threat to the modern mans health than Big Pharma. Let me ask you this, do you believe if there was a button that could be pushed and end all disease and illness, that a Pharma CEO would push that button? What percentage of doctors would be willing to give up their livelyhood, to save hummanity? 10%? I’d say 20% tops.
Woo Fighter #285:
Not to worry; I have potentized homeopathic pixel dust and microbiomial miracle water to fend that off.
Disparaging protocols one knows nothing about is easy. The thing to do is to talk to patients. There is a reason dr. Gonzalez had patients who stayed under his care for many many years. One of the reasons is that he was saving their lives. This is not a speculation.
Liana, there were plenty of patient testimonials for bloodletting. We need science.
“Let me ask you this, do you believe if there was a button that could be pushed and end all disease and illness, that a Pharma CEO would push that button? What percentage of doctors would be willing to give up their livelyhood, to save humanity?”
If the CEO was dying of disease – he’d push that button in a heartbeat. Ditto for all the doctors, whether it was them or their loved ones afflicted with said diseases. Nutty as the hypothetical question is (suggesting that there are miracle cures just waiting to be un-suppressed), it is even nuttier when applied to a pharma CEO, who would likely be in demand in myriad other businesses if his job at a drug company became obsolete.
Physicians and pharma execs are not immune to the afflictions suffered by the rest of mankind. They want cures at least as badly as the rest of us.
Give that some thought.
@Liana #388
Would you ever even acknowledge or talk to one of the patients that left.
Is it OK to even want to find out how many died vs how many stayed and if that is a better percentage of survival than the oncologist down the street at the hospital?
Everyone says talk to the patients that lived, I’m much more interested in finding out about how many died. Someone always survives.
Talk only to the patients that took https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor for years and stayed with Dr. Bailey, don’t talk to the ones who jaw fell off from radiation poisoning, no point finding out about them, just talk to the ones that beyond all imagination are still thriving on the liquid sunshine. Oh and there were a few, who did really well while drinking radium water day in and day out.
Don’t look at the dead and dying, you can’t tell anything about a treatment because of those who died, only go talk to the ones that lived, even if by chance they are the ones that would have lived anway, no matter what treatment, or who lived because the surgery got it all, only they reveal the truth of a treatment. Unless the treatment is from a mainstream hospital. Lord only knows how anyone survives any mainstream treatment.
How about a real world example? As a surgical pathologist, a substantial chunk of my income derives from biopsies of cervices for dysplasia and carcinoma. The HPV vaccine promises to cut this income by greatly reducing the incidence of cervical neoplasia. What do I say? Bring it on!
I don’t know any physician, let alone pathologist, apart from the Usual Gang of Antivax Idiots who are against this vaccine.
Let me ask you this
And Pilate did not stay for an answer.
To add to what TBruce said – a significant percentage of my own income as a surgical pathologist comes from diagnosing cancers linked to smoking.
This hasn’t stopped me from supporting anti-public smoking ordinances and other initiatives to get people to stop smoking (or never take up the habit).
Of all the times I’ve pointed out to the they-don’t-want-you-to-know crowd that it is deeply in the interest of physicians, researchers and pharma employees to find cures for debilitating and fatal disorders, since they and their families are also at risk, the uniform “response” is sullen silence.* The conspiracy of silence angle is just too attractive to allow logic to penetrate.
*there was one person in my experience who argued that yes, physicians and pharma types willingly commit suicide rather than admit the existence of cures that would save them. Which is insanity of another flavor.
“Your probably all collecting some kind of income by some agency telling you what kind of disinformation you can spread”
That is how we can afford apostrophes.
so lets see, let me get this right. Gonzalez was a graduate of Cornell University, Brown University, Weill Cornell Medical College. And the writer of this article has …what qualifications to evaluate medical treatments and alternative therapies? none? and everyone gangs up on Gonzalez? really? Pretty pathetic
@a dunning
You seem to be caught up in the degrees that dr gonzaes had, not the evidence that he produced, which was poor and did not support his theory. Orac has shown evidence that gonazles’ treatment was ineffective at best, horrible at worst, and gonzales did not try to correct himself.
So, do you have any evidence to support your assertions. because otherwise, you look like a pathetic fool and a perfect example of Dunning-Kreuger in action.
