On July 1-3 1946, Dr. Max Gerson was called to testify before the United States Senate at a hearing for the Pepper- Neely Anti-cancer Bill which was designed to appropriate 100 million dollars in funding for anyone who could show promise in the realm of cancer treatment. During this hearing Gerson was able to demonstrate a remarkable case history of cancer patients that had complete tumor regression/cure using his therapy after traditional western treatments had failed. Many of the patients had been sent home “to die” after their doctors told them that nothing more could be done. Many, if not most, of Gerson’s patients were “hopeless cases” after failed conventional western treatment and came to him as a last ditch effort to hold onto their lives.
The below provides some of the statements of the Pepper- Neely Anti-cancer Bill, including Dr. Gerson’s own words:
The below extracted from Statement Samuel A. Market:
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 below extracted form: Statement by Dr. Miley, New York
“….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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. (source)
….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.”
–Heinrich F. Wolf, M.D
“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.”
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.
So shocked were those in the room that renowned ABC news broadcaster, Raymond Gram Swing, present at the testimony, went on his national radio broadcast that night and announced to the entire nation that a cure for cancer had been discovered. During WWII, Mr. Swing had been a famous war correspondent. He chose to present some of the information shared by Dr. Gerson on a successful cancer cure on the ABC Network.
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 anti-racketeering 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 New York, 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.
Unfortunately the dark forces of medicine were also listening and from that point on Dr. Gerson became a marked and censured man and the Pepper-Neely Anticancer Bill (document # 8947 of the United States archives) was defeated by a massive numbers of lobbyists for the immensely wealthy Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association (PMA), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the American Cancer Society (ACS) led by four senators who were medical doctors. They sent out reports to ignore the Gerson press conference and attend a cocktail party instead where free food would be served and libations would be flowing.
Shortly after the end of the broadcast, the executive directors of pharmaceutical companies producing cytotoxic agents for cancer treatment – members of the PMA — threatened to cancel all radio advertising contracts for their drugs sold over the counter, an annual loss in revenue for ABC amounting to tens of millions of dollars.
Within two weeks of that fateful radio broadcast which apprised people of a potential cure for cancer that was natural and holistic in nature, and after thirty years at the same job, Raymond Gram Swing was fired from his position as a newscaster for the ABC network.
“At the time Doctor Gerson testified, he was still on the staff of the Gotham Hospital of New York. Today (1959), 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
Over the next 13 years, Dr. Gerson would lose his membership privileges to the New York State Medical Society, be prohibited from publishing his work in peer-reviewed medical journals and, ultimately, murdered by a likely medical and pharmaceutical industry more interested in preserving vast pharmaceutical profits then curing a dying and suffering humanity.
Controversy about the efficacy of the Gerson therapy continued throughout Gerson’s life. In 1946 and 1949, two articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that the treatment was of no value.[9, 10] The National Cancer Institute (NCI) reviewed Gerson’s data from ten case histories in 1947 and 50 case histories in 1959. NCI concluded that in most cases, basic criteria for evaluating clinical benefit were not met. NCI concluded that the data demonstrated no benefit.[2] In 1972, the American Cancer Society (ACS) published a statement summarizing the negative assessments of Gerson’s treatment.[11] Another statement published by ACS in 1991 concerned various “ metabolic therapies” (defined as treatments that depend on changing metabolism through diet, enemas, and supplements given at clinics in Tijuana, Mexico) and reemphasized the lack of scientific evidence on the efficacy of the Gerson regimen.[12]
Although only a few peer-reviewed journals were receptive to Gerson’s then “radical” idea that diet could affect health, he continued to publish articles on his therapy and case histories of healed patients.
Sadly, in addition to the mainstream medical Mafia, even some of Dr. Gerson’s colleagues eventually turned on him and he was poisoned twice with arsenic and his seminal book: A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 cases’ manuscript was stolen and had to be rewritten before he passed away. Oddly even the 1953 Fitzgerald Report – Suppressed Cancer Treatments does not mention Dr. Gerson which is very strange indeed. Obviously it was too threatening to the establishment and has been suppressed big time.
*** Thanks to the Gerson Institute for granting permission to post much of the above.
Dr. Max Gerson History
Thanks to Lisa Hunt for putting the following information together. Her full article can be found on Powerootz.com
“…I see in him one of the most eminent geniuses in the history of medicine. Many of his basic ideas have been adopted without having his name connected with them. Yet, he has achieved more than seemed possible under adverse conditions. He leaves a legacy which commands attention and which will assure him his due place. Those whom he has cured will now attest to the truth of his ideas.” – Albert Schweitzer M.D. (Nobel Prize Winner)
Max was born in Eastern Germany on Oct 18th, 1881. As a young boy he began to take a deep interest in the soil and how it affected food and the organisms dwelling there. Especially when chemical fertilizers were added and the negative effects they had.
He realized that the soil was connected to our health and that it must be properly taken care of and not poisoned. His interest in health and the body led him to become a doctor. He received his license as a M.D. in May of 1907 at the University of Freiburg, Berlin.
