Gerson-style Therapy vs. Chemotherapy

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

The recent review dismissing Gerson therapy as useless or worse for the treatment of cancer was published before this landmark study came out: a head-to-head test of a Gerson-style regime, versus the standard chemotherapy agent gemcitabine, for pancreatic cancer—one of the deadliest of all malignancies.

Being diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer is, basically, on average, being given a six-month death sentence. The best modern medicine can offer is chemotherapy designed not to cure, but just to kind of slow down the death process, and give people a few extra months. Since death is essentially considered inevitable, it offers an opportunity to try untested therapies—because what’s the worst that can happen?

Now, you’d think with all the interest in complementary and alternative medicine, there’d be lots of these trials. But, they’re actually exceedingly rare, and difficult to do. The National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society should be commended for their efforts here.

So, 55 patients; 23 chose chemo; 32 chose treatment with enzyme supplements, detox, and an organic diet, composed mostly of raw foods.

This may be among the “first controlled, clinical studies to compare allopathic [meaning standard medical] treatment to an alternative medicine program for a survival end point.” What did they find?

Well, first of all, before they even started, they agreed on what’s called a “stopping rule.” If one therapy started working way better than the other, then they’d just stop it [the study], because it would be unethical to continue. That point was reached, actually, and they had to stop the study prematurely because there were so many more deaths—in the Gerson therapy alternative group.

Here’s the survival curve. Here’s the chemo group. As you can see, despite conventional medicine’s best efforts, about half were dead in a year. But, here’s the enzyme and raw food group. As you can see, they started dying off almost immediately, whereas those in the chemo group tended to be able to hold out longer. 

Yeah, but what about the quality of their lives in their last few months on earth? Quality of life was significantly better in the chemo group, as well.

“Conclusion: Among patients who have pancreatic cancer, those who chose gemcitabine-based chemotherapy survived more than three times as long [14 months, on average, versus 4 months]…and had better quality of life than those who chose [the alternative] proteolytic enzyme treatment.”

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• Chabot JA, Tsai WY, Fine RL, Chen C, Kumah CK, Antman KA, Grann VR. Pancreatic proteolytic enzyme therapy compared with gemcitabine-based chemotherapy for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. J Clin Oncol. 2010 Apr 20;28(12):2058-63.
• Cassileth B. Gerson regimen. Oncology (Williston Park). 2010 Feb;24(2):201.

Images thanks to Ben Stanfield and Jason Eppink via flickr; and National Cancer Institute/NIH

• alternative medicine
• cancer
• chemotherapy
• complementary medicine
• detoxification
• Gerson Therapy
• mortality
• National Cancer Institute
• organic foods
• pancreatic cancer
• raw food
• supplements