@ A dunning
As Chris likes to write, there is an unstated intelligence test on this blog: figuring out who Orac is.
If you had passed this test, you will have found the answers to your questions. You will have also found that Orac is quite qualified to evaluate medical treatments pertaining to cancer (as are a few of the regulars here)
A dunning,
Gonzalez was not an oncologist and had no doctorate, as far as I know. It took me just a few seconds to find out that the author of this article has a Ph.D. in cellular physiology, has completed a research fellowship in surgical oncology and works as a surgical oncologist. I’d say Orac’s qualifications to evaluate cancer treatments considerably exceed Gonzalez’s, though I agree with novalox that it is the evidence that is really important.
Another MMS / GcMAF Alternative Cancer healer fears for her safety from (a) Big Pharma wet-teams, and (b) angry Dominicans.
http://dominicanewsonline.com/news/homepage/news/general/british-woman-flees-to-dominica-after-uk-medical-probe-described-as-dangerous/
http://eusa-riddled.blogspot.com/2015/08/what-fresh-hell-is-this-farnham.html
#396
Many of the regular commenters on here can point to their own qualifications from respected universities (I have 2 from Russell Group universities over here, since you didn’t ask), which include training in reading scientific papers (not to mention those who have written them) and know fine well how to pick holes in them, as well as backgrounds in many things medical, biological, physiological, chemical and…and…
So, how far do we want to take this argument from authority?
Murmur: “I have 2 from Russell Group universities over here”
I have one from a school that received funds from the David Guggenheim Fund. While the building is named for him, the department has been recently renamed for the founder of a soon to be century old company and major local employer.
As I read through these stories, I somehow find myself more emotionally impacted by the ones where somebody died suddenly for “no apparent reason” rather than, for example, somebody who allegedly committed suicide after an FDA raid on his clinic for illegal (controlled?) substances.
I think that a lot of the “altmed” community- and particularly the online elements- play upon the shock we all feel when somebody who “appeared” healthy is suddenly dead- whether in 18 months from cancer or all at once from an infarction.
There seems to be this idea floating around that just because somebody eats well and exercises, that will make them 100% invulnerable to disease. Unfortunately, that simply isn’t the case.
What a waste.
Personally, I tell people that I graduated from the U of SMC.
*gigglesnort*
Still waiting for the appropriate moment to use “theiyr’re”
The ignorance on this site is overwhelming as is the ignorance of what constitutes real and scientific medicine as compared to “chemical and toxic science”. Your ignorance is only superseded by the incredible lack of compassion for a man who helped thousands and generally cared about their health. Whether Dr. Gonzales died of natural causes or was taken out by Big Pharma is irrelevant. What should be relevant to all is that modern medicine (outside of emergency care) is ineffective at best and barbaric at worst. REAL medicine before Rockefeller and Carnegie began promoting petroleum-based “medicines” at the beginning of the 20th century, was based on natural, herbal, organic and effective remedies. In fact, holistic medicine made up the core of medical school’s curriculum. It wasn’t until those controlling the previously mentioned medicines began funding the schools and thereby gaining a controlling interest in the courses taught that naturalistic medicine began to be phased out and courses in pharmacology increased. Was there an agenda? Of course, it’s called money. Anyone who believes the medical community is not capable of atrocities against mankind only need survey medical websites that show the horrifying statistics of annual deaths from medications taken as directed (not abused) – over 150,000 deaths in the U.S. each year alone. Remorse? None. If they cared, every medication that ever killed anyone from normal use would be banned. Yet, not only do they continue to produce and dispense them (again, with no second thought), they come up with new killer drugs every year. I personally was saved from a terminal disease through alternative care and never took a medication for it. I know of thousands of others. What you are calling “real science” is trying medications on sick people, if that doesn’t work, give them another. Then give them one to counter the side effects of the first two, then another, than another. If you ask a doctor specifically to show you the studies done on the combination of the 5 drugs the people are taking in combination, they have no idea what the results will be or how it will affect someone. I also know of several MDs who do not take medication (they use natural herbal products) and would never give chemotherapy to their families or themselves, yet the prescribe medications to others without a second thought. Based on the idiocy on this thread, most of you are too stupid, ignorant and non-caring to…give a flip. Same mindset as the medical community.
Joseph — paragraphs are your friend.
So is a basic understanding of how science works.
