Max Gerson (October 18, 1881 – March 8, 1959) was a German-born American physician who developed the Gerson Therapy, a dietary-based alternative cancer treatment that he claimed could cure cancer and most chronic, degenerative diseases.
Gerson described his approach in the book A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases (1958). The National Cancer Institute evaluated Gerson's claims and concluded that his data showed no benefit from his treatment. The therapy is both ineffective and dangerous.
Early life and career
Gerson was born to a Jewish family in Wongrowitz, German Empire (Wągrowiec, now in Poland), on October 18, 1881. In 1909, he graduated from the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. He began practicing medicine at age 28 in Breslau (Wrocław, now in Poland), later specializing in internal medicine and nerve diseases in Bielefeld. By 1927, he was specializing in the treatment of tuberculosis, developing the Gerson-Sauerbruch-Hermannsdorfer diet, claiming it was a major advance in the treatment of tuberculosis. Initially, he used his therapy as a supposed treatment for migraine headaches and tuberculosis. In 1928, he began to use it as a claimed treatment for cancer. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 Gerson left Germany, emigrating to Vienna, where he worked in the West End Sanatorium. Gerson spent two years in Vienna, before moving to France in 1935, associating with a clinic near Paris before moving to London in 1936. Shortly thereafter, he moved to the United States, settling in New York City.
In the United States
Gerson emigrated to the United States in 1936, passed his medical board examination, and became a U.S. citizen in 1942. The rest of his family died at the hands of the Nazis. In the U.S., Gerson applied his dietary therapy to several cancer patients, claiming good results, but other workers found his methodology and claims unconvincing. Proponents of the Gerson Therapy believe a conspiracy headed by the medical establishment prevented Gerson from publishing proof that his therapy worked. In 1958, Gerson published a book in which he claimed to have cured 50 terminal cancer patients: A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases. In 1953, Gerson's malpractice insurance was discontinued and, in 1958, his medical license in New York was suspended for two years.
Death
Gerson died March 8, 1959, of pneumonia. A conspiracy theory has subsequently spread that Gerson was murdered following a lifetime of supposed persecution.
Gerson therapy
Initially, Gerson used his therapy as a treatment for migraine headaches and tuberculosis. In 1928, he began to use it as a supposed treatment for cancer.
Gerson Therapy is based on the belief that disease is caused by the accumulation of unspecified toxins, and attempts to treat the disease by having patients consume a predominantly vegetarian diet including hourly glasses of organic juice and various dietary supplements. Animal proteins are excluded from the diet under the unproven premise that tumors develop as a result of pancreatic enzyme deficiency. In addition, patients receive enemas of coffee, castor oil and sometimes hydrogen peroxide or ozone.
After Gerson's death, his daughter Charlotte Gerson (March 25, 1922 - February 10, 2019) continued to promote the therapy, founding the "Gerson Institute" in 1977. The original protocol also included raw calf's liver taken orally, but this practice was discontinued in the 1980s after ten patients were hospitalized (five of them comatose) from January 1979 to March 1981 in San Diego, California, area hospitals due to infection with the rare bacterium Campylobacter fetus. This infection was seen only in those following Gerson-type therapy with raw liver (no other cases of patients having sepsis with this microbe, a pathogen in cattle, had been reported to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the previous two years). Nine of ten hospitalized patients had been treated in Tijuana, Mexico; the tenth followed Gerson therapy at home. One of these patients who had metastatic melanoma died within a week of his septic episode. Many of the patients had low sodium levels, thought to be associated with the very low sodium Gerson diet. The photographer Garry Winogrand died of gallbladder cancer in a Gerson Clinic in Tijuana.