Cancer and Alternative Therapies

In an article recently referring to Steve Jobs, the following statements were made, which I thought were pretty profound:

According to Dr. Gonzalez, Jobs was seeing an acupuncturist who was very anxious for him to contact Dr. Gonzalez for advice. Dr. Gonzalez has been successfully treating cancer patients for over two decades.

"One of my great patients is a fellow from Michigan who had islet cell carcinoma that, at the time of diagnosis in 1995, had already metastasized to his liver. He went to the Mayo clinic, where everything was confirmed; he had CAT scans and biopsies... To the Mayo clinic's credit... if they know that a therapy isn't going to be useful, they don't promote it, whereas a lot of oncologists will promote therapies that are worthless.
The Mayo clinic told him chemo wouldn't do anything for him... There was really nothing they could do. He started with me in 1995, shortly after his diagnosis. He's alive and well now, 16 years later. CAT scans beginning around 2000 showed total resolution of his big tumors. He had a huge tumor in the pancreas -- it must have been around 6 centimeters. And then he had a big tumor, right under the liver. All these are gone."

"Michael Landon actually did consult with me," Dr. Gonzalez says, "but he never did the therapy. His press agent, Harry Flynn, became a very good friend. Harry and I remain friends to this day, and this goes back to 20 years ago. As soon as a successful celebrity gets cancer, the conventional predators come out of the woodwork-and they say that alternative doctors are sitting there like predators, trying to lure unsuspecting cancer patients into their lairs. You know, I've been in the alternative world for a long time, and I've come out of this very conventional research. But I don't see a whole of that in the alternative world.
What I do see is conventional doctors doing exactly what they criticize in alternative doctors. Landon was treated by an "eminent oncologist" from Cedars-Sinai, who held a press conference. The first thing conventional doctors do when they get a celebrity is to hold a press conference. To me it's almost like narcissism, just to show how important they are with all these celebrities coming to them. This is even if they know they can't do anything. He gave Landon an experimental chemo, but he was dead in three months."
"You see, when a conventional oncologist loses a celebrity patient, they portray him as a hero fighting this terrible disease against the enormous odds; working late into the night trying to keep the celebrity alive," Dr. Gonzalez says. "But when an alternative practitioner loses a patient, they consider him a sleazy quack getting money from unsuspecting cancer victims.
... The same thing was true, more recently, with Patrick Swayze. He had a very aggressive pancreatic cancer. Stanford oncologists doing his treatment held press conferences routinely... filled with this kind of joyful optimism that "they're going to help." He was gone in 18 months. Friends of his are actually patients of mine, but he absolutely had no interest in alternative medicine. He was very conventional – used "the best doctors" from Stanford." 

Dr. Gonzalez' mentor, Dr. Kelley (who developed the cancer program Dr. Gonzalez now uses), treated Steve McQueen. McQueen ultimately died, although he lasted almost a year under Dr. Kelley's care.

"He was terminal when he came to Dr. Kelley," Dr. Gonzalez says. "He had failed radiation, failed immunotherapy. He had been misdiagnosed for a year. The reason he ended up with Stage 4 mesothelioma is because he was misdiagnosed by his fancy conventional doctors in Southern California.
Then they gave him radiation – there's not a study in the history of the world showing that radiation helps in mesothelioma; they gave it anyway. Then they gave him immunotherapy. There's not a study in the history of the world saying that immunotherapy helps in mesothelioma. They did it anyway. Then he was dying and he went to see Kelley. He died, and Kelley got all the blame-not the doctors who misdiagnosed him! In fact when you read the newspaper articles, there are still articles about how Dr. Kelley killed McQueen.
No, cancer killed McQueen.
You see, an oncologist at Sloan-Kettering can do a bone marrow transplant on celebrity patients. They die, and he's written up like a hero... Kelley tries to help after conventional doctors failed miserably and misdiagnosed him, and McQueen lived longer than he should. (He was a half-compliant patient – he continued to smoke, drink, and eat ice cream.) I told Kelley when I first met him, "The biggest mistake you've made with McQueen is you took him as a patient. You should have told him to hit the trail."
Dr. Kelley is now dead. But 30 years later, he still gets blamed for McQueen's death. About two or three years ago, there was an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal attacking unconventional cancer therapy. They talked about McQueen, and how Kelley killed him. ... Conventional oncologists lose patients every day, and no one says they're murdering anybody. Instead they're considered heroes for trying so hard."
"We have multiple patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who have done well," Dr. Gonzalez says. "It's interesting: I do have very world-renowned celebrities as patients. But no one knows who they are; no one knows they have cancer. The reason for that is because they didn't die, and we don't hold press conferences. They're doing their program and doing well with their lives.
We tell our patients: don't make cancer your life. Move on with your life. So they're back acting in movies, doing talk shows and that kind of stuff. No one knows they even had cancer. And that's fine with me. Some of them keep it secret because of the career thing, and they don't want the publicity. I understand that. So my successful patients who are celebrities, nobody knows who they are because they got well and they're just doing their job." 

"They [physicians] grow up with the bias that drugs are the way to go. It's how they're trained; it's imprinted in their brain in medical school. It's like mind control – it's what they believe. They just can't believe anything else. They go to their graves believing it – often to their discredit, unfortunately."

"We get calls from doctors now, asking us about nutrition and what supplements they should take," Dr. Gonzalez says. "There's been a big change in the last few years. Fifteen years ago it didn't happen, and now it's starting to happen." 

I've always wondered about celebrities, who have an endless supply of money, and why it is that they die anyway...yet we fight so hard for the ability for this "health care." Doctors like Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez quoted above deserve recognition so that people like you and I know that they exist. So that the "average Joe" knows that there are alternatives to cut, drug, and die. You can learn more about Dr. Gonzalez at his website: www.dr-gonzalez.com .

You can also read his books: