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Charlotte Gerson: Promoter of cancer “therapy” that failed the “Wellness Warrior”

3/26/2015

 
by William M. London

PictureCharlotte Gerson at the 2009 Cancer Control Society Convention
The Gerson “therapy” has received a spike in media attention this month because of its failure to save the life of its famous devotee, Jessica Ainscough (“The Wellness Warrior”), who died of a very rare type of cancer on February 26th at age 30.

For several decades, the main promoter of this bizarre nutritional approach to healing has been Charlotte Gerson, daughter of its developer, Max Gerson (1881-1959), a German physician who emigrated to the United States in 1936. I have met Charlotte on at least three occasions at conferences promoting so-called alternative treatments. In 2009, I took detailed notes about her 30-minute lecture at the 37th Annual Convention of the Cancer Control Society, an organization that misinforms the public in its advocacy of what it calls “Nutrition and Non-Toxic Therapies” for preventing and controlling cancer and other diseases.

It seems timely now to share some of my notes and discuss what they reveal about how some people can be seduced into choosing a treatment protocol as preposterous and demanding as Gerson’s.


But first some background….


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New memoir from the iconoclastic Edzard Ernst

3/9/2015

 
By William M. London

William T. Jarvis, who served as president of the National Council Against Health Fraud from its founding in 1984 through 1999 described Germany as “a mothering ground of quackery.” The herbalism of Paracelsus, magnetic healing, phrenology, homeopathy, aromatherapy, naturopathy, orgonomy, fresh cell therapy, electroacupuncture (“essentially transdermal electrical nerve stimulation masquerading as acupuncture”), anthroposophy, the Gerson cancer treatment protocol, and other ideologically-driven nonsense originated there. But Germany was also the mothering ground of one of the most influential opponents of quackery—and the most prominent opponent of the quackery-promoting efforts of Charles, Prince of Wales—during the last twenty years: Edzard Ernst.
Picture
Edzard Ernst in 2012. Image by Luiyo via Wikimedia Commons.

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    SWIFT is named after Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels. In the book, Gulliver encounters among other things a floating island inhabited by spaced-out scientists and philosophers who hardly deal with reality. Swift was among the first to launch well-designed critiques against the flummery - political, philosophical, and scientific - of his time, a tradition that we hope to maintain at The James Randi Foundation.

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