You’d think there’s a warehouse full of them, all handed the same script to work from.
What was the average life expectancy in first world countries before modern medicine and after? Did barbarians have better or worse life expectancy? What diseases responded better to pre-modern medicine than modern? How do you know?
Thanks.
Joseph – btw, we will punch your card so your big altie overlords will pay you for your post. We’re not welshers here.
Well, can’t argue with those who can’t read, can’t see beyond their presuppositions and are essentially as dumb as a pile of rocks. Keep taking your medicine folks and pick out your headstones fairly quickly.
Joseph,
I have many concerns with pharmaceuticals and especially polypharmacy but why the flight to something that has even less claim on legitimacy outside of testimonials and to someone who is also making a great deal of money by selling it to you?
Note that I’m referring to alternative medicine in general and not certain herbs or spices that science where has demonstrated efficacy.
What should be relevant to all is that modern medicine (outside of emergency care) is ineffective at best and barbaric at worst.
There isn’t a sane woman in the world (particularly if she’s post-menopausal) who would agree with that statement.
Oh let’s see..
– Only emergency medicine is worthwhile**
– natural medicine worked well
– Rockefeller petrol-based meds and med schools
– thousands cured by alt med
– doctors use alt med
– thousands die from meds
– follow the money
My guess is Joseph has a PhD from PRN- which has the same value as the host’s ‘doctorate’
** as if we could separate medicine into parts- all SBM proceeds from the same basics of physio, anatomy, pharmacology etc
@Joseph: I suspect that if read up on the history of various diseases and their treatment, you would be grateful for not having been born at a more perilous time in the past.
Well Denice, wrong again. I’ve got a doctorate in chiropractic and a degree in nutrition. I’m privy to a lot of information the general public is unaware of. As far as your ignorance regarding “thousands” who die from medication (it’s actually over one hundred thousand – way to read only what you want to read), I only refer you to the following links: http://www.alternet.org/story/147318/100,000_americans_die_each_year_from_prescription_drugs,_while_pharma_companies_get_rich
http://search.cdc.gov/search?query=Prescription+drug+deaths+annually&utf8=%E2%9C%93&affiliate=cdc-main (note the references to overdosing AND regular usage)
Do your homework before you spout nonsense. The majority of the sheeple on this website only confirm the effectiveness of the media/medical brainwashing.
Joseph, how many people died from smallpox last year? Think about it.
@joseph
You better check your sources again, because they aren’t saying what you think you want them to say….
Also, Joseph, there are thousands of car accidents happen every year. Does that mean flying carpets and broomsticks work?
Suuuuuure you are.
“I’m privy to a lot of information the general public is unaware of.”
Then why not make them aware of it? I look at conventional medicine as delivered as a hot mess which is why I practice defensive medicine in my personal life. However, please show me how the alternative is not worse.
When playing the odds it helps to have the odds. Raw numbers are fear inducing but what is the ratio of those helped to harmed? Those helped to those only separated from their wallets? Who’s watching their numbers?
I wish the alt med union would get together to run their own studies to show how effective they are and not waste time on testimonials for things like how helpful plain water is.
And on that note, those here have demonstrated they are open to looking into the research findings for alt med. Finding it lacking they tend toward snark but who cares? If alt med can’t pony up evidence of efficacy, they are doing nothing but shooting in the dark and that gives me less odds than medication roulette.
Joseph: “If they cared, every medication that ever killed anyone from normal use would be banned.”
Well, I guess that means he wants to ban insulin, tPA, antibiotics, painkillers – and chiropractic too, since people have died after “normal” adjustments.
In addition to Joseph’s “doctorate” in chiropractic (which sounds ever so much fancier than “degree”), I wonder just what his certification in nutrition is and whether it’s available for cash and a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
You’re really asking “If there was a button that could be pushed and enusre that not only the person pushing it but also all of his/her loved ones–parents, siblings, wives, lovers, children,grandchildren, etc. would enjoy several decades more of active and productive pain and illness free life, would a Pharma CEO would push that button?”
And my answer is “In a heartbeat.”
Which is of course why, following the development of modern medicine, we saw the average US life-span for both men and women fall to an all time low.
Oh, wait…
Joseph, you do understand that information you claim to have but do not produce the functional equivalent of no information whatsoever, don’t you?
