Each year, ever increasing sums of money are poured into cancer research, while cancer continues to kill millions.
With £632 million donated to cancer research in 2015, scientists remain in the quest for answers.
Hippocrates, the founding father of modern medicine, once professed: “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food”.
So Dr. Robert Young’s story raises questions about the arrests of naturopaths who are treating cancer patients who feel they have been abandoned by the medical profession.
The claim that “cancer cannot survive in an alkaline environment” was suggested by Dr. Robert O. Young, and many others before his time.
Dr. Young is a naturopath who specialised in cellular research, and who has devoted his career to researching the true causes of cancer.
His “pH miracle series” sold more than 4.5 million copies worldwide; advocating the message that nutritional-depleted foods sold to us by food industries are causing our bodies to accumulate excessive acidity, creating an ideal environment for cancer to thrive in.
Dr. Young’s pH Miracle diet incorporates multiple remedies found in nature which he claims act as preventative chemotherapy.
The world spent $107 billion (£87.5 bn) on cancer drugs between June 2015 and June 2016 alone, according to a report from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.
In this same year, 7.6 million people died from cancer worldwide.
[pullquote align=”right”]“Most of these people had been abandoned by the medical profession.”[/pullquote]Dr. Young and his wife Shelley Redford Young opened their “PH Miracle Living Centre” in California in 1995, where they were offering individual and group health retreats, and educational programmes.
Chris Owen a former patient of Dr. Young’s, admitted with Type 1 diabetes, spent one month in the centre.
“Within the first week of following the alkaline protocol, I saw my arteries go from 60 per cent clogging down to 40 per cent. Neither my wife nor I could believe it,” he told us.
“I did the green juices, they had me jumping on trampolines, exercising, walking. I had a hose up my arse, you know, colonics.”
The centre received patients from all around the world, many who said they had lost all hope of recovery. “I spent ten days on the ranch, and saw people in full remission from stage two, three, four Cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and Lupus,” Owen said. “Most of these people had been abandoned by the medical profession.”
In 2014 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raided Dr. Young’s ranch and arrested him for practicing medicine without a medical license.
He was convicted on two counts, but acquitted on the third count in February 2016, and now faces a maximum of three years and eight months in prison, according to the San Diego Tribune: “His attorney believes this is an attack to alternative medicine.”
In 2013, Ida Kolader, was being treated for an extreme case of Lupus in Dr. Young’s clinic, when she saw his ranch raided by the FDA: ”We were having breakfast when suddenly we were surrounded by a squad team with machine guns pointed at us.”
“We had to put our arms in the air, we were not allowed to move, we were not allowed to talk to each other”, recalls Ida. “We had to hand over our passports and were questioned about what we were doing there.”
Owen explained, “They arrested him for having practiced medicine without a license, but on all his medical forms, Dr. Young disclaimed to be a medical doctor.”
The real war stands between doctors who offer natural alternatives, versus conventional doctors, who are pressurised by the multi-million pound pharmaceutical companies to administer their drugs.
Dr. Jonathan Wright, founder and medical director of Tahoma Clinic in Washington, also follows alternative practices to medicine.
He shared an experience similar to Dr. Young’s in the documentary The Truth About Cancer: The True History of Chemo and the Pharmaceutical Monopoly: “On May 6th 1992, the [FDA] raided our clinic. With guns drawn!” he recalls.
However responsible the FDA may seem in standing in the way between the natural alternative cures to cancer, this conflict between drug intensive and natural approaches to healing grows from the 1800s, when the Carnegie and Rockefeller families united to sign the Flexer report.
This essentially negotiated their affiliation with the medical school board in exchange of a generous financial investment, which meant there were able to engineer the medical curriculum into a drug intensive one which would guarantee high profits for both families.
[pullquote align=”right”]”We were having breakfast when suddenly we were surrounded by a squad team with machine guns pointed at us”[/pullquote]Today in the US, the UK and Australia, medical doctors are at risk of losing their job title if they advise cancer patient’s to follow any alternative treatment to chemotherapy, according to the Cancer Act of 1939.
The main issue surrounding these medications prescribed is that they are known to treat the symptoms and not the underlying source of the disease, which is left to grow even bigger.
“I had no nutritional advice whatsoever when I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Cancer”, claims one patient, who was treated with chemotherapy at London Bridge private hospital.
“I also had an argument with my Doctor when she noticed I was drinking the green powder advised by Doctor Young, she told me I shouldn’t be drinking that stuff in hospital,” the patient, who wished to reamin anonymous, told us.
Cancer Research UK offers advice in pursuing natural approaches to treating the disease as a complementary treatment.
Doctors such as Young, however, believe that such treatments should be at the forefront of any cancer patient’s priorities in treating their disease.
“In Europe […] if you’re using a natural approach to cancer, you run the risk of having your license revoked. If you’re a non-medical practitioner [treating cancer], you can be put into jail,” says Dr. Rob Verkerk PhD, in The Truth about Cancer.
“This is a real loss of fundamental rights of freedom for individuals whose bodies need nourishment.”
Increasingly though, through raised awareness we are rethinking our belief in the food industries and modern medical healthcare establishments.
Dr Young’s mission was to educate patients about the various paths to better health through conscious eating.
“There are so many alternative medicines and herbs, but if you keep to basic principles such as Young’s alkaline protocol, that’s 50 per cent of the battle”, reflects Owen. “Slowly but surely a health revolution is on it’s way.”
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Featured image by Huggy Ragnarsson