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The Suppression of Alternative Medical Therapies 171
The therapy Dr. Gerson devised was also designed to be high in potassium
and low in sodium. The soup mentioned above is especially high in
potassium, which helped to correct a too-high ratio of sodium to potassium
suffered by many people with cancer, especially those with moderate
or advanced cancer. Dr. Gerson discovered that restoring a favourable
potassium/sodium balance could reverse some of the cell damage caused
by an excess of sodium.
The function of the freshly-made fruit and vegetable juices in the programme
is to detoxify the body and provide oxidising enzymes to assist
in the rehabilitation of the liver. Other techniques to support the liver and
detoxify the body are also used in the programme, including coffee enemas
to stimulate the flow of bile and safely dispose of toxins, the juice of
raw calves' liver, and injections of crude liver extract. (Liver juices and
extracts are no longer used by people following a Gerson programme in
the 1990s, due to the contamination of the liver with pesticides and bacteria.
Spirulina and carrot juice may be taken instead to provide nutritional
iron and pro-vitamin A. Desiccated liver tablets may be used instead,
since these are thought to contain fewer toxins.)
Gerson also supplemented the diet of people in his care with additional
potassium salts, as well as organic and inorganic iodine. Fluoride-contaminated
water or other products are forbidden because of fluoride's toxicity
to valuable enzymes. Animal fats are excluded. Dr. Gerson's programme
was originally completely free of fats and oils (excluding the
small amount of fat present in the calves' liver), but after experimentation,
Gerson modified his programme to include a small amount of flax seed oil
to supply essential fatty acids.
After six weeks of detoxification using the diet and supplements outlined
above, patients in Gerson's care graduated to a diet which included
small amounts of the protein foods such as yogurt, cottage cheese, and
natural buttermilk. (Foods containing protein had been previously restricted
to allow the body adequate time to detoxify and begin to break down
tumour tissue.)
These, then, were the basic theories and therapy which Dr. Gerson had
developed by the time that he came to the United States in 1936. In
January 1948—almost twenty years after he had first successfully treated
cancer in Germany in 1928—he went to work at New York's Gotham
Hospital. However, Gerson's efforts to publish his discoveries consistently
met with a negative response from the publishers of medical journals.
His article "Cancer, A Deficiency Disease" was rejected by the New
York State Journal of Medicine in 1943. The next year another paper,
"Dietic Treatment of Malignant Tumours," was also rejected by every
medical journal to which it had been sent. In 1945, he finally succeeded