The Budwig Protocol: Deadly Cancer Quackery

The Budwig protocol is, simply, an attempt to cure all types of cancer by eating things like cottage cheese, flaxseed oil, and various fruits and vegetables.  While a healthful diet is a wonderful thing, the Budwig protocol simply does not cure cancer.  Thinking it will is adopting cancer quackery and turns curable cancer into an about certain death sentence.

Regrettably, I engaged in a discussion with a devoted Christian family (not people who regularly attend my church).  This family had a member who had a probably curable (by scientific medicine) type of cancer, but the person with the cancer decided to reject scientific medicine and instead go with the Budwig protocol.  These people then proceeded to claim that God led them to do this (He did nothing of the kind), that God had given them assurance that He was going to heal the person with the cancer, and that He had led them to embrace the Budwig protocol.  They then started to explain how wonderful the Budwig method was and how it was working very well.  Since I did not want other people to follow these devoted Christian people in their rejection of scientific medicine for quackery, I engaged in a written discussion over this subject.  The family stated that they had been "led" by God to reject scientific medicine after watching "The Truth About Cancer," a series by a body-builder on YouTube that has received millions of views.  This Youtube video series is absolutely filled with untruth about cancer and very, very little truth about cancer.  The six-part series "Untruths About Cancer:  10 Common Lies Espoused by Many Unconventional "Medicine" Advocates on my website deals with many of the fallacies, lies, and distorted truths in the "Truth About Cancer" video.  They eventually opted for the Budwig protocol as the unconventional "medicine" of choice to cure this precious Christian's cancer.  They claimed that the Budwig protocol cured 90% of all types of cancer.  The only "proof" given for this 90% figure was the incredibly unscientific video linked to here (warning:  do not believe what this video says).

Part of what I sent the people who adopted the Budwig Protocol was as follows (somewhat edited):

I hope that you have solid, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials proving that what you are doing cures cancer 90% of the time without side effects.  It would be such incredibly good news.  Some of the things stated give cause for concern, however.  For example, the idea that the person who developed the Budwig protocol was nominated for a Nobel Prize and would have gotten it had he been willing to also use conventional scientific medicine.  As far as I know, the discussions of the Nobel Committee are kept secret for 50 years, so nobody knows what they said, and anyone can be nominated for a Nobel Prize; I could nominate you for a Nobel Prize in physics if I wanted to.  Are we sure that these statements about the Budwig Protocol are accurate?  How did we get in on the secret discussions of the Nobel committee?  Also, eating healthfully is a wonderful, wonderful thing to do, but is there a rational scientific basis for concluding that if we eat berries, cottage cheese, etc., that our bodies will start to identify cancer cells as foreign and kill them?  Has this been tested the same way that conventional scientific medicine goes through rigorous testing and been found to be true?  Has it been verified for the specific type of cancer that is in view here?  I also wonder why non-profit organizations that would love to see cancer defeated like the American Cancer Society do not recognize that simply eating these types of food will cure 90% of cancer--if they really do.

Of course, with so much at stake in this--the very life of your dearly beloved other half--I would think that you have examined the medical journals, verified that placebo-controlled testing has taken place, looked at comprehensive reviews of multiple well-designed clinical trials, etc.  

The only reasons that I am writing is because if these things are not factually accurate, other people who get cancer could, out of their great respect for you as a godly, sincere, and knowledgable Christian, conclude that they should forsake medicine scientifically proven to have the best chance of working, according to the vast majority of scientists.  It would be a terrible thing if we unintentionally led others among God's people to an early death by promoting to them things that do not work.  I know several people who have rejected conventional medicine for things that did not have proof, and they are all dead now, even if they had types of cancer that had a very high chance of cure through conventional science.  I can think of one situation where the death of a godly woman now leaves a probably unsaved man raising their many children because of a rejection of scientific medicine.  I, at least personally, do not know a single person who clearly had a proven type of cancer who lived significantly longer through unconventional medicine than what was plausible if that person had just done nothing at all / had a placebo effect.

