This blog is the final chapter on my discussion on alternative cancer practitioner Dr. William Kelley. In my opinion, Dr. William Kelley is probably the greatest practitioner of cancer therapy in human history (Alternative or Orthodox). In my recent blogs I have discussed his cancer therapy at great length, and I have evaluated the credibility of his medical records. Unfortunately, to Dr. Kelley’s chagrin, his cancer therapy was never tested in clinical trials in an official study.
His anecdotal (testimonial) evidence from his medical records were exhaustively investigated by a young 2nd year medical student from Cornell University named Dr. Gonzalez under the supervision of world renown doctor from the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, Dr. Good. Dr. Gonzalez was amazed at the success he found in Dr. Kelley’s protocol while examining over 10,000 medical records and interviewing over 1000 patients. After Dr. Gonzalez completed his final report on his findings, strangely no medical journals would publish even small parts of his report for a peer review process. Other than a minor investigation from the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), Dr. Kelley’s cancer protocol has never received proper scientific evaluation from the medical establishment and therefore has never been given proper credibility. This is an odd occurrence considering the success that Dr. Gonzalez found.
This task is now being pursued by Dr. Kelley’s one-time investigator and now padawan of his cancer protocol, Dr. Gonzalez. Instead of pursuing various opportunities in the medical world, Dr. Gonzalez decided to carry on Dr. Kelley’s “Enzyme Therapy” because of the success he found through his investigation. Dr. Gonzalez began to find similar success in his own practice which eventually qualified for a $1.4 million sponsored study from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). This famous or infamous study (depending on how you look at it) is widely quoted throughout the internet as the final word on Dr. Gonzalez’s “Enzyme Cancer Therapy”. Here is some of what you find on the internet.
On the NCI website they give this summary of this study,
“In this study, one group of patients followed the Gonzalez regimen while another group was given standard treatment (chemotherapy). Results in the two groups were compared to see if the Gonzalez regimen works better than the standard treatment and if it has bad side effects. Results of the study were reported in the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Oncology in April 2010. Patients treated with standard chemotherapy survived a median of 14 months and patients treated with the Gonzalez regimen survived a median of 4.3 months. Patients treated with chemotherapy reported a better quality of life than those treated with the Gonzalez regimen. Dr. Gonzalez published comments 
on his Web site to express concerns about how the trial was conducted. One concern was how well patients in the Gonzalez regimen group actually followed the regimen.”
So according to the NCI, this study seems to have been “peer-reviewed” and clearly demonstrates that chemo produces results 3 times better than Dr. Gonzalez’s regimen. The NCI does note that Dr. Gonzalez had “concerns about how the trial was conducted”, but basically leaves it at that. Quackwatch sites attest that this study delivers a case-closed verdict. Dr. Steven Novella MD writes in his NeuroLogica Blog,
“That’s right – standard therapy mean survival was 14 months and on the Gonzalez treatment 4.3 months. That is a dramatic difference, and supports what critics have been saying for years.”
After a supposed thorough investigation of this study Dr. Novella finds little wrong with this study other than “there is only one weakness to the trial that I can detect – it was not randomized”. This is the only weakness he found in the study??? As we shall soon see, if this is the only thing he found upon investigation that was worrisome, he must have been smoking something pretty strong to come up with this conclusion. This type of conclusion by Dr. Novella explains why my faith in MD’s investigational practices has eroded over the past few months during my alternative cancer research.
My Evaluation of this Study
Dr. Gonzalez has provided an extensive overview of his opinion of how this study was conducted on his website http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/research.htm. I will try to summarize his concerns with the study as well as adding a few cents of my own take on the study.
