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I read the article and then the site of Dr. Gonzalez. I found the claims feasible, but the overall enterprise problematic. There are claims that a method works, yet I could not find any description of the method itself beyond very general and commonsense ideas online. The case studies only describe outcomes, not treatment details.
I downloaded the full text of the 1999 article (let me know if you want it) but it does not have any more details in the Methodology section than the site overall. I'd be surprised if it did, being only 5 pages long - typically, such articles only give an overview of the methodology.
In the era where patients unite into groups and take research and experimentation into their own hands, this lack of free access is problematic. I appreciate the fact it's hard for Dr. Goznalez to publish in peer-reviewed journals, but I do not see what prevents him from making Kelley's and his findings available on his site and friendly sites like mercola.com
See http://quantifiedself.com/ for multiple examples of how groups of people keep their data open and fight illnesses together. I do not think Dr. Gonzalez behaves this way maliciously, but rather out of lack of understanding of network effects.
Do his two books have methodology details?
Posted by: Maria Droujkova | May 04, 2011 at 09:57 AM
Hi Maria.
Treatment details are very individualistic. Dr. G. explains that in the presenation I saw at the WAP conference. The overall approach is the same, but details are definitely not.
As for lack of free access, it is very hard to make available something that is different for every single person treated. Dr. G. talked about the amazing uniqueness for each person's treatment when I met him. I suppose that he could release each person's results and change their personal info, but I would think that would be problematic for many reasons. His patients are not signed up to be in a study - they just want to live and thrive.
Dr. G. has just finished a book about Dr. Kelley, and Dr. G is the only one who was schooled by Dr. Kelley. The story of Dr. Kelley and what happened to him because of his success is quite tragic.
I haven't read any of the books you mention to know about the methodology details. I do know that Ken Morehead is practicing the same overall methodology now that he has found an acceptable systemic enzyme.
The information is not impossible to glean, but there is gigantic resistance by the medical industrty to it being used and they are always on the attack. People like Dr. G. and Dr. Brezynski in Texas are targeted for the slightest misstep, so information sharing isn't what you would hope. The politics of medical boards, keeping licensure and more make it very hard for these guys to do their work. Afterall, if people were cured on mass scale for very little amount of money in comparison to the chemo, radiation and more that regular medicine perpetrates on sufferers, the medical industry would suffer huge losses, and that is unacceptable.
Posted by: Laura Combs | May 04, 2011 at 10:37 AM
I read the reviews of the books on Amazon - they are positive, but it does not look like the methodology is described in them either. Or rather, the first describes high dozes of pancreatic extracts (which are used in many practices - I took some as a child, routinely) and the second talks about cases in general.
Individualistic treatments don't necessarily comprise a method. I know it too well from what I do with kids and math. Some of it is systematic, and can be expressed as a method, but other things are "too intuitive for words" yet. Well, the second kind is hugely important for me, but not shareable and not something one can publish or research scientifically, until it becomes methodical. But Dr. Gonzalez calls what he does a method, so it can't be based on intuitive, individual decisions all the way.
A lot of what doctors (or educators, or other human-oriented helpers) do is intuitive: an art. However, Dr. Gonzalez talks about a method, and about wishing for scientific studies. Anything you can study by scientific methods has to be very explicitly defined. He does talk about decision rules for different metabolic types, types of cancer, and so on. I expect he has a decision tree for how to make treatment decisions, though as any good doctor, he probably deviates from it for particular cases. This general tree, though, is what I'd like to see.
Openness of data is actually a very good protection in scientific circles, though it has to be done in accordance to human subject protection too, for which there are clear rules. Doctors post blogs and statistics of their practices. The author of the Shangri-La diet has an open forum (in addition to his book), and I read his blog regularly: http://sethroberts.net/ His stuff is pretty controversial. So he puts his unpublished articles online.
I am saying this in a way friendly to Dr. G. and in some detail because you talk to him. From someone who looks at him from the internet, he looks like he's hiding his methods from the public, and this does bring up associations with sort of "doctors" he would want to avoid. Maybe we should wait for the next books in the series he and his colleague started.
Posted by: Maria Droujkova | May 04, 2011 at 05:02 PM