STATEMENT OF TESTIMONY OF DR. GEMMA BARZILAI, GYNECOLOGIST AND PATHOLOGIST, NEW YORK CITY, AT THE HEARINGS OF THE SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS ON JULY 2, 1946, IN CONNECTION WITH BILL S. 1875

Dr. BORZILAI. Mr. Chairman, while I should like to express my gratitude for having been given the opportunity of reiterating my whole-hearted support of bill S. 1875, I do not believe there is much need for further detailed testimony enumerating facts about the actual cancer situation in America and in the world at large.

The statements we have had the benefit of listening to yesterday and today, added to those delivered to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives on May 7 and 8, 1946, have contributed I believe a sufficient amount of knowledge on cancer facts for the Senate to consider for a final decision on bill S. 1875.

There has been, furthermore, in our statements such a pleasant and unequivocal agreement regarding the basic principles of bill S. 1875, that there is little, if any, doubt whatsoever about the necessity of Federal assistance in the fight against cancer.

As a matter of fact everyone has agreed, first, that the world scientists must be mobilized for the purpose of an all-out fight against cancer and, second, that this mobilization can adequately be done by no lesser an agency than the United States Government; that the size of the proposed appropriation is an absolute prerequisite to the success of this first mobilization; and that it is obvious that the scope of further appropriations, if and when they are needed, will depend to a large extent upon how soon and how completely the first group of scientists mobilized will have been able to win the war against cancer.

Incidentally, I might say that the Senators will find in our testimonies delivered before the House committee, which have already been printed, detailed information as to how and why the absence of adequate funds at the disposal of cancer-research workers has been a handicap in the pursuit of their work. In my own testimony before the House committee, I have outlined the financial aspects of surgical and pathological cancer-research work.

It has furthermore been explained by many of us that the cancer problem cannot be approached in the same manner as was the project of the atom bomb. We know much less about cancer today than we knew about atomic energy when the atom-bomb project was put to work. There is, however, a relationship between the cancer problem and the atom bomb. Radioactive substances, which are byproducts of the latter, may prove exceedingly helpful in the treatment of

cancer.

We all agreed that the rapidly increasing incidence of cancer stops the mobilization of cancer experts, an emergency where action must be taken under pressure, making little allowance for the element of time to argue things out. This emergency aspect of the cancer problem involves the granting to the President of major powers such as the power of allotting appropriate funds as most fittingly required. To this end, a board of highly specialized technical advisers to the President must be provided.

In answer to the question, "Whether an independent committee ought to be set up, or whether an already established Government

agency should assume the task," in my opinion the advisory committee should be composed of independent, unselfish scientists and adminis

trators.

The spirit of the bill is to make this cancer mobilization an international and not an inter-Governmental body.

The selection of the proposed group of advisers is a crucial point. It is hard to select a group of people with the necessary background to fulfill such work in a satisfactory way. It is relatively easy, however, to establish the various categories of specialists and people who should be represented. I would include the following:

1. Surgeons, X-ray and radium specialists, physicians at large. 2. Pathologists.

3. Biologists (physiologists and biochemists).

4. Physicists and chemists, including theoretical physicists and physicists with special knowledge on radiation energy.

5. Anatomists.

6. Nutritionists.

7. Statisticians.

8. Research workers on genetics.

9. Authors of outstanding scientific books and papers on cancer. 10. Scientists with knowledge of foreign languages and foreign literature on cancer.

11. People engaged in preventive and educational work on cancer. 12. Representatives of Sponsors of Government Action against Cancer.

According to the bill, the selection of this group rests with the President himself.

In answer to the question, "Whether the members of the Advisory Board should first be selected and then a chairman be elected among them by them, or whether a director should be appointed to select the members," in my opinion, the President, in conjunction with the two foreign committees on the House and the Senate who have originated the bill and given so much time and shown such interest in the matter would be in the best position to select the advisory board.

Names of people well equipped to represent the different categories may be found in the records of the American Cancer Society, the National Research Committee, the Committee on Growth, the Academy of Science at large, and among those working at Bethesda, Memorial Hospital, Lankenau Hospital, Massachusetts State Organization Against Cancer, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Mayo Clinic, Smithsonian Institute, American Library Association, etc.

I am entirely in favor of the passage of bill S. 1875 with the recommendation that an independent advisory board to the President be formed at the earliest possible date.

Senator PEPPER. Thank you very much, Dr. Barzilai.

Is Dr. Walter M. Simpson, director of the Kettering Institute for Medical Research, the Miami Valley Hospital, Dayton, Ohio, here? He is not here.

