by Richard Walters
http://educate-yourself.org/cancer/kellysmetabolictherapy.shtml

(Excerpted chapter from OPTIONS - The Alternative Cancer Therapy Book (1993) by Richard Walters)


Dr. William Donald Kelley
Over a twenty-five year period, Dr. William Donald Kelley, a dentist by training, developed a complex approach to treating many chronic and degenerative diseases, including cancer. The three main elements of his metabolic program are nutrition, detoxification, and supplements of pancreatic enzymes. Although the controversial Kansas-born practitioner was condemned as a charlatan by the orthodox medical establishment, thousands; of severely ill patients sought his advice and followed his program, many with reported good results. Today, a number of practitioners claim to be using the Kelley regimen, though whether they actually are is open to question.

Interest in Kelley's therapy has increased dramatically in recent years, largely due to the work of Nicholas Gonzalez, a New York City physician who treats cancer patients in advanced or terminal stages using a modified version of the Kelley program. A graduate of Cornell University Medical School, Dr. Gonzalez undertook a five - year case study of Kelley's own cancer patients who had done well on the program. Gonzalez's 500-page study was prepared under the sponsorship of Robert Good, M.D., Ph.D., then president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. It is "widely regarded as the finest case review ever conducted concerning an alternative cancer therapy," according to Misinformation From OTA on Unconventional Cancer Treatments, by Robert E. Houston.

"Gonzalez has given us convincing evidence that diet and nutrition produce long-term remission in cancer patients almost all of whom were beyond conventional help," wrote the late Harold Ladas, Ph.D., a biologist and former professor at Hunter College. "Because the cases [in Gonzalez's study] represent a wide variety of cancers, the implication is that the paradigm has wide applicability to cancer treatment. ...What should happen is that ACS [Americn Scancer Society] or NCI [National Cancer Institute] should immediately follow up with a half million dollar study to evaluate the rest of Kelley's cancer patients. But don't hold your breath," added Ladas, who concluded, "The evidence is in, and it is stunning. Kelley is vindicated."

Cancer & Protein Digestion
William Kelley held that a root cause of cancer is the body's inability to metabolize (digest and utilize) protein. "The person gets cancer because he's not properly metabolizing the protein in his diet," said Dr. Kelley. "Then, to make matters worse, the tumor has such a high metabolism that it uses up much of the food which is eaten." If a person's disordered protein metabolism is not corrected, Kelley continued, "it will give rise to more tumors in the future, even if the first one is successfully removed. This, by the way, is the unfortunate reason why so many seemingly successful cancer operations end up in recurrences a year or two later. The tumor was removed, but the cause-improper protein metabolism-remained."

Dr. Kelley linked faulty metabolism to a deficiency of pancreatic enzymes, which he regarded as a fundamental cause of cancer. He believed that certain pancreatic enzymes, especially those that are proteolytic (protein-digesting) enzymes, are the body's first line of defense against malignancy. This theory stands in marked contrast to conventional medicine, which holds that the immune system, with its natural killer cells, protects people against cancer.

As every biology student learns, the pancreas releases enzymes directly into the small intestine to aid digestion. But Kelley maintained that the pancreas also secretes enzymes into the bloodstream, where they circulate, reaching all body tissues and killing cancer cells by digesting them. Studies in the clinical literature lend support to this theory, first proposed by Dr. John Beard, a Scottish embryologist working at the turn of the century.

Mineral Imbalance & Immunity
Imbalance of mineral metabolism is another condition that allows malignancy to occur, according to Dr. Kelley. He identified mineral imbalance as a root cause of the breakdown of the immune system. Additionally, he said, cancer cells produce 1. immune-blocking factors and 2. seem to generate an electromagnetic force field that inhibits the proper response of the immune system.

The Kelley anti-cancer program combines
1. therapeutic nutrition,
2.supplements intended to destroy cancer cells, and
3. vigorous detoxification of the body.

