Although this blog is about medicine, specifically the scientific basis of medicine and threats to the scientific basis of medicine regardless of the source, several of us also have an interest in other forms of pseudoscience and threats to other branches of science. One branch of science that is, not surprisingly, critical to medicine is the science of biology, and the organizing theory of biology is the theory of evolution, which was first reported by Charles Darwin and subsequently synthesized with the developing science of genetics in the early 20th century and then with our increasing knowledge of molecular biology, genomics, and proteonomics whose rise ushered us into the 21st century. However, the implications of evolution, namely that humans and apes both evolved from a common ancestor and that humans, for all their belief of being different and superior to animals, are in fact related to animals in the great chain of life going all the way back to single-celled organisms, does not go down well with certain religious fundamentalists, particularly Christian fundamentalists. Whereas I (and I daresay several of my cobloggers) find the interconnectedness of life, including humans, implied by Darwin’s theory to be beautiful and uplifting, many fundamentalists see it as a profound threat to their world view. Consequently, they have attacked the theory of evolution at every turn and tried to insert creationism, particularly the latest incarnation of creationism known as “intelligent design,” into science classes as an “alternative” to “Darwinism.” The manner in which they torture science, logic, and reason to try to cast doubt on a theory that is every bit as rock solid in terms of massive quantities of experimental and observational evidence to support it as any other theory in science, if not more so, is legendary and well documented at blogs such as The Panda’s Thumb and websites such as Talk Origins.
Although one day I plan on writing about how insights from evolutionary theory have led to deeper understandings of human disease and strategies to improve human health in the future, this time I want to concentrate on the similarities in techniques of spreading disinformation between creationists and purveyors of unscientific medical “treatments.” For background, first, you need to be aware of a movie that was released in April. The movie, Expelled!: No Intelligence Allowed was released. Starring Ben Stein at his most unctuous sporting a bullhorn and styling himself as a conservative, buttoned-down version of Angus Young through his choice of apparel in its promotional material, the movie’s main theme is that any academic who “questioned Darwinism” is “expelled” from academia. The basic idea is that “intelligent design” creationism is being “suppressed” by biologists who just can’t accept the thought of the existence of a “designer” (i.e., God). Indeed, the movie goes so far as to equate biologists and scientists who accept the theory of evolution as the best current explanation for the diversity of life to Hitler and the Nazis and their “suppression” of “alternatives” (word choice intentional) to “Darwinism” to Nazi and Stalinist persecution of dissidents and perceived threats to the regime. The movie even features a sequence where Ben Stein visits Dachau and Auschwitz, as though to imply that biologists are busy firing up the ovens for the Brave Maverick Scientists who “dissent from Darwin.”
These Brave Maverick Scientists are a lot like the Brave Maverick Doctors who champion unscientific medicine. After all, Kevin Trudeau has made a cottage industry and sold millions of books based on the claim that there are “natural cures” that “they” (as in doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and the government) don’t want you to know about and that as a consequence the full forces of these groups are being marshalled to “suppress” them and “persecute” the Brave Maverick Doctors who dare to question the “orthodoxy” of “allopathic medicine,” up to and including claims of “Nazi”-like suppression. (Just read those repositories of quackery NaturalNews.com and Whale.to if you don’t believe me.) For the “alternative medicine” movement, it’s all there, in websites, blogs, and books. But one thing that the movement pushing unscientific treatments has lacked, and that’s a movie to call its own, a movie to spread the same message.
That is, until now.