Dr. Dyer, would you be good enough to have your draftsman formulate into a bill the general suggestions that you embodied here this morning in your testimony, which others have approved, making the Commission independent as you have mentioned it, and then emphasize in the drawing of it the fact that this Commission

is to cooperate with similar agencies in other parts of the world and that it is authorized specifically to aid research in any parts of the world, if it is carried on on terms satisfactory to us and information is made available to us, and so on, as we would require; and the Commission also should be authorized to encourage the formation of research agencies of this character in other parts of the world and to work in cooperation with the United Nations Health Organization? (See p. 56 of these hearings.)

Dr. DYER. Yes, sir.

Senator PEPPER. Now, Dr. Max Gerson, of Gotham Hospital, New York. We will hear Mr. S. A. Markel, of Richmond, Va., first. Gentlemen, you have heard_twice the bell ring for the calling of a quorum for the Senate, so I would like us to make our statements just as brief as possible, and if you could make them orally and file your written statements for the record, it might save time.

STATEMENT BY S. A. MARKEL, RICHMOND, VA.

Mr. MARKEL. In the interests of saving time, I have a statement here that I will file for the record.

(Mr. Markel's prepared statement is as follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT BY SAMUEL A. MARKEL

My name is Samuel A. Markel. My residence is 3410 Monument Avenue, Richmond, Va. I am a citizen of the United States, having been born in Elizabeth, N. J., United States of America.

This,

I am in favor of the bill in principle. There are very few undertakings more important than this to which the United States Government could address itself. If my information is correct, between 450 and 500 people die each day of this dreaded disease, in other words, about 165,000 to 175,000 each year. of course, does not take into account the tremendous suffering by cancer patients. Millions of dollars have been and are being spent in cancer "research," and while it is unknown how much of the actual dollar finds its way into research, as compared with other expenses, the amazing fact is that the medical profession is apparently still "researching" on the subject matter of cancer, while there resides in New York City an unassuming physician who has long since passed the period of research on animals and is actually treating and, in my humble opinion as a layman, curing cancer in human beings.

I have seen patients who appeared to me to be so far gone as the result of the ravages of cancer as to be beyond the pale of anything but miracles. These miracles are in fact being performed by Dr. Max Gerson, 667 Madison Avenue, New York.

I have seen some of these results.

The wife of one of my friends underwent an operation for cancer at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington where her breast was removed, and which appeared to aggravate her situation and it appears that cancer had thereafter spread over her lungs. After a visit in New York for several months under the treatment of this scientist, Dr. Gerson, she has returned to her home in Richmond, Va., she has gained in weight, and, so far as I know, is cancer free. She says she has never felt better in her life. Her name is Mrs. W. G. Wharton. Her address is 2806 East Franklin Street, Richmond, Va., and her husband is presently the building inspector for the city of Richmond.

I myself was relieved of a very serious case of osteoarthritis by Dr. Gerson after my own doctor had pronounced my condition incurable.

My only interest in this matter is a humanitarian one, having lost my wife with this dreaded disease, and I feel that the least I can do is to add my voice and such funds as I am able to the eradication of cancer, and I have therefore given freely to the various campaigns for research. It appears, however, that some doctors are fighting Dr. Gerson. I can readily understand that when results so fantastic are obtained that such claims can hardly be believable. My quarrel with these gentlemen is the fact that they will immediately say such things are

impossible, or the doctor is a fake, without even stopping to inquire what is being done. I have had the same experience with my own doctors, who merely throw up their hands and say that anyone claiming to cure cancer is a fake, and while I understand that the medical profession considers it unethical for any doctor to say that he cures any ailment unless that cure has been in effect for 5 years or more. I understand further than the oldest patient in point of treatment for cancer which Dr. Gerson has, in the United States, is about 4 or 41⁄2 years, and I hope that the good doctors of the medical profession will excuse me, if I as a layman say that I would not deny the results that I have seen on account of 6 months or so, and I feel that it is worthy of investigation and certainly of further research.

The very fact that the patients treated by Dr. Gerson are living today when they were destined to die 3 or 4 years ago, according to the statements of these good doctors who treated them, I say is a sensational result and the least that can be said for it is that Dr. Gerson has accomplished something that no one else in the medical profession has accomplished with respect to the treatment of cancer, so far as I am able to ascertain.

