Dying To Have Known

I moved here several years ago.

It is a land where you can touch the pulse of nature's rhythms in their raw.

It is a place where one is able to step back in collect your thoughts.

To contemplate. Contemplate life and what matters.

The privilege to feel the exhilaration of nature's heart beat demands I have to take risks.

Just like a wild animal does each day to survive.

I found that chronicle in the laws of nature as a film maker

has its rewards here.

I guess you could call me a naturalist

and the witness intimately what occurs each day in the wilderness

amongst various live organisms eventually opens the door to a perspective of live

that few no longer can find, even if they want to.

This one one log cabin I live in here in no mans land Alaska, is only where I spend most of my time.

It isn't my home. Home is outside, the environment.

This region, this state,

the air, water, food and even the climate here is dependent upon what goes on in far away places like

Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, Bagdad

even Wall Street, New York City, has an effect.

On clear winter nights, when I step out of my cabin porch

you can see more than just what your eyes witness

to me the northern lights invite wonder and curiosity

and stimulate one to think and question.

Tonight I reflected in a documentary I'd just completed on the threats to Alaska's environment.

Signs of global warming are everywhere.

Polar bears are starving having to be shot because of it.

The native people are protesting the destruction of the Arctic.

They talk about the effect on northern wildlife as a result of climate change

and oil development brings everybody in on a freaks.

That Alaskan documentary also had made the connection

between some pharmaceutical firms being owned by oil companies.

And then the door opens profoundly wide to polices about human health.

And all would be just as sacrosanct

as was your cemetery or Yellowstone.

We are better than this.

We have to invent our way out of these trenches.

There was one statement in my documentary I will never forget:

It is a scientifically verifiable fact

that the Gerson Therapy cures cancer

as well as almost every other chronic degenerative disease.

Privately I could not deeply accept that statement from Charlotte Gerson

without doing some more research.

After a few phone calls my mind was made up.

I had another documentary to do,

focusing this time on the cure for cancer and chronic disease.

Within a short time my bags were packed

and I was on my way, just ahead the road would end.

And I would have to take a bush plane to get to a major Alaskan airport.

I had no idea what this investigation would uncover as the trip would go along,

but I would devote exactly 52 days to make this movie.

DYING TO HAVE KNOWN

This film began almost before I was ready.

As a passenger seated next to me gave me his perspective about the pharmaceutical industry.

What I can tell you more?

I have a neighbor and her father is a very known immunologist.

He studies vaccines, he develops vaccines.

But his daughter never vaccinates her children.

So... - her children? - Yea!

- She won't vaccinate her children? - No, no. - Why?

- Probably she has enough information about vaccines to know better.

The pharmaceutical industry has links with oil companies,

but there is much more to at the net as I was about to find out on this trip.

An airport is a good place for a visual reality check of public health.

In the USA 2/3 of americans are overweight and 20 million of us have diabetes.

Half of all americans take prescription drugs

and hundred million of us have high cholesterol.

The cancer rate has gone from 1 in 50, in 1900

to almost one in two at the present time in industrialized countries.

Before boarding my connecting flight

there was time to reflect on the history behind Charlotte Gerson's efforts

to inform people about her father incredible success in curing cancer and chronic disease.

In Toronto, Ontario, I've documented one of her lectures.

Charlotte was one of three girls born to Dr. Gerson and his wife Gretchen.

Growing up, Charlotte took a particularly strong interest in her father's ability to heal the hopeless.

Earlier, during Dr. Gerson's time as a resident physician in Germany

he suffered from severe migraine headaches.

He cured his migraines by changing to a special diet.

This diet was then discovered by Gerson to cure skin tuberculosis.

Dr. Robert Koch had been studying tuberculosis

and in 1905 received the Nobel Price for his research at the organism.

So did Dr. Niels Finsen for a special treatment of the disease.

But Dr. Gerson received nothing for actually curing tuberculosis.

Basically, Dr. Gerson's cure was and is a special combination

of fresh raw and cooked organic foods and their juices.

Later, Gerson discovered in conjunction with this,

that organic coffee taken as a 15 minute retention enema

aided in the restoration of the liver and the blood purification.

In 1924, a clinical trial of 450 tuberculosis patients was launched with Gerson's treatment.

446 out of the 450 walked away cured.

Then, Nobel recipient Dr. Albert Schweitzer asked to cure him from diabetes

along with his wife's lung tuberculosis and their daughter's weird skin disease.

And Gerson did.

By the time Gerson escaped Nazi persecution in Germany

and fled to the U.S. with his family,

he was already curing people with cancer.

This profound success caught the attention of senator Claude Pepper

who held Senate subcommittee hearings with Gerson and some of his patients in July of 1946.

The astounding testimony was quickly reported by Raymond Gram Swing via ABC Radio.

The publics reaction was swift and favorable.