The original goal of this study was to compare the effectiveness of Dr. Gonzalez’s Enzyme therapy against a standard chemotherapy drug called GTX on patients with pancreatic cancer, the most deadly of all cancers. Dr. Gonzalez was awarded $1.4 million of funding from the NCI and the NCCAM to conduct this study because of the success Dr. Gonzalez had with a smaller pilot study of 11 patients with pancreatic cancer. Here are the results of this pilot study that was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrition and Cancer 1999:
“As of 12 January 1999, of 11 patients entered into the study, 9 (81%) survived one year, 5 (45%) survived two years, and at this time, 4 have survived three years. Two patients are alive and doing well: one at three years and the other at four years. These results are far above the 25% survival at one year and 10% survival at two years for all stages of pancreatic adenocarcinoma reported in the National Cancer Data Base from 1995.”
As you can see Dr. Gonzalez’s pilot study continued to show similar results to that of his mentor Dr. Kelley and better than expected results as compared to standard therapies (ie. chemo). Based on these results Dr. Gonzalez was able to get approval from NCI director, Dr. Richard Klausner to pursue this $1.4 million clinical trial under the direction of a team from Columbia University.
Some Initial Points to keep in Mind
It must be understood here right off the bat that GTX chemotherapy and Dr. Gonzalez’s Nutritional Enzyme Therapy are completely different modalities and require significantly different levels of commitment to follow each respective therapy. For one to successfully follow GTX chemo, one only needs to show up at the doctor’s office to receive the drug intravenously and injest pills orally. Not much else is expected of the patient. Conversely, for one to properly follow Dr. Gonzalez’s therapy, the patient must exert a high level of discipline to follow the strict diet, supplements, and detoxification strategies. Anyone who has attempted any type of special diet can attest that strict adherence to the diet requires some “gumption” to keep at it. Here’s how Dr. Gonzalez describes his protocol,
“Patients must diligently follow a prescribed diet, and ingest some 150 or more supplements to be taken at precise times throughout the day ….. the regimen requires discipline and some determination, as does any lifestyle intervention; patients must be motivated, or else, as we learned long ago, they will not follow through with its day-to-day application.”
Thus, to fairly judge the effectiveness of GTX chemo versus Dr. Gonzalez’s (I will call him Dr. G, for brevity) therapy, patients selected to Dr. G’s therapy must be those who are disciplined enough, healthy enough, and be given the proper amount of support to follow through with the program. In short, the patient enrolled in Dr. G’s therapy must believe enough in the protocol to faithfully follow through with it. It is similar to someone joining a Weightwatchers diet program versus dieting by one’s self. Some may argue, “If following a chemo regimen is much easier to adhere to than Dr. G’s therapy, shouldn’t chemo be the better option then?” I agree that ability to adhere is a valid consideration, but my opinion would be that the therapy which produces the best results is the one that should be followed, no matter how difficult it is to adhere to. “No pain, no gain” as they say.
What are the problems with the study?
1) To start, one of the initial problems was the decision by the NCI-Columbia team to “randomize” the study. What is a randomized study? Basically, what happens is patients are not given a choice as to what therapy they want to use, instead they are randomly designated to one of the assigned therapies. Also the doctors performing the treatments are not allowed to pre-select patients in any way. Randomization, essentially is supposed to eliminate biased selection. From an academic standpoint this seems like a very logical method to avoid biased results.
The problem is, we are dealing with real life patients who are desperately trying to beat pancreatic cancer. As I already mentioned, it is critical for a cancer patient to believe in the therapy that they are doing. If not, there is very little chance they will follow through with it, especially Dr. G’s. Also if someone who wants to do Dr. G’s therapy is forced to do the GTX chemo therapy instead, that patient probably will not comply and an ideal candidate for Dr. G’s therapy will be lost. Contrarily, if someone is assigned to Dr. G’s therapy that has an anti-alternative bias and wanted the GTX chemo treatment, the odds of them following through with Dr. G’s treatment is close to nil. Compliance and informed consent are critical elements to developing a good study.
Initially 260 patients with pancreatic cancer contacted Columbia to join the trial, but after learning that the trial would be randomized, only a measly 3 patients agreed. Of these 3, two later quit when they were told they had to do chemo. What a waste of eager pancreatic cancer patients and many good potential candidates. Because of this, the Columbia team was forced to get their heads out of the intellectual sand, and eliminate the randomization parameter from the study. Too late though, as the damage was already done and many good potential candidates were gone.