The second reason of concern is that we have stated that God has convinced us that this cancer is going to be cured.  If we haven't done the work to be sure that there are plausible, rational scientific explanations for why what we are doing cures cancer, and there isn't clear evidence of it based on unbiased clinical trials, then if we are doing something that does not work, and then something that is very sad for us takes place and your precious one with cancer goes to be with the Lord, then I am concerned about the honor of God's glorious name when we have said that this person was going to be healed.

I am sure that this is a very sensitive subject, and I cannot think of much else that could possibly touch closer to home.  I thought that love for God, whose Name is at stake if we say that He is going to heal as we use means that we have said cure 90% of cancer, and love for the brethren, whose future lives may be at stake based on what we say, and love for you and your family, required me to write this letter, which I would much rather not have written.

Obviously if the "Truth About Cancer" series is what led you to not go with conventional scientific medicine, you would have carefully analyzed and been able to refute articles such as this one:

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-truth-about-cancer-series-is-untruthful-about-cancer/

I would be interested in seeing what you had put together in response to articles such as that one before you decided to go with Budwig, etc.  

Furthermore, we know that YouTube is an incredibly unreliable source of information and not a place we could trust on anything important, much less our lives.  Perhaps, instead of YouTube, you could direct me to the peer-reviewed clinical trials on humans, that are independently verified, demonstrating the 90% cure rate for Budwig. Obviously someone who is a possible Nobel Prize winning scientist, as you claim the person is who developed the Budwig protocol, would have many, many such trials for her cure for cancer. For any type of cancer treatment, we absolutely must know:

1.) Does the remedy have clear, properly tested and verified cure statistics?

2.) In creating these statistics, did they verify what stage of cancer a person had (e. g., I, 2A, 3B, etc.), and that the persons supposedly cured actually did have cancer?

3.) Did they follow up on their patients to verify that they were actually cured, or was follow up spotty or nonexistent?  Do they follow up on 100% of those they treat, or do they only publicize people who happen to still be alive while ignoring the rest?

4.) Do they utilize unsubstantiated testimonials about cures instead of objective testing?

5.) Have there been double-blind, placebo-controlled tests of the remedy, or only poorly designed tests, or no tests at all?

6.) Are their statistics independently verified, or are they only self-promulgated with no independent verification?

Perhaps I could be directed to the published scientific material on this that you examined, and  the resources from published, independently verified trials are mentioned that you looked up and verified for yourself.

Obviously also, cancer cells are our own body's cells where the mechanism that causes the cells to stop dividing has failed.  I would be interested in knowing the scientific explanation for how eating the types of food recommended in the Budwig protocol makes our body start recognizing the cancer cells and deciding to kill them instead of not recognizing them as dangerous because they are our own cells. I have taken some college biology, etc. so I think I would be able to understand the cellular explanation.  Why does eating cottage cheese, when that substance is digested, make a macrophage or some other white blood cell recognize a cancer cell as foreign when it has all of our own body's identifying markers (as it is our own body's cell with certain non-replicative functions disabled)?

In relation to your ozone treatments, it is true, of course, that ozone in a high enough concentration will kill cancer cells, for ozone is a dangerous pollutant that will kill any cell in our body in a high enough concentration. Ozone in a high enough concentration in our blood stream to kill cancer cells would also kill the red blood cells and so on.

Anyway, the published clinical trials that are independently verified about the 90% cure rate would be of definite interest; I would also be interested in your response to the web article referenced above.  

Thanks again for sending the video on the Budwig protocol.  I had the following thoughts.

1.) The video is filled with bad, incorrect grammar, painfully so, throughout the entire work.  We are supposed to believe that this video provides proof of a cure for all types of cancer, although it provides no substantiation for its claims.  It is so sloppy that it cannot even take the time to learn how to avoid basic grammar mistakes that a well-trained middle school student at a Christian school would notice.  Should we trust it with our lives?