Joseph,
I’ll respond as I have on the many previous occasions this has claim has come up here before. Closer examination find that this figure is based on a review of studies (Lazarou) (that Melody Petersen refers to in your first link), many from the 60s and 70s, and that ignores any that report no fatal adverse effects of drugs, and then extrapolates to the entire US hospital population of 1988. Given developments in medicine over the past 40-50 years it is almost certain to be badly wrong. Other estimates are far lower.
Remember that anticoagulants, for example, kill thousands every year, but save the lives of hundreds of thousands more. Unless you have an alternative to anticoagulant drugs we are stuck with those deaths until drug companies develop safer drugs, which they are working on.
You also need to take into account the fact that the vast majority of deaths from prescription drugs are in people who would undoubtedly have died without treatment. These are mostly elderly patients with multiple health problems who have already had their lives extended by conventional medicine. If you look at the figures, life expectancy is still creeping up. and so is active life expectancy, meaning people are living active lives for longer than ever before. For example, this US study (PDF) found that:
Not only are people living longer, but they are living longer without disabilities. How can it possibly be true that modern medicine does more harm than good?
Right back at you. You have some things very badly wrong as I have demonstrated.
Well, it’s a good thing for the Rockefeller/Carnegie conspiracy that the paradigm shift coincided with such a wide variety of diseases and conditions suddenly becoming less deadly and/or disabling and/or prevalent.
That was an amazing piece of luck, really.
If infant mortality rates were still what they were before Carnegie and Rockefeller messed things up, there would be over 500,000 presently living children who died before the age of one every year.
And that’s just infant mortality.
Such as treating everything from constipation to rashes with mercury and lead compounds now known to be toxic. For instance.
REAL medicine before Rockefeller and Carnegie began promoting petroleum-based “medicines” at the beginning of the 20th century, was based on natural, herbal, organic and effective remedies.
As ann points out, that doesn’t mean the “natural” medicines then in use were either necessarily effective or without toxicity. In one culture and another, people have been experimenting on patients with plants for millennia. Granted, many herbal remedies remain to be thoroughly investigated under current technologies, but many of them were toxic or ineffective and caused injuries and death.
I’ve got a doctorate in chiropractic and a degree in nutrition. I’m privy to a lot of information the general public is unaware of.
I was not previously aware that mail-order chrioquactic / nutrition diplomas came with a TSU security clearance.
I’ve got a doctorate in chiropractic and a degree in nutrition.
So you can give back-rubs and cook. That makes you great boyfriend/husband material, but hardly qualifies you to assess medical issues.
Speaking of quack doctors and remedies Orac has labeled ozone therapy as quackery. So I invite you Orac- or your many acolytes – to condemn this series of cases as quackery as well.
The abstract essentially says that 3 confirmed cases of Ebola were treated with ozone therapy and completely resolved in 2-4 days
http://journals.sfu.ca/africanem/index.php/AJID/article/view/3578
A fair minded person might say after reading the abstract: “hmm..seems intriguing and since the therapy is non toxic, costs next to nothing and we have no other cure for ebola if the details in the full article (which is behind a paywall) accurately support the abstract we ought to consider an appropriate test of ozone therapy for Ebola asap.
Instead you’ll either ignore this post (it is bit late for this thread but I will repost in a more germane post as well) or heap your usual scorn and snark. I hope I’m wrong but I’ve never ever seen you admit you might be wrong in all the years I’ve followed you.
Let’s see what happens.
Um, no.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2014/11/20/the-invasion-of-well-meaning-quacks-into-west-africa-continues-apace/
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2014/11/25/the-invasion-of-well-meaning-quacks-into-west-africa-continues-apace-part-deux/
No, it’s not. Perhaps you’re slow on the uptake.
If one manages to struggle through the truly atrocious writing, not especially. Good to know that Robins is a podiatrist, though.
The African Journal of Infectious Diseases is a pay-to-print vanity publisher ($300 for a 10-page PDF), AND they try to sell subscriptions. AND advertisements.
The editor (one Clement Oladapo Adewunmi) also runs the ” African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicines”, with an identical business model… he’s an equal-opportunity grifter.
#433
I’ve managed to get the full paper…
First off this illustrates why “case series” are not viewed as particularly high quality research: very small numbers (4 allegedly symptomatic patients, one of whom was not confirmed as having Ebola), no controls of any sort.
