CANCER RESEARCH - HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE - SEVENTY NINTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON S. 1875

CANCER RESEARCH - HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE - SEVENTY NINTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON S. 1875
A BILL TO AUTHORIZE AND REQUEST THE PRESIDENT TO UNDERTAKE TO MOBILIZE AT SOME CONVENIENT PLACE IN THE UNITED STATES AN ADEQUATE NUMBER OP THE WORLD'S OUTSTANDING EXPERTS, AND COORDINATE AND UTILIZE THEIR SERVICES IN A SUPREME ENDEAVOR TO DISCOVER MEANS OP CUR> 1X0 AND PREVENTING CANCER
JULY 1, 2, AND 3, 1946

The complete bill is here.
...."I have seen patients who appeared to me to be so far gone as the result of the ravages of cancer as to be beyond the pale of anything but miracles. These miracles are in fact being performed by Max Gerson, M.D., 815 Park Avenue, New York.
I have seen some of these results....
.....It appears. however, that some doctors are fighting Dr. Gerson. I can readily understand that when results so fantastic are obtained that such claims can hardly be believable. My quarrel with these gentlemen is the fact that they will immediately say such things - impossible. or the doctor is a fake, without even stopping to enquire what is being done. I have had the same experience with my own doctors, who merely throw up their hands and say that anyone claiming to cure cancer is a fake....
....The very fact that the patients treated by Dr, Gerson are living today When they were destined to die three or four years ago, according to the statements of these good doctors who treated them, I say is a sensational result and the least that can be said for it is that Dr. Gerson has accomplished something that no one else in the medical profession has accomplished with respect to the treatment of cancer, so far as I am able to ascertain.

I would hate to think that the antipathy to Dr. Gerson would be in any manner associated with the fact that his treatments are dietary and are not surgical. He does not use surgery or recommend surgery, as I understand it, unless there may be some remote cases. Therefore, if this treatment is effective, as I believe it to be, the public would be relieved of millions of dollars of surgical fees, and I repeat, I would hate to think that such possibilities should incense any of our surgeons, who after all are presumed to be humanitarians as well. Dr. Gerson has no doubt made enemies as the result of his dietary therapy, wherein he does not permit patients to smoke or to drink intoxicating liquors or to consume canned goods and other items which could materially affect trade in that respect if it became universal, and of course it was not designed for Dr. Gerson to "make friends" but rather to treat cancer as the result of the many years of his experience.
....Now, what bothered me was, as I said before, millions are being spent for research. We are still researching with animals while here an unassuming Scientist in New York - and I hope the medical profession will pardon me for using the word "cure" - is curing cancer today."
The above extracted from Statement Samuel A. Markel
"....the dietetic treatment was used in all other kinds of tuberculosis - bones, kidneys, eyes, lungs, and so forth. It too, was highly favorable in many other chronic diseases such as arthritis, heart disease, chronic sinusitis, chronic ulcers, including colitis, high blood pressure, psoriasis, sclerosis multiplex, and so forth. The most striking results were seen in the restoration of various kinds of liver and gall bladder diseases which could not be influenced by other methods up to the present.
The great number of chronic diseases which responded to the dietetic treatment showed clearly that the human body lost part of its resistance and healing power, as it left the way of natural nutrition for generations.
.....My experience leads me to believe that the liver is the center of the restoration process in those patients who improve strikingly. If the liver is too far destroyed, then the treatment cannot be effective.
Aware of the imperfection of this as well as any other theory. I shall try, nevertheless, to explain the end results of the Gerson diet. It is condensed in three surpassing components:
(1) The elimination of toxins and poisons and returning of the displaced "extracellular" Na-group, connected with toxins, poisons. edema destructive inflammation from the tissues, tumors, and organs where it does not belong, into the serum and tissues where it belongs - gall bladder with the bile ducts, connective tissue. thyroid, stomach mucosa, kidney medulla, tumors, and so forth.
(2) Bringing back the lost intracellular K-group combined with vitamins, enzymes. ferments, sugar, and so forth, into the tissues and organs where it belongs: liver, muscles, heart, brain, kidney cortex and so forth; on this basis, iodine, ineffective before, is made effective, continuously added in new amounts.