2.) It claimed a “90% documented success rate,” but did not define “success,” nor provide any real medical evidence.  This is why we should never trust YouTube with anything as important as our lives or the lives of those whom we love.  Why not cite real evidence from peer-reviewed scientific journals such as at PubMed?

3.) It also provided no documentation for the “7 times Nobel Prize Nominee” claim.  

4.) It claimed the Budwig protocol was “effective in all type [sic] of cancer.”  There are many different types of diseases that go under the rubric of “cancer” with many different causes.  There is no one cure for “all type [sic] of cancer.”  Are we supposed to trust the unsubstantiated claims of this video with our lives or the lives of loved ones when the video does not even contain proper English?

5.) The video is filled with egregious scientific errors and failures to understand science.  It would take pages to describe them all.  I believe that a discussion of this video with any family practitioner trained in scientific medicine, that is, with an M. D., would be able to point out huge numbers of errors.  For example, 4 minutes in the video claims that Ms. Budwig discovered a “yellow green” substance in an (unspecified) number of patients in an (unspecified) location at an (unspecified) time.  The video does not state what this substance is.  Wouldn’t that be kind of important?  It then states that these (unspecified) patients began to improve after three months, and thus “Dr. Budwig had found her cure for cancer”!  Anything can happen to someone for three months.  Real science employs repeatable trials with much larger numbers of people over a much longer periods of time with much better documentation, rather than claiming a cure for all types of cancer based on what allegedly happened to unspecified people in an unrepeatable setting for three months based on an unspecified and mysterious “yellow green” substance.  Another example—the video claims that sauerkraut is “full of enzymes” (7:55) that allegedly help to cure cancer, but the video does not mention the fact that our stomach digests and breaks down all enzymes that we eat and then our bodies make their own enzymes, so it does not matter if sauerkraut has enzymes. At 8:55, the video claims that Muesli has “high energy electrons” that “attract . . . healing photons from sun [sic].”  That type of food has no more high energy electrons than any other type of food, and electrons do not attract photons, much less “healing photons from [“the” missing] sun,” whatever “healing photons” supposedly are.  A single class in undergraduate chemistry or physics would make this claim clearly appear to be nonsense.  Furthermore, “sugar is absolutely forbidden” (16:45), but then honey and various other things that have exactly the same chemical compounds as table sugar are permitted.

6.) 8 minutes in the video claims that clinical studies have regularly confirmed this allegedly 90% cure rate for all types of cancer by eating cottage cheese, being in the sun, and so on.  Why doesn’t it cite even one of them, then?

7.) The statement of what allegedly causes the Budwig protocol to work at 15:23 is simply utter scientific nonsense.  If she actually wrote it, then she also cannot even write simple English grammar, and the science of this affirmation is worse and far more dangerous than the grammar.

8.) At 15:58 the fact that Ms. Budwig “favors homeopathy” as a cure for disease should be a dead giveaway that her “cancer cure” is fraudulent. Homeopathy is drinking water—nothing but water, as it is so dilute that not a single molecule of anything else is in most homeopathic “treatments.”  See http://faithsaves.net/medicine/.  Anyone who thinks homeopathy does a single positive thing has no understanding of science or medicine.

9.) The most important fact to be taken away is that all there is not a single piece of actual evidence given in the entire video.  The claims of cures are entirely and utterly unsubstantiated.  Furthermore, the clearly erroneous health claims, clear scientific errors, ideas that, if they were true, would require that simple elementary biology, chemistry, and physics are all wrong, and an inability simply to speak English evidence that it is extremely dangerous to rely upon this sort of sloppy YouTube misinformation in any way.  This video is crying out “health fraud.”

