Nicholas Gonzalez

Nicholas James Gonzalez (December 28, 1947 – July 21, 2015) was a New York–based physician known for developing the Gonzalez regimen (or Gonzalez protocol), an alternative cancer treatment. Gonzalez's treatments were based on his belief that pancreatic enzymes were the body's main defense against cancer and could be used as a cancer treatment. His methods have been generally rejected by the medical community, He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Brown University, with a degree in English literature. From 1970 to 1977, Gonzalez worked as a journalist for Time Inc. and as a freelance writer, covering a variety of health-related topics, including a July 1972 cover story in New York Magazine, a 1976 cover story for Family Health Magazine, and an article for Prevention Magazine. Gonzalez became interested in medical research, and in cancer research in particular while covering these topics. Gonzalez worked with Robert A. Good at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center while in medical school. After receiving his medical degree, Gonzalez completed an internship in internal medicine at Vanderbilt University. From 1984 to 1986, Gonzalez worked with Good again, completing a fellowship in immunology while at University of Oklahoma and All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Gonzalez died of a suspected heart attack on July 21, 2015, at age 67. A conspiracy theory subsequently spread that Gonzalez was murdered as part of a systematic plot to kill "holistic" practitioners.

Cancer treatment and its effectiveness Gonzalez's treatment methods, which he started using in 1987, were developed from previous work by the orthodontist William Donald Kelley. Gonzalez believed that cancer was caused by a poor diet, a problem compounded when one does not eat a diet that corresponds with one's "metabolic type"; and that environmental pollution and daily stress contributed to health problems. Subsequently, others concluded that the longer survival time reported by Gonzalez was due to selection bias and other confounds.

Rejection by mainstream medicine Like his mentor, William Donald Kelley, Gonzalez's treatment method was rejected by the mainstream medical establishment. He was fully licensed to practice in New York.

Gonzalez lost two malpractice lawsuits. according to news reports, Gonzalez "had to pay $2.5 million in damages to a patient he wrongly claimed to have cured" of cancer. The former patient had been diagnosed with uterine cancer but "Gonzalez discouraged her from following through on her cancer specialist's advice, instead recommending dietary supplements and frequent coffee enemas". The patient had refused both standard treatment and an experimental protocol, but after the cancer spread to her spine, she discontinued Gonzalez's treatment and received chemotherapy and external beam radiation. Sometime during this period, she began having problems with her eyesight, back and hip, and she eventually became blind. In 2000, Gonzalez was found partly liable (49%) in the death of a patient with Hodgkin's lymphoma and ordered to pay $282,000 in damages, due to his use of an unproven cancer screening method instead of standard cancer testing.

The American Cancer Society notes that there is "no convincing scientific evidence that [the Gonzalez treatment] is effective in treating cancer" and that some portions of the treatment may be harmful. The trial was designed to compare the efficacy of pancreatic enzyme therapy plus a specialized diet with gemcitabine for stage II, stage III, or stage IV pancreatic cancer. However, the study had difficulty attracting patients, and most eligible patients refused random assignment, so the trial was changed in 2001 to a controlled, observational study.

The trial found that patients treated with the Gonzalez regime survived on average for 4.3 months; those using standard chemotherapy survived on average for 14 months and reported a better quality of life.

An accompanying editorial said it was troubling that expensive CAM therapies were not backed by firm evidence, and that the trial of the Gonzalez regimen was not capable of providing a definitive conclusion because of flaws in its design. Kimball Atwood said that flaws in the trial design might have led to bias in favor of the Gonzalez regimen but that it nevertheless amounted to "a slam-dunk condemnation" of the therapy.

This trial had been criticized for its implausible and unsupported theoretical model of cancer development which bears no resemblance to the scientific understanding of neoplasia,