Conventional Doctor Sabotaged On Nutritional Trial Against Pancreatic Cancer

After being involved in the thread regarding the pharmacists being diagnosed with cancer and doing quite a bit of research on the subject, I stumbled across the following story (the links below contain quite a bit of info so before you comment or make assertions, please read the available info) :

In 1999, the Boston Globe reported on a pilot study executed by Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez & Dr. Linda Lee Isaacs. The pilot study was completed on 11 people with pancreatic cancer.

Boston Globe Article

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest known forms of cancer and by the time diagnosis is made, life span is shortened to months (this is the norm).

Gonzalez & Isaac's pilot study focused on nutrition, supplementation, additional pancreatic enzymes, & coffee enema. Although coffee enemas are not well known or understood by most conventional doctors, in the holistic world they are widely known for cleansing of the liver and assisting the body in elimination of toxins. Coffee enemas are especially known and used in the Gerson Therapy for cancer. It is still in practice at their practice in Mexico.

The participants in the pilot study (11 total) lived for (approx) three times longer than the average pancreatic cancer patient on chemotherapy.

The NCI/NIH offered them a $1.6 million dollar grant over 5 years through Columbia University to launch a trial to see if his treatment was more effective than chemotherapy.

Here is where it gets really interesting:

I was curious to see where the study had gone and the outcome of the clinical trial so I searched around to find Dr. Nicholas Gonzales & find him I did.

Dr. Nicholas Gonzales

As we look at the way the trial was conducted, we see blunders by Columbia University. We see managerial mismanagement by the doctors conducting the study (Dr. Gonzales & Dr. Isaacs were excluded except administering the nutritional portion of the trial) including failure to acquire signed consent forms from those involved in the study.

According to Dr. Gonzales, even though the patients had pancreatic cancer, they had to be within a certain number of weeks of diagnosis. They had to be able to care for themselves or have one support person living with them to help administer the treatment. They had to feel well enough to even go through with the nutritional portion which required that they have an appetite. In other words, the same criteria that was used in the pilot study.

When Dr. Gonzales & Isaacs had concerns about the type of patient being sent to them for the nutritional arm of the study (Stage IV highly ill patients compared to the lower stage II/III patients being admitted to the chemotherapy arm of the study), their concerns were ignored by Dr. John Chabot (the doctor that Columbia put in charge of the trial). He, alone, had say over which patients were admitted to each arm of the study: the nutritional/enzyme & the chemotherapy. This was supposedly due to concern that Dr. Gonzales & Isaacs would have bias over which patients were chosen

This makes good sense, of course! And would have been perfectly acceptable had it not been discovered by Dr. Gonzales that Dr. Chabot had developed the chemotherapy treatment that the nutritional arm was pitted against in the trial.

Continued below

Furthermore, he seemed overly enthusiastic that the chemotherapy patients, most at the time diagnosed with earlier stage disease, were surviving longer than our group of largely untreated, non-compliant stage IV patients. When despite many promises the serious problems and mismanagement continued, we started to wonder if Dr. Chabot might be undermining the nutrition arm so that the chemotherapy regimen might appear to be more effective than our treatment. Dr. Isaacs and I began to investigate Chabot and to our astonishment learned, as the published scientific literature clearly confirmed, he had worked very closely with his Columbia colleague Dr. Robert Fine developing the very “GTX” chemotherapy regimen being used against our treatment in the clinical study. Dr. Chabot appears as co-author with Dr. Fine on multiple articles appearing in the scientific literature during the very time of our clinical trial lauding the GTX regimen, though we had not been told of the severe conflict of interest. We had naively assumed that Chabot, a surgeon, would have no involvement with the development of GTX. To make matters worse and the conflict of interest more egregious, Dr. Fine was in charge of treating all chemotherapy patients entered into our trial.

After complaints by Dr. Gonzales were filed to the proper authorities that the trial was of no use because it had two experimental treatments being compared instead of a control treatment (standard chemo treatment) and the major issues mentioned above (& others), Dr. Chabot attempted to get the trial published. Luckily, JAMA refused due to the Federal investigation.