He realized that the soil was connected to our health and that it must be properly taken care of and not poisoned.
As a student in medical school Max struggled with persistent chronic migraines. His condition became so debilitating that he sought advice for treatment from his professors and other medical doctors. Unable to obtain any relief, he began to experiment on himself and form his own treatment. After 2 years of an elimination diet he finally was able to completely halt his migraines through a specialized diet of fruits and vegetables with no fat, salt, alcohol or spices.
In 1918 his “migraine diet” became somewhat well known and widely used by his patients and others. Then, as fate would have it, a patient returned to Dr. Gerson and reported an observation that not only did the “migraine diet” cure his migraines, but his skin tuberculosis was also cured. This was a miraculous report considering tuberculosis was incurable at the time. The news of this miracle spread quickly throughout the medical community.
In 1924 Dr. Max Gerson was invited by the famous lung specialist Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch to do a clinical trial on 450 incurable skin tuberculosis patients using the Gerson diet as treatment. Dr. Sauerbruch told Dr. Gerson that even if one patient showed improvement he would believe every word of Gerson’s treatment. 446 of the 450 patients completely recovered resulting in over a 99% recovery rate. Dr. Sauerbruch and Dr. Gerson simultaneously published articles in a dozen of the world’s leading medical journals, establishing the Gerson diet as the first cure for skin tuberculosis.
446 of the 450 patients completely recovered resulting in over a 99% recovery rate
At this time, Dr. Gerson attracted the friendship of Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer, M.D., by curing Schweitzer’s wife of lung tuberculosis after all conventional treatments had failed. Gerson and Schweitzer remained friends for life, and maintained regular correspondence. Dr. Schweitzer followed Gerson’s progress as the dietary therapy was successfully applied to heart disease, kidney failure, and finally – cancer. Schweitzer’s own type II diabetes was cured by treatment with Gerson’s therapy.
When Nazi Germany threatened the Jewish population, Max was the only one of his 7 siblings to escape alive. He left Germany in 1933 and ended up in the United States in 1936 to start his medical practice in New York where he remained & cured many patients of cancer and other diseases until his mysterious death by arsenic poisoning induced pneumonia in 1959.
The Gerson Diet.
The Gerson dietary regimen consists of a low salt, low fat, and high carbohydrate diet plus oral administration of minerals and vitamins to supplement those vitamins missing in the diet. The diet is chiefly made of large amounts of organic fresh fruit and vegetable juices and does not allow any meat, milk, alcohol, canned or bottled foods. Tobacco in any form is prohibited.
The diet burns down to an alkaline ash and in general is a combination of many well known and approved dietary nutritional discoveries by many other workers. The therapy also includes a liver detoxification procedure via coffee enemas.
Max assumed that the closer one’s diet is to nature and the soil with fresh fruit from the trees and fresh vegetables directly from the garden, the ‘nearer one is to normal health.
This new approach to the cancer problem is of fundamental importance because it is the first promising method which treats cancer as a systemic disease, that is, a disease of abnormal chemistry of the whole body.
Heretofore, all efforts to treat cancer have been based upon the theory that eradication of the cancer growth must be performed by surgery, X-ray, or radium without regard for abnormal body chemistry which permits the growth to occur. The reason that surgery, X-ray, and radium have not been a real success in the treatment of cancer is that cancer is primarily a disease of abnormal body chemistry, chemistry which is controlled by organs far distant from the site of the cancer.
The Gerson dietary regimen is an encouraging attempt to return such abnormal body chemistry to normal.
Gerson demonstrated his motivations clearly as follows:
“Since the end of January 1946, I treat my patients in the Gotham Hospital in New York, 90 percent of them without charge, and never refuse any patients, irrespective of their condition, in order to see what this treatment can do for them. Up to the present all practical and research work was financed by myself in cancer, as well as other chronic diseases, including tuberculosis and I will not ask for money, here. This limits the progress of the method.”
Dr. Max Gerson was a man that truly cared for human life more than his own reputation or money.
Dr. Max Gerson may have been from another time, but his legacy lives on as well as his cured patients. His daughter Charlotte Gerson heads the Gerson Institute in San Diego California. Gerson Therapy approved facilities exist in countries that do not prohibit the treatment of cancer by a M.D. with therapies other than chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. One such facility regularly treats patients in Tijuana Mexico.
His therapy lives on and continues to heal & save lives to this day.
Dr. Max Gerson has published several books that outline his therapy and how to heal yourself naturally of many types of diseases. His therapy is not a cure-all miracle wonder where every person walks away with their health reclaimed. However, I truly believe that it is one of the most effective and complete treatments of cancer and disease that will leave you with the highest possible chance of recovery.
Food truly is the bodies best source of healing, energy, and vitality when kept in its pure & true forms. There are many healing properties found in nature’s pantry if we only give them a chance to do what they were designed for.
You can find documentaries below that highlight the therapy in detail as well as the struggles of natural medicine vs big pharma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-JMt9ASvJ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj8JoJXP9dI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elGywOBYpeo
https://youtu.be/KqJAzQe7_0g?t=1h27m23s