Ten Metabolic Types
Kelley divided people into what he called ten metabolic types, with slow-oxidizing vegetarians at one extreme and fast-oxidizing carnivores at the other. Each person is different, he asserted, not only in nutritional needs but also in food utilization.

For each of the ten different metabolic types, a different nutritional program was recommended. An individualized diet was tailored to match the metabolic character of each patient, taking into account his or her physiology , neurological and physical make-up, basic metabolic rate, and personality. Some common threads ran through the diets, however. The consumption of raw, organic fruits and vegetables was emphasized, while protein intake was reduced considerably in order to to preserve the enzymes needed to digest the fruits and vegetables.

Supplements
In addition to following a diet,. Kelley's patients also took up to 150 supplement pills per day, including pancreatic enzymes, vitamins and minerals, and concentrates of raw beef or organs and glands , believed by Kelley to contain tissue-specific growth factors, hormones, natural stimulants, and "protective" molecules. A direct anti-tumor effect has been observed repeatedly in patients on various metabolic therapies who receive enzymes either orally or by injection. As the enzyme "digests" the tumor, large amounts of cellular debris are released into the bloodstream and surrounding tissues, according to Kelley.

Detoxification
These breakdown products from cancer cells are foreign to the normal body and can be very toxic, he maintained. Even though the liver and kidney can filter these substances out of the bloodstream, the wastes from tumor destruction form so quickly during enzyme therapy that the body's normal detoxification processes may become overloaded. To assist their bodies in detoxification, Kelley's patients periodically discontinued their enzymes and other supplements for several days. This rest period, Kelley believed, allows the liver and kidneys to catch up with the body's load of tumor by-products.

Coffee Enemas
As at second aid in detoxification, Kelley advised all his patients to take at least one coffee enema daily. His reasoning was that coffee enemas clean out the liver and gallbladder and help the body get rid of the toxins produced during tumor breakdown. During a coffee enema, claimed Kelley, the caffeine that is rapidly absorbed in the large intestine flows quickly into the liver. He held that in high enough concentrations, caffeine causes the liver and gallbladder to contract vigorously, releasing large amounts of stored wastes into the intestinal tract and greatly aiding elimination. Kelley also believed that enemas are important in stimulating the immune system, since most waste products eliminated by detoxification are enzyme inhibitors. Frequent enemas prevent the suppression of protein-digesting enzymes. These enzymes can break down the cancer cells' fibrin (protein) coats, making the cancer cells more vulnerable to the immune system.

Nonorthodox doctors other than Kelley, among them Dr. Max Gerson, have recommended coffee enemas.

Organ Flushes
The original Kelley program also included purges to cleanse the liver, gallbladder, intestines, kidneys, and lungs. Like many other metabolic therapists, Kelley believed that the functioning of these organs is severely impaired in the cancer patient. Colonic irrigations, liver and gallbladder flushes, and controlled sweating accomplished the cleansing tasks. Kelley also often recommended some form of manipulative therapy, such as chiropractic adjustment or osteopathic manipulation, to stimulate enervated nerves.

The Spiritual Component
A frequently overlooked aspect of the Kelley system is its spiritual component. Kelley called his approach metabolic ecology, taking into account the cancer patient's total environment-physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. He urged the patient to "accept the fact that you are afflicted with a symptom (malignant cancer) and that recovery is possible. Establish a faith in a power greater than yourself and know that with His help you can regain health and harmony. Patients were encouraged to conduct a searching self-analysis and to eliminate negative behavioral patterns and emotions.

The Kelly Regimen
The rigorous Kelley regimen is not easy. It requires self-discipline and a strong will to alter established dietary and other habits. Some patients experience fear and anxiety during "healing crises" involving lymph-system swelling, pain, and fever, all normal responses as the body detoxifies and heals. Critics of the system are deeply troubled by the enormous number of pills the patient is required to consume. Orthodox medicine holds that mega-doses of vitamins and minerals are unnecessary and can be harmful. Excessive amounts of the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) are stored in the body and can be toxic, according to mainstream physicians.