The (Not-So-)Beautiful (Un)Truth
A number of readers have e-mailed to me links and references to a new movie, which recently completed a run in New York City from November 14 through 20 and is scheduled to open on Wednesday in Los Angeles and show there through December 4. I’m referring to a movie entitled The Beautiful Truth. Before the e-mails started, I had had no inkling that this movie was being made or that its release was on the horizon. Maybe it’s because the movie is only showing in New York and Los Angeles and hasn’t made it out of the media enclaves of those cities out to the rest of us in flyover country, or maybe its release is so limited that I just hadn’t heard of it. Or maybe it’s because it didn’t have the multimillion dollar marketing push from religious fundamentalists, coupled with a famous face like that of Ben Stein fronting it. However, what this movie reminds me of, more than anything else, is Ben Stein’s pseudoscience- and lie-filled bit of “intelligent design” creationism propaganda Expelled!. The similarities are eerie, at least in terms of the message. The Beautiful Truth may not have the marketing muscle or celebrity behind it that Expelled! had (and still has behind its release as a DVD), but it does have slick website, not to mention a lot of trailers and clips from the movie on YouTube and elsewhere.
These trailers and clips make it quite obvious that The Beautiful Truth is nothing less than a credulous paean to cancer quackery in much the same way that Expelled! was a credulous paean to “intelligent design” creationism coupled with a conspiracy theory casting advocates of pseudoscience as brave “skeptics” of scientific orthodoxy. Specifically, it’s a paean to the quackery known as the Gerson therapy, mixed in with a veritable cornucopia of dubious and fraudulent cancer treatments. If the dozen or so clips on the website and YouTube are any indication, this movie is nothing less than a tour into the dark heart of American quackery led by a credulous guide who has drunk deeply from the Kool Aid on sites like Whale.to, NaturalNews.com, and Mercola.com. Just as Expelled! claims that academics are “suppressing” any criticism of “Darwinism” or research into “intelligent design,” The Beautiful Truth postulates a grand suppression of this “alternative” cure for cancer that “they” don’t want you to know about. The movie is described thusly:
Garrett is a 15-year old boy living in the Alaskan wilderness with a menagerie of orphaned animals. Growing up close with nature has given him a deep understanding of nutritional needs required by diet sensitive animals on the reserve. Unfortunately, the untimely and tragic death of his mother propelled him into a downward spiral and he risked flunking out of school. This led to his father’s decision to home-school Garrett. His first assignment was to study a controversial book written by Dr. Max Gerson.
Note the religious overtones to this plot device holding the movie together. Indeed, this is nothing less than a conversion story, of which we hear many from religious fundamentalists, the kind where after a tragedy a troubled youth falls into a pit of despair, complete with substance abuse, bad grades, and falling in with the “wrong” crowd. Either as a result of his fall or as the cause of his fall, the youth rejects Jesus. Then, in such stories, inevitably someone shows the troubled youth the Bible and tells him all about Jesus again, and eventually the youth “sees the light” and is saved from the darkness. This movie sounds exactly like this, except with “alternative” medicine being the savior and Max Gerson providing the “miracles” in the form of a “miraculous cure” for cancer. This is not surprising, because so much of “alternative” medicine is more like religion than anything else–and a cult religion at that, as has been argued by my cobloggers at various times. No amount of evidence or science deters its adherents from their belief. But, if you really, believe, the Messiah Max Gerson will cure you–yes, you!–of your cancer, no matter how advanced
The description of the movie continues:
Written over 50 years ago, Dr. Gerson found that diet could, and did, cure cancer. Controversial at the time (and even today), Garrett took on the challenge of researching this amazing therapy, which drew the interest of his neighbors in the small Alaskan community. With the help of Dr. Gerson’s daughter, Charlotte Gerson, and grandson, Howard Strauss, they gave him the ammunition needed to go in search for the truth – a truth that would affect not only him, but his entire Alaskan village – all of whom wanted to know if these claims were true. After a number of cancer patients, who were diagnosed as terminal, shared their stories and their medical records with Garrett, it became abundantly clear that, contrary to the disinformation campaign spear-headed by the multi-billion dollar medical and pharmaceutical industry, a cure for virtually all cancers and chronic diseases does exist – and has existed for over 80 years!