Their proposed method of action for ozone takes a bit of a jump from effects on other viruses to the Ebola virus, with a scarcely conclusive statement that “Ebola appears no different”, without being able to fully substantiate that. And then moving swiftly to “in vitro” effects without any mention of in vivo effects…
Mention is made of “numerous papers” in Europe, but without referencing them…
At this point I stopped as what I had read so far was so poor as to not warrant any further time.
[…] Gonzalez: The latest victim of the pharma assassins? Respectful Insolence am 24. Juli […]
Is it just my imagination or do you have a gigantic stick up your ass? I’ve never heard of you or this dead doctors scandal. Just surfed here randomly only to find the Don Trump of oddly disrespectful mannerisms. If the murder spree is real, YOU (INSERT whatever your inappropriately abbreviated first name is HERE) would make an excellent #1 suspect. Chill out You’ll live longer.
chow for now hunny buns! 😉
First time I’ve read this blog….
just curious, does Big Pharma support this site or your work?
No.
Next question.
I agree with The Questioner below. This commentary is every bit as biased and self-interested as any other agenda-based website. It is also possibly a tired and outdated opinion. My mother-in-law’s doctor, a respected medical oncologist at Yale Medical School, did not dismiss either Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, or the other alternative cancer doctor specialists as “quacks.” Certainly, the jury is still out on the overall effectiveness of their treatments. But it is not a foregone conclusion that they are ineffective for every patient. True scientific inquiry, at least as I learned it in school, requires a critical, yet simultaneously, willing and open mind, flexible and humble enough to adjust to, and integrate new, and sometimes, problematic and competing data. There is no doubt that other than allopathic physicians have achieved some notable successes, which may be difficult to track in conventional clinical trials. That means little to a person (like my mother-in-law) who has been discharged by her allopathic physician, and is willing to try alternative care. Hope is a powerful agent, as well, and not to be sneered at. The tone of this article is anything but scientific. More importantly, it is disrespectful to a physician who is not around to defend himself and died after a full life of doing what he apparently, sincerely believed was helping others. With the literally hundreds of thousands of documented cases of medical malpractice (some with serious, or irreversible injury) in our country per year, I do not take issue with Dr. Gonzalez giving people who would otherwise have no hope, hope. Would that the author of this article be so fortunate as to make a difference in the lives of others, rather than masquerading as an objective scientific observer. Never met Dr. Gonzalez, but may he RIP.
Emerson- False hope is worse than no hope.
The alternative to “allopathic” is “homeopathic.” The Gonzalez protocol was 100% allopathic.
Please try to keep your neologisms straight.
Who had those notable successes? What was notable about them? What success rates did they have and how did they compare to the current standard of care for the same diseases? Why are the successes difficult to track in conventional clinical trials? If the successes can’t be tracked under rigorous conditions, how do you differentiate them from background noise? Thanks in advance.
Emerson — the alternative to “no hope” is not “hope”. It is “having your MIL’s bank account drained to pay a mountebank for treatment that has not been demonstrated will improve her chances one iota.”
Are you prepared to hold altmed to the same standards you hold science-based medicine?
” it is disrespectful to a physician who is not around to defend himself and died after a full life of doing what he apparently, sincerely believed was helping others.”
But he did not help others, his own research proved that. Regardless of his sincerely held beliefs, his protocol is useless.
Does this not matter?
It’s less a case of a jury not being out but that there isn’t any evidence suggesting these treatments are effective for a jury to consider.
Hmm….what happen to Royal Raymond Rife? Anyone? There’s one for you.
He died aged 83 on August 5th 1971.
Except that the indignation of the author and a lot of regular commenters come from the fact that alternative therapies should be held to the same rigourous standards than science-based medicine. We aren’t denying the cases of medical malpractice ; we are angry that alternative therapies don’t have an equally severe supervision on malpractice (among other things).
I presume that you are not using “malpractice” in its usual legal sense, so I was wondering whether you might proceed to the aforemention documentation, in all its excruciatingly literal detail.
This involves some sort of Excel mess, right?