2) Now, having eliminated the randomization component, it was important to develop an unbiased selection process. The person who was given charge of this selection process was Dr. John Chabot of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. What Dr. Gonzalez later found out is that Dr. Chabot was not an unbiased supervisor. Dr. Gonzalez stated,
” We have learned, for example, that according to the published medical literature, Dr. Chabot, who as Principal Investigator should have been a completely neutral manager with no ties to either treatment being evaluated, had worked closely with his Columbia colleague developing the very GTX chemotherapy regimen used against us in the study – an obvious conflict of interest that had never been declared to us. We suspect Dr. Chabot believed it was in his best interest to discredit our alternative therapy and instead prove the value of a treatment he helped develop.”
It bewilders me how the Columbia team who initially wanted to avoid bias by making the study randomized, then selects as principal investigator of the study, someone who clearly has a conflict of interest. Was this just an oversight? Did Dr. Chabot fail to declare this obvious conflict? Whatever the answer, it smells like monkey business to me. This alone should have thrown this study into the “wasted money on research” garbage pile. As we look further into the details of the study you will see this conflict of interests come to the surface.
3) Clearly Dr. Gonzalez had concerns about the selection process under the direction of Dr. Chabot. Dr. G requested that the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP), a research watchdog, investigate Dr. Chabot’s selection process. Here’s what the OHRP found,
“We note that Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) found that for 40 of 62 subjects it appeared that informed consent was not documented with a signed written consent form prior to the initiation of research activities involving human subjects.”
As already mentioned, having “informed consent” is critical to the success of any study and is especially critical for someone entering Dr. G’s therapy. A patient must clearly know what there are getting into so as to determine whether or not they will be able to comply with the program. The OHRP states in their article,
“HHS regulations at 45 CFR 46.117(a) require that informed consent be documented by the use of a written consent form approved by the IRB and that is signed by the subject.”
Having informed consent is a clear regulation of the HHS (Department of Health & Human Services) that Dr. Chabot, as principal investigator, should have been aware of. So Dr. Chabot incorrectly selected 40 of 62 patients, over half of the patients!!! Yes, you can see the conflict of interests starting to show.
4) The initial grant of $1.4 million was awarded to Dr. Gonzalez because of his results from his pilot study. It is only fair then that he be involved in the selection process of the candidates. After all it is his therapy that is “on trial” here so he should be involved in the process. Dr. Gonzalez noted,
“Trouble began in earnest in July 2000 when at the insistence of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Isaacs and I were removed from any involvement with the evaluation and admission of candidates into the nutritional arm of the trial, leaving the Principal Investigator, Dr. John Chabot, with absolute total dictatorial control over patient admission to both groups, with no appeal possible”
The NCI justified this decision by saying that restricting Dr. G’s involvement eliminated bias. HUH!!! Eliminate bias?? Having Dr. Chabot, mister conflict of interest, in complete charge without some balanced input from Dr. Gonzalez clearly does not eliminate bias on the other side. Why do I continually have the aroma of monkey business passing by my notrils??
5) An important part of the selection process into Dr. G’s protocol requires that the patients be physically and mentally able to follow the program. For instance, the patient must be healthy enough to eat and be able to injest the large amount of supplements. The patient must also be mentally stable enough to be able to follow the details of the therapy. And again the patient must have the proper belief, motivation, and support to be able handle the rigors of this nutritional therapy.
One might argue that Dr. G’s requirements are much stricter than the requirements for the GTX therapy and is in a sense is “cherry picking” his patients. It is true that chemotherapy is an easier protocol to follow than Dr. G’s, but again I feel that ability to adhere is a secondary consideration as to the primary objective, overall therapy effectiveness. If we are going to judge one therapy to another, candidates selected must be able to follow either therapy in its entirety to fairly compare the two different therapies.
