Cancer new pancreatic treatment

When orthodontist William Donald Kelley was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1963, he refused standard treatment and used his knowledge of biochemistry to develop a nutritional-metabolic regime to cure himself. Eventually, Kelley used supplements, individualized diets, and daily coffee enemas to help other cancer patients. As a medical student, Nicholas Gonzalez asked Kelley if he could review his patient records for the years 1970 to 1982. Gonzalez interviewed 455 of these patients and chose 50, who had been diagnosed by well-regarded specialists, for a study. After five years of research into Kelley's work, Gonzalez, who describes himself as a 'traditional medical student', says: "...I had no choice other than to face the fact that he had hundreds of patients with obviously terminal disease who were still alive five, ten, and fifteen years later. It was there in the data, and to me, ultimately, data are the only things that can tell the truth."

According to Kelley's view, cancer results when the body is not producing enough enzymes to digest protein properly or control the amount of protein circulating in the blood. Consequently, he prescribed high doses of pancreatic enzymes. While researching Kelley's work, Gonzalez learned that John Beard, a Scottish embryologist in the early 1900s, had linked enzymes from the fetal pancreas to the sudden inhibition of uncontrolled growth exhibited by young placental cells (trophoblasts). Beard found that injections of the pancreatic enzyme trypsin reduced tumor size in mice. When Kelley stopped seeing patients in 1987, Gonzalez, who had completed an immunology fellowship the previous year, started his own practice, based on Kelley's regime.

Like Kelley, whom the American Cancer Society denounced as a quack, Gonzalez has also been castigated for "departing from accepted practice." Throughout the medical board investigations, reprimands, and denunciations, Gonzalez has asked to have the treatment independently evaluated. A small pilot study by Gonzalez and his colleague Linda Isaacs, published in the peer-reviewed Nutrition and Cancer in 1999, led to a $1.4 million research grant from the National Institutes of Health. The money will fund a study of 70-90 people with advanced pancreatic cancer. Half of them will receive Gonzalez's enzyme-nutritional treatment, and the other half will be treated at Columbia Presbyterian (New York) with the best chemotherapy and hospital care available. The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 4%; over 80% die within the first year.

"The Outlaw Doctor" by Michael Specter. The New Yorker February 5, 2001.