Of course it has. It always has–at least, if you listen to people like Mike Adams, that is. Indeed, I wonder if he had a hand in this movie. Alas for my speculation, according to the press kit, at least, he didn’t. In any case, if you believe purveyors of many, many forms of quackery, there is always a cure for cancer out there that big pharma and the government have been “suppressing” because–well, it’s never entirely clear exactly why they would keep such a cure a secret or, more incredibly, how they could possibly keep such a secret. Indeed, these cancer “cures” strike me as being either the world’s most well-kept conspiracies of all time (after all, I’m a cancer surgeon and researcher and I’ve never heard from my colleagues even a hint of such an amazing cure for cancer in general or any specific cancer) or the worst-kept (after all, filmmakers like Steve Kroschel, writer, producer, and director of The Beautiful Truth, seem to have very little difficulty finding out all about it). In actuality, whether the secret of these “natural cures” is well or poorly kept seems to vary with the needs of the advocate telling the story.
Moreover, none of these claims makes much sense on a strictly logical basis. Think about it this way: So many people die of cancer every year that virtually every person in developed countries, doctors and cancer researchers–and, yes, even big pharma executives–included, have known, know, or will know someone with cancer. Many have seen or will see someone they love die of cancer, sometimes in horrific ways. Certainly over the more than four decades of my existence, I have had multiple family members who have died of cancer. In fact, right now my wife and I are dealing with the heartbreak of a close family member recently diagnosed with widely metastatic breast cancer, and I’ve been trying to work every contact I know to get her to the best oncologist in order to provide her with the best possible palliation. Do the makers of this movie think that I or any other cancer researcher (or even big pharma executive) would withhold knowledge of such a “cure” or keep it from others if I knew of it? Indeed, because cancer kills so many people, many of these very same doctors and researchers will end up battling the disease at some point in their lives, and many of them will end up dying of it themselves. I might even end up dying of cancer someday. You might end up dying of cancer someday. Does it make any sort of sense logically that every single one of these doctors, executives, and bureaucrats would dismiss or conspire to suppress (or even blindly ignore the evidence for its existence because of dogma and “business as usual” of) such an amazingly effective cure, if it really existed? No, it does not. Someone would talk, probably a lot of people. I know I would. Again, given how cancer has recently touched our family, I assure you, if such a cure existed, I would make damned sure that family member got it, no matter what it was, and if it truly worked as advertised I would make sure everyone else knew about it too. You can be sure that quite a few of those supposedly nefarious cancer researchers, government bureaucrats, and big pharma executives would too.
So now, not surprisingly, the filmmaker (through Garrett) has a mission:
Garrett’s mission now is to tell the world.
Of course it is. It always is. Because he’s been converted and is now an evangelist.
The Gerson “Therapy”
Let’s review a bit about just what the Gerson therapy is. It’s a so-called “nutritional” therapy for cancer that involves consuming large quantities of fruit and vegetable juices, raw liver, coupled with a “detoxification” regime that involves frequent coffee enemas. It is described thusly on the movie’s website:
The Gerson Therapy is a powerful, natural treatment that boosts your body’s own immune system to heal cancer, arthritis, heart disease, allergies and many other degenerative diseases. One aspect of the Gerson Therapy that sets it apart from most other treatment methods is its all-encompassing nature. An abundance of nutrients from thirteen fresh, organic juices is consumed every day, providing your body with a super dose of enzymes, minerals and nutrients. These substances then break down diseased tissue in the body, while enemas aid in eliminating the lifelong buildup of toxins from the liver.With its whole-body approach to healing, the Gerson Therapy naturally reactivates your bodys magnificent ability to heal itself with no damaging side-effects. Over 200 articles in respected medical literature and thousands of people cured of their incurable diseases document the Gerson Therapy’s effectiveness. The Gerson Therapy is one of the few treatments to have a 60 year history of success.Although its philosophy of cleansing and reactivating the body is simple, the Gerson Therapy is a complex method of treatment requiring significant attention to detail. While many patients have made full recoveries practicing the Gerson Therapy on their own, for best results it is recommended to begin treatment at a Gerson Institute licensed treatment center. For more information, visit www.gerson.org.