Here is what Dr. G found with the 39 patients that were assigned to his protocol,
“We have identified 11 patients entered into the nutrition arm whose appetites were so poor they could never possibly have adhered to the prescribed regimen…..Dr. Chabot admitted three patients who, because of mental disability, we believe should have been disqualified, and one with no family or social support….We estimate that another 10 of the admitted patients lacked the drive, motivation, or faith in the treatment to stick with it for any length of time….Discounting overlap – several patients should have been disqualified for more than one reason – we estimate conservatively that 16 individual patients of the 39 admitted into the nutrition arm did not fulfill the written entry criteria.”
So almost half (16 of 39) of the candidates selected were simply not able to follow the protocol, yet they were included in the final statistical analysis which clearly skewed the results. If we are judging Dr. G’s protocol fairly, his patients must be able to do to therapy. It’s as simple as that.
6) It is one thing to not be able to follow the protocol. Another consideration is, for those who have ability to follow the rigors of the protocol, did they actually fully follow the therapy? From a statistical viewpoint, only those patients who sufficiently comply with Dr. G’s therapy or any therapy for that matter, should be included in the final statistical tally. If the therapy is being tested, then it must be sufficiently adhered to. Otherwise the results do not truly reflect the therapy.
Here’s what Dr. G found in this regard,
“For a number of reasons, including physical disability, psychiatric instability, lack of social support, poor motivation and physician harassment, we have calculated that 30 of the 39 patients ultimately entered into the nutrition arm followed the prescribed regimen not at all, for only brief periods of time, or incompletely.”
This amounts to a 77% non-compliance rate, yet all were included in the final statistical analysis!! It is quite irresponsible of Dr. Chabot to have included these individuals in the final tally. But if these individuals were excluded, there really wouldn’t be much of a sudy left, so Dr. Chabot couldn’t let that happen. After all, it is his GTX therapy on trial here too. Dr. Chabot clearly was not an unbiased director of this study.
You may notice that Dr. G mentioned “physician harassment” as one of the reasons for non-compliance with his therapy. It is important to note here that of the 39 patients enrolled in Dr. G’s therapy, only 3 of them actually lived in the New York area, and were able to see Dr. G for regular monthly assessments. The remaining 36 patients lived too far away and were forced to receive follow-up from a local doctor unfamiliar with Dr. G’s therapy and very often hostile to it. Dr. G notes,
“Repeatedly, we heard from our patients that during the required monthly meetings, the local physicians aggressively discouraged them from continuing their treatment with us, instead urging them to proceed with some standard approach – despite the fact that the conventional therapies for inoperable pancreatic cancer have proven largely worthless.”
In our culture, oncologists and doctors in general, receive an almost “god-like” status when they give medical advice. Though doctors have studied their trade for many years, the most honest of doctors will readily admit that there is still much in the treatment of disease that they do not know. Yet when frightened pancreatic cancer patients are pressured to give up on treatments like Dr. G’s, only a select few have enough gumption to stick with it. This is what makes clinical trials on alternative cancer therapies so difficult to properly assess, because most doctors have been anti-alternative indocrinated.
This supervision by local doctors instead of Dr. G himself brings up another area of concern for me. If Dr. G’s therapy is on trial here, should not all patients accorded to his final statistical tally, be patients who received regular treatment and assessment from Dr. G personally or someone certified by Dr. G. Oncologists who are unfamiliar or unsympathetic to Dr. G’s therapy cannot possibly employ the same level of adherance as Dr. G? If we are going to judge Dr. G’s therapy, then his statistics should be based on patients he actually treats, not doctors unfamiliar and untrained in the execution of his protocol. This is a clear weakness which would inevitably skew the results.
