From: GT <NoSpam@worldnet.att.net>
Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative
Subject: Gerson Cancer Therapy
Date: Mon, 09 Dec 1996 21:18:40 -0800

[....]

Back around 1980, my dad was diagnosed with Stage IV malignant Melanoma on his chest. This was surgically removed at the VA Hospital.

Then, around 1989, he was diagnosed with Stage IV malignant Melanoma on his lower-left back. This was surgically removed at M.D. Anderson.

In both the above cases, it appeared as though they got it all. However, it doesn't seem to be so with the 1989 surgery.

In December, 1992, he discovered a lump under his left armpit. His Oncologist told him that he was 99 9/10% percent certain that it was Melanoma and that it had metastasized to the lymph gland.

Knowing that once Melanoma has metastasized it is pretty much a death sentence, my dad asked the obvious question about how long he had to live and was told that he probably had less than three months.

At this point, nothing had really been done, not even a CAT scan. The lump was about the size of a grape. My dad was 68 years old at the time.

Appointments were made to start conventional treatment. However, sometime after his first surgery in 1980, my dad had attended a lecture by Charlotte Gerson on the Gerson Therapy. Charlotte is the daughter of Dr. Max Gerson for whom the Gerson Therapy is named. After reviewing the Gerson literature and then talking to a "terminal" cancer patient that had been healed by the Gerson Therapy some eleven years earlier, he decided he would first go to the Gerson Clinic in Mexico and get another perspective.

Two weeks after he discovered the lump, my dad arrived at the Gerson Clinic. By that time, the lump had grown to about the size of a large lemon.

The Gerson doctor indicated that with Melanoma, the therapy, if successful, would either 1) kill the tumor and the necrotic tissue would then be excreted during the course of the therapy's very intense detox program, or 2) the tumor would become encapsulated and then removed by surgery at the end of the therapy. The therapy was said to last at least two years and sometimes longer.

During the three and a half weeks he spent at the Gerson Clinic, my dad had become convinced that his best chance of survival was with the Gerson Therapy. At the end of his stay, the tumor had reduced to about the size of a golf ball.

Once home, my dad informed his Oncologist that he had decided to pursue the Gerson Therapy instead of conventional treatment. While at home, he followed the rigorous schedule of the therapy, which included, among many other things: 13 organic juices a day (green and carrot/apple), five coffee retention enemas a day, frequent castor oil treatments and blood tests every six weeks.

It was an unbelievably intense, time consuming and energy draining experience. We ended up having to hire someone to come in and make the juices and even with that, we finally had to take some "calculated risks" and make some changes in "when" the juices were made. It was either that, or run the risk of not being able to continue.

After the first year on the therapy, the tumor seemed to be increasing in size and the first CAT scan was taken. It showed that the tumor was trying to divide in half, but otherwise, the scan was "negative for disease."

At this time, my dad returned to the clinic for one week, where he received Laetrile injections to increase the tumor's sensitivity to heat along with hydrotherapy treatments, with the water as hot as he could stand it - seems that cancer cells die at 104+ degrees. At the end of the week, the tumor was back down to about golf ball size.

After the second year on the therapy, the tumor was still there and still about the size of a golf ball, with one notable exception - it was now very hard. We assumed that it had become encapsulated.

It was now December, 1994, the therapy was over and it was now time to have the tumor removed. My dad was 70 years old at that time and as retired military, he decided to have the tumor removed at a military hospital.

The Gerson doctor requested, in writing, that a "conservative lumpectomy procedure" be performed on a "Stage III left-axillary-metastasized superficial spreading malignant melanoma" tumor and advised "against lymphatic dissection of wider excision unless surgical margins are demonstrably infiltrated."

The military doctors, however, were convinced that wider excisions would be required because, in their experience, there was always "black" cancerous areas all around this type of tumor and that these would have to be removed.

I might add, that the military doctors were a little bewildered by my dad's chosen "therapy." I can even remember one doctor saying that this therapy was "like something out of the Twilight Zone."

After the tumor was removed, the Chief Surgeon of the hospital visited with my dad. He said that there had been a number of surgeons in the operating room during the surgery and that between them, they had performed hundreds of lumpectomies and that not one of the doctors had ever seen a tumor that looked like the one that they had just removed from my dad.

He said the tumor was encased in about 1/4" to 3/8" of scar tissue, just like the scar tissue you might see on someone's skin; that wide excisions were not required and the surgical margins were "clean", including the surface area of the scar tissue.

In the later, written Tissue Report from the Pathology Lab, the tumor was described as an "unoriented mass 9.0 x 8.0 x 4.5 cm [3.5" x 3.1" x 1.75"], red, firm, and nodular." And as to the diagnosis, "These findings are most consistent with the diagnosis of malignant melanoma."

The Chief Surgeon also said that my dad was "very lucky", because the survival rate for this type of cancer is less than 1% and that it did, in fact, look like the Gerson Therapy had done exactly what they said it would do.

Since the removal of the tumor, two more CAT scans have been taken - one in July, 1995 and the other in February, 1996 - neither of which showed any significant areas of concern for melanoma. Another scan will be scheduled for sometime in the Spring of 1997.

My dad is now 72 years old and appears to be in extremely good health. He is active, jogs and does light weight training. Two years after the removal of the tumor, he continues to adhere to a modified version of the Gerson Therapy (by his own choice) and will probably do so for the rest of his life.

Hope this answers your questions,.... If there are any others, please feel free to ask.

Regards - George
<address available on request>


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