But Kelley proponents counter that the nutritional program supplies various aids to the digestive system enabling the large doses of supplements to be absorbed and fully utilized. These digestive aids include hydrochloric acid, said to be abnormally low in many people, lessening their ability to digest proteins. Kelley also prescribed a combination of the herb comfrey and the digestive enzyme pepsin. These supplements dissolve the mucous coatings that cover the villi ( the fingerlike projections) of the small intestine and block the absorption of nutrients.

Kelley's theory that people are genetically carnivorous, vegetarian. or somewhere in-between is rejected by many vegetarians and by others.

Coffee Enemas
Some prospective patients were put off by the idea of frequent enemas, although Kelley claimed that most of his patients quickly adapted to this procedure. In fact, many patients on metabolic-therapy programs have reported a dramatic increase in energy and improved outlook after a coffee enema, presumably because of the elimination of toxins from the bloodstream, cells, and liver. The procedure appears to, calm and soothe the nervous system, dispelling nausea, irritability, lethargy. lack of appetite, and sometimes even severe pain.

Pat Judson, a woman from Dearborn, Michigan, became Dr. Kelley's patient in 1972, having been operated on for cancer of the colon two years earlier. She is now in excellent health and completely cancer-free after her original diagnosis of "incurable" cancer. As she told a Michigan State Legislature committee investigating alternative cancer treatments in 1977, "I speak as . . . a cancer patient who seven years ago was sent home to die by a doctor who told me there was nothing more traditional medicine could do for me . . . One of the doctors that performed my surgery told me that I had the fastest growing type known to man and cobalt or chemotherapy would not help me. Expressing surprise that I even survived the surgery, he told , me I had six months to a year to live. However. I was given diethyl-stilbestrol [DES] for hormone balance since they had also removed my ovaries. I have wondered many times why a medical doctor would prescribe a cancer-producing drug to a cancer patient."

In January 1972, almost two years after the original surgery, Pat had a recurrence of the blockage of her colon and the cancer had metastasized to the lymph glands. Reluctant to go through the ordeal of surgery a second time, she turned to a different doctor who, advised her that she might survive "possibly three months" with surgery. At that point, she heard of the nutritional therapy of Dr. Kelley and went to visit him in Texas.

After taking a blood sample and conducting diagnostic tests that were subjected to computer analysis. Kelley determined that Pat had a cancer index of 600. This scale was devised by Kelley to gauge the body's ability to defend itself; it runs from an optimal 1 (normal) to 1.000 (terminal, beyond help). Following these tests, Kelley prescribed a combination of diet, rest, exercise, and detoxification.

When Pat Judson returned to Kelley's office five months later for a checkup, her index rating had dropped to 300 and her cancer was under control. Eleven months after the initial visit, a shriveled mass of excreted material was found to be necrotic, or dead, tissue from the colon tumor. Pat's next cancer-index reading with Kelley was 50, which is within the normal range. Standard diagnostic tests subsequently confirmed her to be in remission.

During Pat's first operation in 1970, her surgeon had noticed a lump in her throat that she had had since girlhood He said it might have been a "leader" for the cancer. As Pat continued on a Kelley maintenance protocol after being diagnosed in remission, she also took Essiac, the Canadian herbal tea that has helped many cancer patients. By 1978, the lump in Pat's throat was completely gone, and it has never returned. (Note: Some practitioners strongly advise against combining the Kelley program with Essiac or any other herbal remedy. They contend that the herbs work against the enzyme supplements.)

Pat Judson served as president of the Metro-Detroit chapter of the Foundation for Advancement in Cancer Therapy (FACT), in which capacity she told a Michigan State Legislature committee, "If I had accepted the advice of my doctor, if I had not been directed to Dr. Kelley, I would be another cancer statistic. " In her speech, she also rebuked the medical establishment for its constant harassment of Dr. Kelley.