Do you take issue with him for the two documented cases of medical malpractice he committed, one of which resulted in serious and irreversible injury and the other of which resulted in the early death of a woman who had a form of cancer that’s usually not only treatable but curable?
http://www.leagle.com/decision/199963069FSupp2d561_1580/GONZALEZ%20v.%20GRAY
http://www.leagle.com/decision/1997400173Misc2d227_1372.xml/CHARELL%20v.%20GONZALEZ
To say nothing of the numerous documented cases of negligence, incompetence and other forms of professional misconduct he also committed:
http://www.casewatch.org/board/med/gonzalez1994.pdf
Do you take issue with those?
How about you, Nacho Mama? Got any sassy comments for those patients?
You stinking vile sociopaths. We’ll be coming for you……
Given that it took “yall” two-and-a-half months to so much as find the post, this doesn’t come off as a particularly compelling communiqué.
Plus, we have HAARP, the Mossad, and the best one-time pads that money can buy.
Given that it took “yall” two-and-a-half months to so much as find the post,
Dealing with a Truther here. That dope won’t smoke itself.
Narad
Isn’t HAARP being shut down? Or is that what we want them to think.
best one-time pads that money can buy.
Enough of that. I don’t talk about your day-job, do I?
You stinking vile sociopaths. We’ll be coming for you……
How about we come after you for impersonating a psychiatrist without a license?
Gunnery sergeant Hartman
Truth is sometimes greater than fiction so it’s harder to believe Everyone knows that the cancer drug industry is real big business Had a friend, who was a nurse practitioner, was invited by a doctor she worked for at the time. that was invited to attend a huge conference, in the city. . . She related to me just how huge the dug business had expanded. I was the only one she told as it was to be kept confidential I am one who truly believe that a cure for cancer is here, however, if revealed and initiated, they would lose billions in revenue. It’s the same old process of who they consider expendable. Just think of the enormous pay checks these people are receiving. They are not about to give any of it up So that’s where the real corruption begins. Called process of elimination. Which is the most important to them, lives or money. Guess what they chose! My friend passed away several years ago. with cancer. What a financial burden on these guys if all the cancer treatment centers had to close. Whoops! Maybe they would consider suicide too. (It’s always the little guy verses the BIG GUY. They will win
one way or another.
After your service as a privateer aboard the Antelope? I would have thought that would have hardened you against such something so huffety-puffety. Or did that one fat ball (lordy, that sounds a little rude out of context) leave you shell shocked?
Anyway, he’ll never find you now that you’re back in Sherbrooke 😉
^ superfluous such
I wound up making about $4 an hour on the paper that caused me to think about quality metrics in stochastic subsamples to start with, so it’s just as well.
Oh, wait.
@Ida Montgomery – to recap:
1. Pharmaceuticals are big business, but nobody has noticed.
2. You believe there are cancer cures being suppressed by big pharmaceutical companies to protect their existing products. Even though it would cost millions to create and prove such a cure, which would be money down the drain that the board and investors would question management about. Even though the people involved in the research are deprived of their ability to publish their work, enhance their careers, and possibly win Nobel prizes. Even though the only real way to legally prevent someone else developing the same thing would be to patent it, which would make the information public. Even though the first company to market such a drug would make huge bucks if they wanted – more than enough to compensate for the loss of existing products. Even though a soon-to-be-ex-employee with a thumb drive could take that secret and use it to negotiate a separation agreement large enough to raise questions?
I’m willing to believe that companies would do all kinds of things that are borderline or outright illegal for short term gain. I believe this because of the news – companies do bribe people, they do sell in places they aren’t allowed to (often by a series of sham companies), they do configure automobiles to act one way when tested and another way when on the highway (sort of an automotive double slit experiment – if a diesel engine is going down the highway and there is no emissions test equipment attached, does it emit oxides of nitrogen?).
It strikes me as unlikely that they’d act against their own interests by suppressing a cancer cure. But I could be surprised. I’d need more than a feeling to believe that.
” Had a friend, who was a nurse practitioner, was invited by a doctor she worked for at the time. that was invited to attend a huge conference, in the city. . . She related to me just how huge the dug business had expanded. I was the only one she told as it was to be kept confidential”
Whoops, cat is really out of the bag now!
“My friend (the nurse practitioner) passed away several years ago. with cancer. ”
Same thing happens to physicians, researchers, drug company execs and all the rest of the Medical Mafia. They avoid researching real cures, suppress the proven alternative ones and march happily off to the grave. The money’s just too good.