Conversely, those enrolled in the GTX “arm” of the study, all 23 of them, received direct and intensive care under the very determined, skilled, and well-respected Dr. Robert Fine. Patients in this arm were spared no expense and many times treated 2-3 times per week. Dr. G puts is like this,
“Those under Dr. Fine’s charge could not ask for more intense or sophisticated care, from an enthusiastic, supportive staff at a major academic institution. Our patients, on the other hand, faced quite a different and often grim situation at the hands of local doctors at best indifferent and frequently hostile to our therapy”
This may sound like sour grapes, but as mentioned earlier, support is critical if one is going to properly follow any type of cancer therapy. Clearly, patients did not receive equal levels of support, yet we are supposed to trust the results?
7) At the beginning of the study, the experts at Columbia determined that for the study to “achieve statistical legitimacy” the number of patients participating needed to be at least 72. At the conclusion of the study, only 58 patients had participated. Dr. Chabot and the other Columbia didn’t see this as a problem and felt the numbers were adequate enough, even though they never achieved their original determination of legitimacy. It seems like Dr. Chabot was willing to change any rules he felt necessary to prove his GTX chemotherapy.
In addition to the insufficient numbers enrolled in the study, of the 58 patients entered you would expect an even distribution of the patients. This did not occur. 39 patients were entered in Dr. G’s regimen, and only 23 were admitted to the GTX therapy. For unknown reasons 4 patients were disqualified from Dr. G’s therapy, which then gave a grand total of 58 participating patients. Again Dr. Chabot didn’t feel the discrepancy between the numbers enrolled in either therapy represented a problem. Rule bending appears to have been a regular thing for Dr. Chabot during this study.
8) Another very important consideration when comparing pancreatic cancer therapies, is that the health of the patients enrolled in either therapy should be a similar as possible to produce accurate results. In other words, one therapy should not be receiving sicker patients than the other. If we are comparing apples to apples, the stage of the cancer must be closely similar.
With pancreatic cancer there are 4 stages which measure how progressed and widespread the disease has become at the time of diagnosis. Stage I pancreatic cancer is the least virulent, whereas Stage IV would be the most dangerous. Most people (about 75%) diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are already at the very advanced Stage IV. So for any clinical trial, one would expect to find this type of percentage to be fairly similar.
According to Dr. G by 2004,
“38 patients had been admitted for nutrition treatment, and of these, approximately 76% by our accounting had been initially diagnosed with the most advanced (stage IV) disease, the other 24% with earlier stage II or III. This pattern approximated, as did our pilot study, the usual distribution of newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer patients as reported in the literature.”
Dr. G’s focus was on his own patients, not the ones from the GTX “arm” of the study. So it was until the study was almost finished that Dr. G was given charts from Dr. Chabot about the GTX “arm”. Here’s what Dr. G became aware of,
“First, I was surprised that he had tabulated the numbers incorrectly for our group, which he reported incorrectly consisted of 35% at stage II and III and 64.7% at stage IV. But I was even more surprised to learn that the chemotherapy arm of the study, created under the direction of the Columbia oncologists, consisted of only 14 patients, 61.5% with earlier stage II and III disease, with only some 38% as advanced stage IV – a near reversal of the distribution in the nutrition group, and a reversal of the usual breakdown reported among patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”
So according to charts given by Dr. Chabot himself, Dr. G as a whole was treating much sicker patients than the ones assigned by Dr. Chabot to the GTX arm. What is even more troubling is that having 61.5% Stage II & III and only 38% Stage IV patients being enrolled in the GTX therapy, doesn’t correspond to the norm of approximately 75% of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are stage IV. This indicates “cherry-picking” by Dr. Chabot by having an abnormally high percentage of Stage II & III patients and abnormally low percentage of Stage IV patients enrolled in the GTX arm of the study. Can you say, conflict of interest? Yesiree!!
When Dr. G informed Dr. Chabot about his concerns with these numbers, he began to add, delete, and change patient numbers to make them more palatable for the final statiscal tally. This is otherwise know as number-fudging. I don’t know Dr. Novella, but I think this is a problem don’t you think?
9) Another discrepancy in the way patients were treated in each “arm” was the opportunity to modify the treatment when a patient was not responding to treatment or getting worse. Any good doctor, when diagnosing a problem with the treatment, will change it up by altering the dosage, change scheduling of the drugs or supplements, or changing many other variables in the treatment.