Kelly Comes Under Attack
Kelley's problems with the medical orthodoxy intensified in 1969, when he self-published his book One Answer to Cancer, which became a best-seller in the "nutritional underground." The dietary program presented in the book was a distillation of his personal battle against illness. In 1964, according to Kelley, he was told by a doctor that he had metastasized pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease, and that he had only weeks to live. There is no biopsy verification for his cancer. His internist recommended surgery, but the surgeon felt Kelley wouldn't survive the operation.

With nothing to lose, Kelley, who holds a Doctorate of Dental Surgery (D.D.S.) from Baylor University in Dallas and has an extensive background in nutrition, began his own impromptu course of nutritional therapy and lifestyle changes. As he gradually recovered, he felt he had stumbled across a scientific discovery and undertook further research to refine his program.

As One Answer to Cancer soared in popularity, Texas medical and legal officials launched an investigation of its author in 1969. Undercover officials posed as patients. A restraining order prohibited Kelley from treating non-dental disease, and a local district court made it illegal for him to distribute One Answer to Cancer or any other publication discussing his approach to degenerative illness. Dr. Kelley appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the restraining order was a flagrant violation of his First Amendment rights. But the Supreme Court upheld the ruling. "To my knowledge, Dr. Kelley remains the only scientist in this country's history ever forbidden by court decree from publishing," notes Dr. Gonzalez.

In 1971, the American Cancer Society put Kelley's therapy on its "Unproven Methods" blacklist, where it remains. To this day, no ACS scientist has ever attempted a direct, objective evaluation of Kelley's methods and results.

After the Texas dental board suspended his license for five years in 1976, Kelley moved to Winthrop, Washington, where he continued his nutritional practice. He later moved to Pennsylvania.

Kelley's most highly publicized encounter with the medical establishment began in 1980, when he agreed to treat actor Steve McQueen, suffering from advanced mesothelioma, a rare, nearly always fatal form of lung cancer. McQueen's malignancy was too extensive for surgery, and his terminal condition was completely hopeless. Nevertheless, on Kelley's advice, McQueen entered a small Mexican hospital where doctors claimed to use the Kelley program. McQueen never followed the full Kelley protocol; he smoked and smuggled junk food into his room. Even so, after eight weeks on a partial Kelley regimen, his tumor had stopped growing, he no longer felt a need for painkillers, and he had put on weight. His doctors expressed some cause for optimism. However, McQueen eventually discontinued the program. He died in November 1980, just hours after undergoing surgery to remove an apparently dead tumor mass in his abdomen.

The ensuing publicity triggered a media assault on Kelley organized by the American medical community. Spokesmen for the ACS, NCI, and leading medical schools condemned Kelley and his methods vociferously, without ever bothering to examine the details of McQueen's treatment.

Kelley claimed a high success rate with patients on his therapy. For those with a predicted life expectancy of about three months, he said that a well-designed nutritional program would yield "slightly better than a 50-50 chance of survival." For those with a very advanced disease, given less than three months to live, he claimed a success rate between 25 and 35 percent. These figures have not been verified and should be treated with caution. Yet according to Ruth Sackman, executive director of FACT, an educational organization that leans toward a nutritional-metabolic approach, "Enough of Kelley's patients lived ten years or more to suggest a pattern of survival and to indicate that he was using a basically sound system."

Kelly Questionaire
In Kelley's elaborate system of diagnosis and treatment, patients answered a detailed questionnaire, a nutritional survey consisting of up to 3,200 questions. The results were assessed by computer, and each patient was then fitted into Kelley's classification system of metabolic typing, which he used in treating a wide variety of diseases.

To understand Kelley's metabolic typing system, let us quickly review the ABCs of metabolism. The human body has two nervous systems. The central nervous system (CNS) regulates conscious movement, and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) governs unconscious actions such as digestion, the secretion of enzymes and hormones, breathing, blood circulation, and heartbeat. The ANS plays a key role in the way cells transform food into energy

There are two branches of the ANS - the sympathetic system, which tends to speed up body metabolism, and the parasympathetic system, which slows down metabolism. Kelley's thesis is that people can be divided into three genetically based categories that evolved in distinctive environments under evolutionary pressure. Each metabolic type reflects an inborn balance in the activities of these two subsystems.