“If the murder spree is real, YOU (INSERT whatever your inappropriately abbreviated first name is HERE) would make an excellent #1 suspect.”
True, Orac has never supplied alibis for all the times in question. Omigod.
Speaking of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman: he would like you to wake up and get your day started.
#461
*Sigh*
You, as many others, assume that the pharmaceutical industry is one huge monolithic structure, which is far from true.
This particular (former) senior nurse attended many, many drug company sponsored events over the years (only way to get funding for running conferences much of the time) and observed repeatedly that any given company will spend MORE time slagging off their competitors than plugging their own products.
If any company could get a commercial advantage over the others, e.g. by patenting a wonder drug for cancer, they would do so as they would be able to hammer competitors into the ground and steal their market share.
Also your argument assumes that “cancer” is one, single clinical entity: it isn’t, as even us mental health bods know…
Doug @462
Cut me some slack, I am a broken man on Halifax pier.
MOB @465
We need to use this one more often. A lot of people don’t think this one through.
I used to drive a VW Heisenberg, but every time I looked at the speedometer I got lost.
We’re all the Last of Barrett’s Privateers instead of being Bonnie Offit? I LIKE that idea…. 🙂
I used to drive a VW Heisenberg, but every time I looked at the speedometer I got lost.
The GPS system will show your location but not your velocity.
MA, doug and Dawn — stop. I mean it. It took forever to get rid of that earworm the last time.
She related to me just how huge the dug business had expanded. I was the only one she told as it was to be kept confidential
It was a huge conference but you were the only one who knew about it?
Visualize if you can a correctly closed quote.
shay, I offer as alternative worms:
I Don’t Want a Bunny Wunny by Tom Paxton
The I.P.D. by Sue Edmonds & Lian Tanner
@ MI Dawn:
Unbelievably I do NOT know that tune at all.
HOWEVER in an odd way, we ARE all Barrett’s ‘privateers’
( or choose another descriptive ) if you mean Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch.
At any rate, I am one.
@Denice Walter: to spare poor shay’s feelings, I won’t post a youtube link. But no, I don’t mean Dr Barrett. It’s an English folk song. My favorite version was done by The Crimson Pirates (http://www.crimsonpirates.com/CP/Welcome.html). The things you learn at Renaissance Faires! 🙂
@ MI Dawn,
As you might know I am not an aficionado of Renaissance Faires- AND I might have to wear a ((shudder)) dress there.
Anyway, while studying literature I had the extreme pleasure of taking a class where the prof brought in an accomplished music student to play and sing English folk songs. He was actually entertaining and the session really made sense because reading the songs was quite another thing from hearing them performed. But no pirate songs.
@DW: Nah. You wouldn’t have to wear a dress. Plenty of women wear their normal clothing…or chain mail. Personally, I enjoy dressing up as a wench (and my partner enjoys how I look in a bodice….). But Ren Faires aren’t everyone’s thing, and I respect that.
That would have been a fun class. Wish my English Lit teacher had done that. OTOH, my HS world lit teacher told us all sorts of fun tales about the stories he had us read…
Dawn.
My world lit prof took us out of doors to a hillside to read Greek plays aloud and served us red wine. He was from Italy.
I attended interesting universities.
-btw- I own what I refer to as an Evil Faery Dress which is a 2 piece formal I wore to a wedding. It has a handkerchief hem and hanging pieces of tulle – all black, of course. Imagine Helena Bonham Carter at an awards show and you’ll get the idea – not that I look anything like HBC.
author of the article, i truly hope a great tragedy befalls you soon, where you will be forced to make a much needed mental transformation, from a putrid low-life cunt who badmouths (deceased) people that were willing to risk public humiliation to help others, to something more. such a shame, such a waste of air you are
dsd, well aren’t you a little ray of sunshine! Please tell us all about the benefits of putting coffee up your bum.
DSD sounds nice.
MI Dawn
Apparently you are unaware that Canada is not part of England. The song that must not be mentioned for the sake of Shay was written by Stan Rogers and first released in 1976.
To get rid of you earworm, I recommend a glass of Garnet’s Home Made Beer.
hdb: “DSD sounds nice.”
I am sure that he/she is quite adorable, in a kind of Dunning Kruger way.