But it also provoked threatening reactions from the medical and drug community,

which resulted in Raymond Gram Swing's firing from ABC two weeks later

in astounding display of censorship by commercial interests.

I was investigated twice time.

What do you mean by being investigated?

- They investigated you. - Yes, twice time.

Every time they come, I show them. Here is the patient you sent home to die: cured.

Other patient. You sent home to die: cured.

Next patient. You sent home to die: cured.

What are you going to do?

To try to get this across, so that it will be accepted by the American Medical Association.

First I write the cancer book

and in this cancer book I will bring in as many cases as possible

sent home to die.

So, that every physician here in the country can read it.

And I will have it translated,

the editor, the publishing company will translate it in many languages.

I had now flown to San Francisco

and thought that who better discuss Dr. Gerson's historical legacy with

than someone from Dr. Gerson's very own family.

I met Howard Strauss, the grandson of Dr. Gerson and son of Charlotte Gerson.

Howard is a scientist, author and historian who's careful record keeping of Gerson's past

serves as an invaluable aid to researchers, scientists and medical professionals with an open mind.

The day I visited with Howard, he reviewed his grandfather's book with me

which outlined the treatment protocol.

Howard feels his grandfather's treatment is more desperately needed now

by the sick and dying than ever before.

And yet, the opposition to this treatment remains relatively steadfast.

Howard's personal life has been permanently tied to Dr. Gerson's discoveries.

Nearly 17 years ago, when my wife and I were engaged to be married,

she came down with her third occurrence of skin cancer,

it was a small lesion about a size of a dime on her ankle

but it was the third time, so it was pretty serious, it was coming back.

Rather than do anything other, we went on the Gerson Therapy,

we went immediately down to the hospital in Mexico,

we went on the Gerson Therapy, we stayed faithfully on it,

and in the middle of the therapy we got married.

And that was 16 and a half years ago

and she's been fine ever since.

It's seems at any local that was truly sick that was in, that Howard has a life changing experience.

Back on 1978, I was, I thought, in very good health

living a very normal life and my husband discovered a lump in my breast.

So, we went to go to an oncologist and he sent us to a surgeon,

the surgeon did the biopsy, he said you have cancer,

we will have surgery in two days.

I got a panflet in the mail - I still think it's a miracle -

which said that Charlotte Gerson was going to give

this lecture for the National Health Federation, on cancer.

So I said: I might, so I go and listen, because that's another way

and I listen to her, everything she said made sense.

I started to wonder how the critics would react to these testimonies.

After the therapy we went back to ah... you talked to a specialist on blood and she

said my body was so clean and clear that she couldn't tell that I ever had cancer

and she said I were the first patient that ever happened to.

Now I have two doctors friends we are very closed with and

every time they talk we were doing quackery, we were doing this and they said every time they...

every time he sees me, he says... by calls on the phone, he says:

How are you feeling now, Don?

As if any day I'm gonna fall down dead.

I started to wonder if this is just coincidence.

The next lady has had breast cancer.

... needed biopsy, found out it was cancer, called me back and told me.

The doctor explained to me my choices: one was lumpectomy, the other was mastectomy.

And because of the lumpectomy are just taking a large portion of my breast

I thought that maybe I should just have the mastectomy and so

when I told my husband, he told me that he had a client

that his mother knew about nutrition.

Of course, she was talking about Howard and his mother Charlotte.

The first phone call I got, when I started taking phone calls,

was my gone oncologist and he...

and I was telling him what I was doing, he told me I was making a big mistake

and he even said he would recommend me to a doctor up in San Francisco or Stanford or some place.

And he wanted me to go and talk to him.

And I said: No.

You know, I wouldn't do this. This is what I wanted to do.

It just shocked me and scared me for like one second.

But then I knew, what I was doing was the right thing.

The other doctor I went to was just my regular intern.

One of them told me I was like committing suicide

and that was eleven years ago.

Prostate cancer had struck this lady's husband.

Howard's CPA (certified public accountant)

Almost 6 years ago, Howard.

When I had that needle biopsy and sent the biopsy up to Stanford.

And they sent it back and said: Well, it looks like cancer to us.

So, I decided, I know what I'm gonna do.

Gerson Therapy for me.

Howard explained to me that even the daughter in this family,

who had pleurisy, was healed with Gerson's treatment.

All three in one family with different ailments. All cured.

All with medical records to prove it.

Coincidence?

The colors of fruits and vegetables are derive from a variety of chemicals called anti-oxidants.

Only plants produce anti-oxidants.

Anti-oxidants subdue what is wrong in our bodies.

A law of nature Dr. Gerson understood and used.

Just outside, San Francisco, I was scheduled to interview Dr. Dean Edell,

a radio and television personality, in reports on health and science issues.

I don't think the Gerson Therapy has ever cured a terminally ill patient.

People get very confused by this.

This is a world of science, a world of data, I would like to think of it as a courtroom,

a courtroom of science and medicine.