According to Kelley, people who are slow-oxidizing "sympathetic dominant" types thrive on high-carbohydrate, low-protein foods and are meant to eat a largely vegetarian diet. Fast-oxidizing "parasympathetic dominants" grow hungry and weak between meals, so Kelley suggested that they follow a diet providing at least half of their total calories from fatty meat. "Balanced types," having both branches of the autonomic nervous system equally developed, were said to thrive on a wide variety of foods.

If a person follows the "wrong" diet, in Kelley's theory, disease' is more likely to develop. For each of the three basic types (broken down into ten metabolic sub-types), he recommended a diet that would push the autonomic nervous system toward metabolic equilibrium. Furthermore, he linked specific syndromes and illnesses with each of the three types. "Hard tumors" - malignancies of the internal organs such as lung or colon cancer-were held to be more likely to afflict severely imbalanced "sympathetic dominants." "Soft tumors" - cancers of the white blood cells and lymph system - were linked with "parasympathetic dominants."

Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, the New York City physician mentioned at the beginning of this chapter who uses a modified Kelley program, visited Dr. Kelley in Texas in 1981 and was given access to all of Kelley's records. Gonzalez was amazed to discover case after case of patients with advanced metastatic cancer who were healthy and active five, ten, and fifteen years after diagnosis.

Gonzalez interviewed 455 Kelley patients in depth, then narrowed down the group to 160 after eliminating the patients whom he considered inadequately diagnosed, others who had received intensive orthodox therapy, others who had been apparently "cured of their disease before they consulted Dr. Kelley ," and still others who did not meet the selection criteria. Eventually, Gonzalez selected 50 patients whom he considered representative cases rather than Kelley's best cases.

These 50 patients represented a broad spectrum of cancer types, including long-term survivors of cancer of the breast, colon, ovaries, pancreas, and prostate. According to Gonzalez's findings:

* 22 of the .patients " ..experienced documented regression of cancer while pursuing the Kelley program. None in this group received orthodox therapy during this period of improvement.
* Another 5 patients described regression of superficial, biopsy-proven malignancies, such as breast tumors or cancerous lymph nodes . . . [but] never returned to their orthodox physicians for follow-up studies.
* six patients were found at surgery to have extensive inoperable abdominal or pelvic disease, such as metastatic pancreatic or prostate carcinoma. All these patients were given terminal prognoses. None have ever returned to their orthodox physicians, so strictly speaking I have no proof of tumor regression . . . [although] each of these people has survived for years with cancer that usually kills within t months.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of the disease; the five-year survival rate in orthodox medicine is essentially 0 percent. Dr. Gonza1ez reviewed the records of all 22 patients whom Kelley had diagnosed with pancreatic cancer between 1974 and 1982. Five of these 22 patients followed the Kelley program completely. Their median survival (at the time of Gonzalez's study in 1987) was nine years, and 4 of the 5 are alive today; one died of Alzheimer's disease. This is a 100 percent remission rate for those who adhered to the full Kelley regimen. (The 10 patients with pancreatic cancer who never followed the treatment had a median survival time of 67 days. Seven who partially followed the program had a median survival time of 233 days.)

These reported results are virtually unheard of in conventional treatment. Orthodox medicine gives a median survival time of two to six months for panreatic cancer.

One of Kelley's patients whom Gonzalez investigated was Robert Dunn, a sixty-two-year-old man from Missouri diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer in June 1977. The formal diagnosis, as it appears in the medical records, reads, "Carcinoma of the pancreas - unresectable, incurable." Although his traditional physician recommended both chemotherapy and radiation, Bunn was told he would probably not live a year even with aggressive treatment. Refusing both options, he took a brief course of laetrile in Mexico, then consulted Dr. Kelley and, in August 1977, began the full Kelley protocol.