I am sorry that I have to draw this conclusion from the video.  If we follow the recommendations of this video, we should conclude that we are not more likely to be cured of cancer than if we do nothing at all.  God can heal against means, but 99%+ of the time He uses means.  The recommendations of this video are a placebo “treatment” for cancer.  The video is a clear example of why we must not trust YouTube instead of scientific medical professionals and scientifically validated and proven medicine to treat life-threatening disease.  I would be very fearful to promote the “cure” for cancer mentioned in this video by Ms. Budwig to thousands of saints of God, knowing that out of love and respect for us they may adopt this placebo “treatment” when they are in a bad spot and could die instead of being cured of cancer.

I am sorry if my comments come across as harsh.  That is not my intention.  This is a matter of life or death, potentially for many of the people of God who can follow our example.  Otherwise it would not be so important.

You also sent me a second Youtube video, "How Shannon beat Stage 4 breast cancer."  Warning:  do not believe what this video says. The following thoughts came to me in relation to this video.

1.) If what Shannon is saying is accurate, the hospital she went to had very poorly trained workers. Also, getting her medical records is a great idea, and I'm all for it.

2.) There is no way to know or verify what she is saying actually happened to her.  She says in the video that she had extensive radiation treatment and also drank juices and so on.  She says it was not the radiation that helped with the cancer but the juices and other unconventional remedies, but all we have is her unsubstantiated word on that.

3.) Before scientific medicine makes claims, it goes through rigorous testing, something like: "80% of patients with stage III breast cancer lived 10 years or more after receiving treatment X, while only 10% lived 10 years or more when they did not, while all other treatment features were the same, verified for 10,000 people over a 20 year study."  What one person says happened to her is not a wise way to judge something that can put our life at stake.  Before getting on an airplane, we would want to know that the engine prototype has been rigorously and extensively tested, that the plane wings have been rigorously tested, etc.  We would not want one person to say, "Yep, I flew in it and it worked for me for a while."  Why would we do this with cancer treatments when we don't do it with airplanes?

4.) She claims that it has been three years since she was allegedly cured by doing all the stuff she was doing.  Cancer cure claims are not made for three year time periods--it is too short.  How do we know she has no cancer?

5.) She seems like a nice lady, but anyone can put anything on Youtube.  I can make a Youtube video where I interview my wife and we both say that we had stage 4 cancer and were cured by singing carols to the full moon.  We don't even have verification that this lady had cancer.  I'm not saying that she didn't, but that we can't base anything on Youtube.

6.) She does not appear to have her facts very straight; she claimed, for example that cancer in the lymph nodes is by definition stage III, when it could be stage II, not stage III.  Do we know that she even can tell what the four stages are, and if not, can we trust her that she had stage four cancer?

7.) Among all the unconventional remedies she proposes, she does not push the Budwig protocol, which the other video claimed, without proof, to have a 90% cure rate.  If the Budwig protocol really has a 90% cure rate, why push all these other things?  Are they all better than 90%?

8.) She claims that cancer can be caused by things like having one's pet die and feeling sad.  She said that she was robbed and that was a big part of why she got cancer.  Is there evidence that people who have pets die and feel sad get cancer because of that?  Does she have evidence that getting robbed and so on results in one getting cancer?  The video even said people can get cancer because they get divorced.  Divorce causes cancer?  The video said feeling shame causes cancer.  So listening to convicting preaching from the Bible that leads to people feeling ashamed of their sins causes cancer?  Is there evidence for this?  Is this real science or crazy quackery?

9.) She talked a lot about the immune system, but never specified how doing what she recommends makes the body identify cancer cells as foreign.  For example, when we develop antibodies to, say, one strain of the common cold, the antibodies attach to the foreign cells and then the macrophages, etc. destroy them.  Cancer cells are our own body's cells that have begun to multiply out of control.  Our immune system does not recognize them as foreign because they are not foreign.  Why doesn't she specify exactly how what she is recommending leads to our body recognizing cancer cells as foreign if it actually works?