Dr. Fine was one of those doctors who would not give up on patients when they worsened during the GTX therapy. He would make alterations and do whatever he felt necessary to intensify the treatment. According to Dr. G, patients in his “arm” were not given the same flexibility,
“Yet as we came to learn, it seemed that Dr. Chabot believed our patients needed to be handled quite differently, as if two standards governed the trial – at the first sign of worsening, our nutrition patients were to be sent elsewhere for different treatment.”
At the first sign of trouble, those in Dr. G’s therapy were removed from the study and considered a failure in the final statistics. The local doctors clearly had no faith in Dr. G’s nutritional protocol for treating pancreatic cancer and would not go the extra mile and contact Dr. G for further advice on how to “ramp” up his therapy. Dr. G , in his regular practice, like Dr. Kelley would assess each patient regularly and if a patient was not responding to the therapy, he would alter the dose of enzymes, change the supplement scheduling, and/or change the diet.
It is clearly not fair for Dr. Fine to have full autonomy to alter his GTX treatments as needed, and Dr. G’s patient to have no adaptable support from their local doctors when they are not responding to therapy. Dr. G’s therapy requires regular assessment and alteration, so if this variable is not afforded to his patients by local doctors, his patients in effect are not doing his therapy and therefore should not be included in the statistics. Yet, Dr. Chabot included them all.
10) One more final consideration about this study is the length of time between diagnosis of the pancreatic cancer and the eventual initiation of the treatment. This is critically important with pancreatic cancer, as it is a very aggressive and deadly disease. So the sooner you can start the treatments the better. With regards to this study, for equal comparison the delay time between diagnosis and treatment should be the same for both therapies.
Dr. G became aware that this equal “delay time” was not equal after all. He found those enrolled in his therapy were experiencing great delays in their treatment after being diagnosed. Here’s what he found,
“Overall, we have calculated that 26 of the total of 39 patients admitted into the nutrition arm had been diagnosed by biopsy four or more weeks before meeting with us for their initial consultation, and 17 had been accepted six or more weeks from biopsy. We have calculated for all 39 nutrition patients an average delay between biopsy diagnosis and entry into the study of 36 days, or slightly more than five weeks – not insignificant for a disease as relentlessly aggressive as pancreatic adenocarcinoma.”
So the average delay between diagnosis and treatment for Dr. G’s therapy was about 5 weeks!! On top of the that, Dr. G’s therapy requires orders for supplements which take another week or so. With this delay, Dr. G noted that some patients then became too sick to comply with the therapy.
With regards to the GTX therapy, Dr. Chabot never gave Dr. G the details on delay time in this regimen, but Dr. G notes that with his extensive experience with cancer patients, chemotherapy is usually employed very soon after diagnosis (24-48 hours). Because pancreatic cancer is so deadly, most oncologists waste little time to begin treatment. I see no reason why Dr. Fine would be any different in his application of GTX chemotherapy.
So, this study is supposed to compare each therapy’s effectiveness on a level playing field, yet the delay time for treatment for Dr. G’s therapy was on average 5 weeks, and most likely the delay time for GTX was less than 48 hours. Time and time again we have seen that Dr. G’s regimen gets the short end of the stick. Dr. Chabot didn’t make this delay time a priority for Dr. G’s patients, and I venture to say that considering his conflict of interests from the very beginning, this delay had as Shakespeare said “method in his madness”. What makes this all the more distressing is that patients lives were in the balance here, and Dr. Chabot seemed to be playing them like pawns in a chess game. It’s actually disgraceful!!