Unfortunately, the Journal of Clinical Oncology did not refuse to publish the trial regardless of the problems with the trial and apparent sabotage. Dr. Gonzales' name is even left off of the trial and Dr. Chabot lists the grant as being his under his credentials.

All of this is chronicled on Dr. Gonzales' website: Here

My opinion: If we do not stop conventional medicine authorities from silencing viable alternatives health will continue to deteriorate. How can we provide good science when the character of the researchers conducting the studies is in question?

When we allow discrepancies in information to litter a study & obvious conflicts of interest to influence a trial, we pollute the pool of good information and only cause a pervasive continuation of "business as usual" in the medical field.

Thoughts?

Absolutely no surprise here.

Once you've been studying alternative medicine vs. allopathy for a while, you come to accept this kind of thing as the norm.

The allopathic drug peddlers will do what it takes to preserve their income and/or egoistical illusion of superiority.

I recently met my first truly open-minded allopath (in general practice). Unfortunately for him (or perhaps fortunately, depending on which angle you look at it from), his journey into natural/alternative healing has forced him to rethink his allopathic career and he is on the edge of quitting.

For those that take their vow of 'Do No Harm' seriously, remaining in Allopathy once awareness of harmless and superior alternatives has dawned, is a very tough call.

Emergency trauma medicine and one or two other niche areas excepted of course.

[edit on 18/7/10 by RogerT]

If indeed true that JAMA refused to publish the JCO-accepted study based on the published investigations, good news.

There's still some integrity held by JAMA editors...

What a waste of time and money(in the good meaning of that expression).

A whole decade worth of study time and funding that may be difficult to get approved again.

This does not surprise me at all. This is typical day to day operations of the lucrative and thriving healthcare business.

I have a feeling that the success rate of Dr. Gonzalez/Issac's treatment has to do more with the enzymes they give the patients than anything else. Though we most likely will never know for sure.

I will continually assert that pharmacology and alternative medicines all work through chemistry. Their continual efforts to paint each other as the bad guy are reminiscent of the "two-party system" here in the US. They both play the profit game, though alternative practitioners tend to hide it better IMO.

Originally posted by dbloch7986

I will continually assert that pharmacology and alternative medicines all work through chemistry. Their continual efforts to paint each other as the bad guy are reminiscent of the "two-party system" here in the US. They both play the profit game, though alternative practitioners tend to hide it better IMO.

What a surprising and misleading analogy!

I can see how many people would have the perception of alternative medical practitioners playing the profit game as IMO 99% of alternative practitioners are almost as dangerous and even more incompetent than their allopath adversaries.

However, how you can compare billion dollar drug companies selling toxic materials at 10,000% markup with freely distributed information on the curative powers of e.g. broccoli, grapes and garlic and a coffee enema is beyond me???

reply to post by RogerT


I'm not talking about grapes and broccoli. I'm saying that you can pay $300 for a pack of teas that literally costs $0.03 per bag. Its no different than buying a bottle of Advil. Same mark-up.

Both businesses are lucrative businesses. Both businesses will try to sabotage the other. Both businesses are using the same exact arguments against and for each other.

If you understand chemistry then you understand that both pharmaceuticals and herbs function the same way. Almost all pharmaceuticals have an herbal likeness. The healing effects are enhanced in the pharmaceutical and so are the side effects. They are the same business.

Psychotropic drugs are something I am very against however. To make that clear. No one understands the chemistry of the human brain well enough to be messing with it.

Originally posted by dbloch7986
reply to post by RogerT

 

If you understand chemistry then you understand that both pharmaceuticals and herbs function the same way. Almost all pharmaceuticals have an herbal likeness. The healing effects are enhanced in the pharmaceutical and so are the side effects. They are the same business.

Psychotropic drugs are something I am very against however. To make that clear. No one understands the chemistry of the human brain well enough to be messing with it.

I think we can agree to be on polar opposite on both counts here.

When you can make a pill in a lab that sprouts and becomes a peach tree, then I'll reconsider giving weight to your first paragraph.

All the best.
RT

You should all know that Dr Gonzalas's program is based on Dr. William donald Kelley's program.

Here's Kelley's 1st book free for all to read.
www.drkelley.com...

www.drkelley.info...

cancertutor.com...

[edit on 26-7-2010 by Sargoth]