(3) Restoring the differentiation, tonus, tension, oxidation, and so forth, by activated iodine, where there were before growing tumors and metastases with dedifferentiation, loss of tension, oxidation, Ioss of resistance, and healing power.
(Dr. Gerson placed on file with the Committee a document entitled: Case History of Ten Cancer Patients, Clinical
Observations, Theoretical Considerations, and Summary.)
The above extracted from Statement by Dr. Max Gerson M.D., New York, N.Y.
Primary biochemical investigations by Dr. Rudolph Keller indicate that the use of the diet is soon followed by certain definite electrochemical changes, notably shifts toward normal or markedly unbalanced sodium, potassium, and phosphorus ratios in the blood serum and the body tissues. Dr. Keller, as a result of his investigation of the diet, believes that this type of electrochemical reaction can very well change the entire metabolism of the body in cancer patients. A preliminary paper by Dr. Gerson describes the diet in detail and cites 10 cases of cancer in which it appeared that the Gerson dietary regimen favorably influenced the course and symptoms of the disease.
http://www.cancer-research.net/TenCaseHistories.pdf
....Even the newly announced radioactive phosphorous cure of skin cancer, and skin cancer only, does not approach the deeper body cancer problem from a systemic or fundamental point of view...
....These observations have become apparent to several distinguished physicians who have witnessed the effects of
the Gerson diet on cancer patients and whose signed statements are also herewith enclosed.
Therefore, it is my carefully considered opinion that in view of the success so far and the excellent future promise of the Gerson dietary regimen, it would be unthinkable not to give major consideration to these new avenues of approach to the cancer problem in the research program contemplated by bill S. 1875."
The above extracted form: Statement by Dr. Miley, New York
"There were quite a number of failures also, but they were, in my opinion, due to the fact that Dr. Gerson accepted for treatment patients who were so far gone that they were absolutely hopeless, even for the most optimistic observer."
-Heinrich F. Wolf, M.D.
End of Extracts from Bill S.1875
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On Wednesday. July 3, 1946, millions of Americans heard Raymond Swing's broadcast on the American Broadcasting Company network. To the cancer sufferer, to his family, to everybody who hated and feared the cruelest killer of all, it was a message of almost unbelievable hope:
"I hope I have my values right if, instead of talking tonight about the agreement reached on Trieste by the Foreign Minister in Paris, or the continuing crisis of the OPA in Washington, or President Truman's signing the Hobbs antiracketeering bill, I talk about a remarkable hearing before a Senate subcommittee in Washington yesterday on cancer and the need for cancer research in new fields.
"Let me first say that I well appreciate that one of the basic virtues of the modem medical profession is its conservatism. For without the most scrupulous conservatism in the statement and application of medical knowledge, there can be no confidence in the integrity of medical science. But for the very reason that the practice of medicine must be conservative, medical science must be bold and unceasingly challenging. Otherwise, medical science will not progress as it can and must, and will lose its integrity.
"A bill is before Congress, the Pepper-Neely bill, to appropriate a hundred million dollars for cancer research under Federal control. It proposes that the government go in for cancer research with something like the zeal and bigness with which it went for the release of atomic energy, turning the job over to the scientists with resources generous enough to solve the problem.
"This alone would make a good theme for a broadcast, just as an example of the use a great democracy can make of its intelligence and wealth. But the subject has been made peculiarly gripping by unprecedented happenings yesterday before the subcommittee which is holding hearings on this bill, and of which Senator Pepper is chairman.
"He invited as a witness a refugee scientist, now a resident of NewYork, Dr. Max Gerson, and Dr. Gerson placed on the stand, in quick succession, five patients. They were chosen to represent the principle prevailing types of cancer, and in each instance they showed that the Gerson treatment had demonstrated what is conservatively called 'favorable effect on the course of the disease.' That in itself is remarkable, but it is all the more so because Dr. Gerson's treatment consists mainly of a diet which he has evolved after a lifetime of research and experimentation. To say that Dr. Gerson has been curing cancer by a dietary treatment is medically impermissible, for the reason that there must be five years without recurrence before such a statement is allowed. Dr. Gerson has cured tuberculosis and other illnesses with his diet, but he has only been working on cancer for four and a half years.