Conclusion
So what can we conclude here. I have given 10 points which all represent significant flaws in how this study was carried out. I could have given more points, but I feel I have given sufficient evidence that this was a fatally flawed study from beginning to end. The director of the study, Dr. Chabot, had a clear conflict of interest having been a developer of the GTX chemotherapy. This conflict of interest became evident time and time again. To me the most significant problem was that 92% (36 of 39) of the patients assigned to Dr. G’s therapy were not actually treated by Dr. G or someone certified by him. Instead this was done by doctors unfamiliar with, untrained in, and often hostile to Dr. G’s therapy. Yet the lack of success of “his patients” was blamed on Dr. G!!! Clearly this study is not anywhere close to a true reflection of Dr. G’s enzyme therapy.
Dr. Engel, the official spokeswoman for NCCAM and this study, evaluated the concerns brought up by Dr. Gonzalez and came up with this conclusion,
“Given all of the challenges, the surprising outcomes, and the uncertainties about balance between the two arms, it is highly likely (if not certain) that reviewers of the data from this study will raise substantive and legitimate concerns about the comparability of the two populations. As a consequence, it is virtually certain that the controversy surrounding the study will not be settled by the data from it.”
” It was our impression that everyone in the room basically agreed that, despite best efforts, there is in fact, reason to be concerned about this issue, and that it clouds interpretation of the data.”
So “it is highly likely (if not certain)” that the data from the study basically cannot be trusted according to Dr. Engel. There are so many problems with the study that “it clouds interpretation of the data”. If the data cannot be trusted and the interpretation is clouded, why is it presented as a valid study on the NCI website? Why do quackwatch sites widely quote this study on the internet as the final word on Dr. Gonzalez’s & Dr. Kelley’s Enzyme Therapy? Why can’t doctors like Dr. Novella admit there are insurmountable problems with this study or even any problems at all?
Money, Anti-alternative indoctrination, pride, control, –you take your pick. It’s probably all of the above, but at the end of the day the core issue I believe is money. Billions of dollars are made and have been invested in chemotherapy drugs, radiation machine, surgeries, and cancer diagnostics. This became quite a shock to me when it first hit me several months ago, but it becomes truer each time I look under another cancer “rock”.
It is also very suspicious to me that Dr. Beard, Dr. Kelley, and Dr. Gonzalez have found great success with their practice of this enzyme therapy, yet the results of this study give a completely different and quite unique message. In figure skating, when a performance is judged, the top and bottom scores are not included in the final tally to avoid biased, hometown judging. Because this study is so off the baseline from what Dr. Beard, Dr. Kelley, Dr. Gonzalez, and others have found when using enzyme therapy, we must seriously question its validity. Dr. Beard was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his work. Dr. Gonzalez investigated Dr. Kelley and he became a believer. Dr. Gonzalez’s pilot study convinced Dr. Richard Klausner enough to award Dr. G with the $1.4 million to complete this study. Now strangely the results of the this study are completely at odds with the results of Dr. Beard, Dr. Kelley, and Dr. Gonzalez. So we have only 2 options
1) Dr. Beard, Dr. Kelley, Dr. Gonzalez and others have been fudging their numbers with enzyme therapy all these years
or
2) Dr. Chabot and the NCI fudged the numbers in this study to discredit enzyme therapy and therefore maintain the popularity of current money-making therapies chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.
If you have been reading my blogs, including this one, it is no secret which option I would select. I believe there is clearly some monkey business going on behind the scenes and I’m not quite sure who or what is behind it all. All I know is that people are what is important, and people with cancer need to be told the truth and be given the therapies that produce the best results with the least collateral damage.
So Brent are you saying that we can’t trust medical studies anymore? No, but we do need to be much more vigilant in our evaluation of them. Brent, there is only so much time in the day, we can’t evaluate every medical study like what you have done in this blog. Eventually we have to show some trust don’t we? I guess we all have to activate our own “spidy senses”, check our gut feelings and then follow them up with research. Now, I would be extra skeptical about any study which denigrate an alternative cancer therapy that has a lot of successful anecdotal evidence behind it. Truth is not an easy road to follow, and I wish I was wrong on this, but the serious truth seeker in this day and age must be willing to go the extra mile and work much harder than the average person. At the end of the day though, truth-seeking is worth the extra effort.
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truthbreakdown 