The Gerson Therapy – Was Doctor Gerson A Quack?

Written by Steve on 02 August 2010

Max Gerson, M.D. was a physician who claimed to have developed a protocol that could cure cancer. He is dead now, but his legacy lives on in alternative cancer treatment centers around the world – with the most famous one being located in Mexico.

Mainstream healthcare providers frequently react with extreme skepticism and/or claims of quackery when asked their opinion of Dr Gerson’s theories and protocols.

I reacted the same way when I heard of this physician’s claims and beliefs. Some of his proposals sounded completely nutty to me.

But there is nothing like knowing that a loved one has an advanced cancer that most people die from to make you reexamine your assumptions and what you accept as fact.

You see, I know that the treatments we currently subject patients to almost always have poor outcomes if the patients’ cancers are not discovered early and cut out.

So… as part of my study of options that might be useful to extend my family member’s life… I forced myself to put aside dogma and my biases and pre-conceptions so that I wouldn’t miss something that might work.

Thus, it was inevitible that I would end up reading Dr Gerson’s book – ‘A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases and the Cure of Advanced Cancer’. In fact, I read it several times.

It was a difficult read. The first time I read it I had to re-read the chapters several times because it was extremely difficult to get my mind wrapped around the ideas presented by this physician. Every time I progressed to a new idea my subconscious mind told me it was nuts and I was wasting my time. It was a tortuous process.

Pharmacists are extremely conventional in their perspectives, and – as a group – we tend to have been strongly indoctrinated to the status quo. But, slowly it dawned on me that I had to interpret Dr Gerson’s writings and theories based on the state of scientific knowledge when he was practicing - to look for what I call ‘convergence’ of the data and ideas and the assumptions behind them with new knowledge that originates from other sources.

Then, the pieces started to fall into place. I won’t detail Dr Gerson’s theories in this post. If you need the information there are many books out there that will explain in much more detail than I can. But I will say this – I can point out case after case of convergence between his claims and protocols and information that is documented in journal articles that have been published in the recent past.

I do not know whether the people who are running his clinics are curing cancers or not. I have seen documentaries where patients claim they are. I do not know if Dr Gerson actually cured cancers or not, although there are many claims that he did. I do not know if Dr Gerson was a good man or not, but I have heard recordings of interviews that seem to show a physician who believed with all his heart that he was helping people.

I haven’t drug my loved one to the Gerson clinic in Mexico – things happened too fast and my learning curve limited my ability to assimilate enough data soon enough to even consider whether or not that trip should have been made. But….  as my learning has progressed I find myself implementing things into her day-to-day activities that could easily qualify as spin offs of therapies proposed by Dr Gerson.

And every day I find evidence that Dr Gerson may have been correct in many of his actions.

So, I find that I must say that I do NOT believe that Max Gerson, M.D. was a quack.

You can find more information about clinics that practice the Gerson Therapy if you’re interested in learnng more about his protocols at http://www.gerson.org/ .

Again – I’m a pharmacist, not a doctor. I’m providing information I think you might want to talk to your doctor about. Good luck.