"Let me say right away that I am not discussing this Gerson diet as a cancer cure-all. It has produced remarkable results. It also has the failures in its records, which anything as yet unperfected is bound to show. It is not something that offers release from the most rigorous and conservative medical observance in its acceptance and application. Whenever something new and promising comes up in medicine, the temptation of the outsider and even some physicians is to run to glowing superlatives and expect too much from it. But anything that offers even a possibility of treating successfully at least some of the four hundred thousand existing cancer cases in this country is stirring news, no matter how conservatively it is formulated.
"There would be no Pepper-Neely bill to appropriate a hundred million dollars for cancer research if the existing research were coping with the need.
" .. .I have spoken about this carefully and abstractly, which is to lose some of the shock and delight of the experience yesterday at the hearing of the Pepper Committee. It is one thing to talk abstractly about chemistry and diet and vitamins and other factors in medical science. It is another to see, as the Committee yesterday saw, a seventeen-year-old girl, who had suffered from a tumor at the base of the brain, which was inoperable, and which had paralyzed her.
Yesterday, she walked without assistance to the witness chair, and told clearly about her case and her treatment. There was a sturdy man, Who had been a sergeant in the army, who had suffered from a malignant tumor, also at the base of the brain, which had been operated on but needed deep X·ray treatment, and this he could not receive because of the danger to the brain. Yesterday he was the picture of health as he testified, and quite naturally he was proud of his remarkable recovery. There was a woman who had suffered from cancer of the breast which had spread. Yesterday, she was well and testified with poise and confidence.
"A few cases showing such improvement cannot, of themselves, affect the outlook of the medical profession. But they are attested facts and not flukes, and as such they have to be accounted for. And there are many, many more cases which could have been cited. It would seem to be the business of medical research to leap on such facts and carry every hopeful indication to a final, conservative conclusion.
"So the advocates of the Pepper-Neely bill can argue that unless we learn now how to deal successfully with cancer. many millions of persons now living in this country are condemned to die from cancer. A hundred million dollars is little more than a token payment for America to make to avert such a sweep of death, and they can then point to the Gerson dietary approach as a most promising field for research. Already it has achieved results which, while relatively few, are astounding and challenging*.
"Dr. Gerson was an eminent if controversial figure in pre-Hitler Germany. He was bound to be controversial because he was challenging established practice in treating illnesses such as tuberculosis by diet. He has been assistant to Foerster, the great neurologist of Breslau, and for years assistant to Sauerbruch, one of the great physicians on the Continent. The Sauerbruch·Gerson diet for skin tuberculosis is well-known to European medicine and the account of it is part of accepted medical literature. Dr. Gerson told the Pepper Committee that he had first come upon his dietary therapy in trying to cure himself of migraine headaches. Later he treated others, among them a man with skin tuberculosis as well. Dr. Gerson was an acknowledged dietary authority in Weimar, Germany, and was responsible for the German Army, of his time, being placed on dehydrated, rather than canned foods.
But all the hope and promise and excitement were for naught:-Today, the Pepper-Neely bill, which might have opened The door to a new life of worry-free health for the present and future generations of the world. which might have saved uncountable lives, itself lies forgotten behind closed doors: a dusty testament of man's eternal folly and a legacy of bitterness for the children of tomorrow.
*"At the time Doctor Gerson testified. he was still on the staff of the Gotham Hospital of New York. Today, he is not on the staff of any hospital. Once he instructed his associates in his method of cancer therapy. Today he finds it impossible to secure medical assistants. Approaching the age of eighty, he now practices alone. For over thirty years he has demonstrated excellent results in treating cancer, his approach is on a highly scientific level, and his credentials are the finest. Yet he has never received a penny to aid in his researches ... Despite the fact that the Gerson therapy is based on authentic physiology, discoveries in biochemistry and nutrition. it has met the usual blackout. The originator is isolated: the medical journals will not publish his work." Natenberg, Maurice: The Cancer Blackout. Chicago: Regent House, 1959
Thanks to the Gerson Institute for granting permission to post much of the above. CG

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