I would hate to think that the antipathy to Dr. Gerson would be in any manner associated with the fact that his treatments are dietary and are not surgical. He does not use surgery or recommend surgery, as I understand it, unless there may be some remote cases. Therefore, if this treatment is effective, as I believe it to be, the public would be relieved of millions of dollars of surgical fees, and I repeat, I would hate to think that such possibilities should incense any of our surgeons, who after all are presumed to be humanitarians as well. Dr. Gerson has no doubt made enemies as the result of his dietary therapy, wherein he does not permit patients to smoke or to drink intoxicating liquors or to consume canned goods and other items which could materially affect trade in that respect if it become universal, and of course it was not designed for Dr. Gerson to "make friends" but rather to treat cancer as the result of the many years of his experience.

I think this new approach is very important since apparently cancer research and the cancer research dollar has been traveling for many years down the same avenue of conventional orthodox research, and apparently those good scientists are unwilling to look at or give credence to anything new. In any event, the discoveries of Dr. Gerson should be carried further, as, in my humble opinion, he has unlocked the door to an avenue of approach to this problem from which a solution will be found.

To my mind it is of outstanding importance that facilities be provided in some manner, so that Dr. Gerson may train other doctors in his technique and that hundreds of thousands may be treated rather than the limited number that he is able to personally attend. It would be a calamity if anything happened to Dr. Gerson with no one left to carry on in this particular field, and I hope that the committee will see to it that in the development of cancer research, dietary therapy will have an important part.

Mr. MARKEL. I want to say at the outset that I am here in favor of S. 1875. At first I was constrained to oppose that bill like a lot of other people. There was a general apathy. I think Mr. Perlmutter's committee has stirred up some public interest, but there was a feeling that after 50 or more years, millions and millions of dollars spent, with the helpless feeling upon the part of these victims, that out of it grew nothing that they could lean on, not even a hope, and that it would just be another hundred million dollars down the same rat hole, at the cost of thousands of dollars per "rat." I feel, however, that we ought to do something.

The only assurance that I would like to see is that the commission as constituted would be absolutely independent, that it would be willing to do a job of research, as the name implies-every avenue of research that lends promise of a solution of this problem. There should not be a closed corporation or a gentleman's club where nothing would be heard from it.

We have present here cancer patients, victims, citizens of the United States, and I do not know who would have a greater right, Mr. Chairman, to express their opinion about the expenditures of public money for this purpose than those people. As far as I know, they are in favor of this bill, but I feel fully that research ought to be what it implies.

Since we have been here 50 people have died of cancer, while we are in this hearing. Money, as stated here, means nothing. We spent billions to destroy people, and probably we can spend a few hundred million dollars for the recapture of life. That is what this bill is designed to do, if it will do it; but I am not in favor, Mr. Chairman, of making the commission the tail to any existing kite. I think that it should be absolutely independent. Let them decide what they want to do. Let them adopt their own rules. All they need to be is honest scientists and honest Americans.

Now, what bothered me was, as I said, before millions are being spent for research. We are still researching with animals, while here, an unassuming scientist in New York-and I hope the medical profession will pardon me for using the word "cure"-is curing cancer today.

Now, I understand that a patient must have been free of a recurrence of disease for 5 years before an ethical doctor would be permitted to say the patient was "cured." Well, fortunately, nobody can take my license away, because I am an ordinary layman, I am not a scientist, I am not a doctor-and I will not cloud the results on account of for 6 months. I say when the patient has lived 42 years longer than the time allotted by reputable doctors, I am willing to say he was cured. At least, he has not been buried when he was designed to be by the hospitals that sent him home to die, Mr. Chairman. They were told that they could not live but a few months. That is 4 years ago. Something has been done for them. It has not been surgery. It has not been radium. It has not been X-ray-and those are the only three things, if my information is correct, that the millions of dollars had been spent upon. I say if there is another avenue, a nutritional avenue-which this is-or anything else which gives promise of the cure of cancer, these research artists at least should be willing to condescend to look at it, Mr. Chairman. In this case there have been outstanding scientists, I am told, who have been told of this, and they do not even want to look at it. I do not ask them to admit that it is true. At least take a look.

Senator PEPPER. Well, suppose we hear Dr. Gerson.

Mr. MARKEL. Yes.

Senator PEPPER. I have been informed by Mr. Markel and by a gentleman from Florida who is a friend of mine, they have been very much impressed by the work that has been done by Dr. Gerson, and they have requested that he be heard, here, at this hearing. I assented to the request. Mr. Markel, I believe we could do better, in view of the short time-and I know you would like to do this-to hear Dr. Gerson as soon as we can.

Mr. MARKEL. Yes; and we have Dr. Miley, here.

Senator PEPPER. All right. I have those two.

Mr. MARKEL. There are those two.

Senator PEPPER. We will hear them just as soon as we can.