All the usual buzz words are there, the “naturalness” of it (although I’ve never been able to figure out how advocates of these sorts of “natural detoxification” regimens can think that pumping coffee up one’s posterior is in any way “natural”); the vague and scientifically meaningless “boosting the immune system” claim; and, above all, the “detoxification” claim. Apparently believers in the Gerson therapy (not to mention many other forms of “alternative medicine,” believe that our bodies (and colons) are packed with hideous toxins that are making us ill. Once again, how shoving coffee up one’s posterior removes “toxins” I fail to understand, but then I’m thinking about this scientifically rather than religiously. Adherents who believe in detoxification appear to me to do so more out of a belief analogous to religion that they are “unclean” and need “purification,” much the same way that some fundamentalist Muslims engage in ritual self-flagellation or the manner in which in Christian religions Baptism is believed to cleanse the soul. The Gerson protocol provides that “purification,” just as a wide variety of “colon cleansers” and “liver flushes” beloved of “alternative medicine” mavens. Unfortunately, they do not work against cancer and can lead to delays in treatment and, even worse, can rob patients with fatal cancer of effective palliation when they usurp scientific medicine.
Actually, the Gerson protocol was a precursor to the now more commonly discussed and more (in)famous Gonzalez protocol, which my co-blogger Dr. Kimball Atwood IV deconstructed in such exquisite detail over the course of several posts right here on this very blog a while back (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Grafted onto the therapy by his daughter Charlotte since Max Gerson’s death have been other forms of woo, such as liver extract injections, ozone enemas, “live cell therapy,” thyroid tablets, castor oil enemas, clay packs, laetrile, and “vaccines” made from influenza virus and killed Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. Gerson’s “evidence” in the form of his case series was examined by the National Cancer Institute back in the 1950s, and this is what was found:
In 1947, the NCI reviewed ten cases selected by Dr. Gerson and found his report unconvincing. That same year, a committee appointed by the New York County Medical Society reviewed records of 86 patients, examined ten patients, and found no evidence that the Gerson method had value in treating cancer. An NCI analysis of Dr. Gerson’s book A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases concluded in 1959 that most of the cases failed to meet the criteria (such as histologic verification of cancer) for proper evaluation of a cancer case [16]. A recent review of the Gerson treatment rationale concluded: (a) the “poisons” Gerson claimed to be present in processed foods have never been identified, (b) frequent coffee enemas have never been shown to mobilize and remove poisons from the liver and intestines of cancer patients, (c) there is no evidence that any such poisons are related to the onset of cancer, (d) there is no evidence that a “healing” inflammatory reaction exists that can seek out and kill cancer cells [17].
And:
Charlotte Gerson claims that treatment at the clinic has produced high cure rates for many cancers. In 1986, however, investigators learned that patients were not monitored after they left the facility [19]. Although clinic personnel later said they would follow their patients systematically, there is no published evidence that they have done so. A naturopath who visited the Gerson Clinic in 1983 was able to track 21 patients over a 5-year period (or until death) through annual letters or phone calls. At the 5-year mark, only one was still alive (but not cancer-free); the rest had succumbed to their cancer [20].
The cancer doctor in me knows that this is pretty much what would be expected if one were to follow 21 patients with advanced cancer who were being given no treatment. The exact timeframe for their deaths would vary depending upon the mix of cancers, but one could be pretty confident that very few, if any, of them would be alive after five years–or even two or three years. Moreover, because the Gerson regimen, like the Gonzalez regimen, is quite onerous and difficult to follow, only patients in relatively good shape to begin with can follow it, thus selecting for patients more likely to live longer with their metastatic cancer anyway.
But Back to the Quackery Propaganda…
If the clips posted to YouTube are any indication, this movie wastes no time in plunging down the rabbit hole of paranoid conspiracy-mongering.
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