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.1 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 G. Houston.2
"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 or NCI 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."3 Dr. Gonzalez's findings on Kelley's patients are discussed later in this chapter.
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."4
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-digesdng) 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.5