Within a year, Dunn said, he felt better than at any other time in his life. A follow-up CAT scan indicated that the once-large pancreatic tumor had completely regressed. Exploratory surgery in 1983 to remove a small bowel obstruction further confirmed that the tumor was gone. When last contacted by Dr. Gonzalez more then ten years after his original diagnosis, Dunn was following a maintenance protocol and was in excellent health.

Dr. Gonzalez treats advanced cancer patients with a Kelley-derived program. He keeps careful records of his own patients and also monitors many of Kelley's patients who have survived ten years or more. He claims that approximately 80 percent of his patients are doing well on his therapy. Most of his patients have already been heavily treated with surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy and, having failed these modalities, come to him with a prognosis of two to three months to live.

In May 1985, doctors removed roughly ten pounds of tumor from Bonnie Randolph, a clinical psychologist from Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. They also performed a total hysterectomy. Bonnie's ovarian cancer had grown silently for eight years, according to the doctors, - and had spread to her abdominal organs. The survival rates in such cases are less than 20 percent. Over the next year, Bonnie underwent eight courses of chemotherapy and two more major operations, all of which failed to eradicate the cancer. By the fourth chemotherapy treatment, her bone marrow was suppressed to such an extent that her white blood count had plunged from a normal of 4,000 to less than 100. After the second major surgery, in March 1986, her doctor injected a massive dose of radioactive phosphorus into her abdomen, "which he said would be my quota of radiation for the rest of my life," according to Bonnie. Six ovarian cancer specialists then told her that despite the radiation treatment, she had a year to live at the most.

Bonnie, who tells her remarkable, moving story in the November 1991 issue of East West, began investigating alternative therapies through a cancer referral service. "I had known there were cancer survivors who had beaten the odds by using nontraditional forms of treatment. What I did not know was that there were so many of them-and that they were doing so well." She became a patient of William Kelley, and her CA 125-a standard medical test for ovarian cancer-dropped from 29 to 11. (A reading above 35 indicates tumor growth.) Her pelvic exams were negative. But Dr. Kelley abruptly moved away into semi-retirement. A few months later, the ovarian cancer returned. Her conventional doctor insisted that Bonnie undergo radiation once more, even though it would not save her life. When Bonnie refused to submit her body to more damage from radiation therapy, her doctor became incensed. "'You'll be dead in two months,' he yelled at me over the phone."

For two months, Bonnie followed a strict nutritional program, which she believes kept her alive, while searching for a responsible alternative practitioner. In January 1988,' she began the Kelley - derived program with Dr. Gonzalez in New York. "He warned me that it could be years before I became completely well again because of all the damage the chemo and radiation had done to my immune system," she says. Under Dr. Gonzalez's supervision, Bonnie followed, an organic vegetarian diet (one of the ten diets prescribed) and took massive doses of pancreatic enzymes, nutritional supplements, and coffee enemas.

Today, more than six years after her initial diagnosis, Bonnie is, alive, free of pain, and writing a book about her experience. Her last three Pap smears were normal. Although she still has evidence of cancer and works hard to maintain good health, she keeps the cancer l. under control with a maintenance protocol of pancreatic enzymes, supplements, and sound nutrition and hopes to achieve complete remission. "The Gonzalez regimen requires discipline," Bonnie reflects, "but this is a small price to pay for having the chance to live out my life. And implementing the program is in my hands, so I feel that I am in command of my health care."

In a review of the Gonzalez study published in a leading insurance industry journal, Robert Maver, vice president and research director of Mutual Benefit Life, stated, "The Research Division has been evaluating Dr. Gonzalez' results over the last four months, including numerous site visits. ...The results are indeed extraordinary." He added, "This is a prime example of an innovative therapy that merits evaluation, but is being ignored. As costly as cancer is to our industry, and in light of such promising and cost-effective preliminary results, our industry should consider funding such a trial."

Richard Walters, 1993

(Dr. Kelley is today (2003) once again active in teaching people how to take responsibility for their own dis-eases.)

Web posted at: http://www.drkelley.info/index.php?section=A+View+From+The+Outside