10.) She says many cancer clinics in Mexico are doing wonderful things. This reminded me of something I wrote here:

http://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2016/05/oasis-of-hope-in-tijuana-mexico.html

after another Christian opted to reject scientific medicine and went to the Oasis of Hope unconventional medical clinic in Mexico.  (The person is now dead, not having lived any longer than if nothing at all had been done, although the Mexican clinic now has the family's inheritance, not the heirs.)  Based on the link above, should we trust clinics in Mexico?

11.) She promotes the "Truth About Cancer" video which, as mentioned before, is filled with extremely dangerous misinformation; see, again: 

 https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-truth-about-cancer-series-is-untruthful-about-cancer/

12.) She promotes a different series of videos called "Quest for Cures," which is also filled with misinformation.  Interestingly, I read about this very series a year or more ago, and would highly encourage the reading of the "Untruths about Cancer" series here:

http://faithsaves.net/medicine/

Untruths About Cancer: 10 Common Lies Espoused by Many Unconventional “Medicine” Advocates, Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6 

13.) What the video promotes, such as laetrile, does not cure cancer.  See, e. g., here:  

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/laetrile.html  

The cancer "treatments" promoted in the video do not cure cancer. 

14.) The video even said that doing what she did cures HIV as well as cancer.  Does she really have evidence for this also?  Why doesn't she do real clinical trials in countries where there are people dropping dead right and left from HIV?  Couldn't the multi-billion dollar unconventional treatment industry fund a few well-designed clinical trials in, say, sub-Saharan Africa and prove that everyone is cured of HIV by drinking juice and so on?

15.) She claims that doctors know nothing about nutrition, but a survey of the 126 accredited medical schools in the USA revealed that the overwhelming majority did teach nutrition, although some did not do as much as could be desired.  There is a huge difference between some doctors not taking as many courses in nutrition as would be ideal and saying that doctors receive no training in nutrition.  The former is true, the latter totally false.

16.) Near the end of the video, horrible statements were made claiming that we cannot make our decisions based on statistics about cures from different types of scientific, verified studies.  The affirmation was made that all of these were doctored and faked statistics.  Does she have proof of this?  There are actually strong safeguards in place to watch against what the video says is the case for all scientific cancer studies.  We are allegedly, then, just to do what we feel will work and reject scientific studies of what works because all the science is allegedly corrupt.  This rejection of scientific clinical trials is very dangerous and she should have very, very powerful evidence that thousands and thousands of trials, in thousands of places, with thousands and thousands of medical professionals, with all sorts of contradictory vested interests, in both for-profit settings, non-profit settings, and competing educational institutions, and so on, are all conspiring to corrupt all the trials that they are doing.  Is this really possible?  Why doesn't she produce proof of it instead of mere assertions?

There is a lot more that can be said, but the bottom line is that the video contains:

a.) Major misinformation and misrepresentation;

b.) Crazy ideas like that having one's pet die and feeling sad can lead to a person getting cancer;

c.) Zero real evidence that any of the ideas promoted actually cures cancer;

d.) Contradictory ideas to the Budwig video, unless all the other ideas promoted in this video do better then 90% at curing all kinds of cancer.  What is actually recommended here does not agree with what is actually recommended in the other video. The only thing they agree on is to reject scientific medical treatments.  Could all these other ideas all be equally promoted as an alternative because all of them are no better or minimally better than a placebo, and none of them have any real evidence for them?

I'm sure we both agree that if we are commending treatments to thousands of God's saints, recognizing that they might adopt our recommendations when they get cancer, we should be very, very sure that we are promoting what is true, so that the people of God will live and not die early.  We do not want people to die because they have received placebos when they forsook proven science and adopted unconventional remedies for cancer.

Unfortunately, the family to whom I sent these communications did not listen, but continued to promote the Budwig protocol to vast numbers of people and gave testimony about how great it was--at least for a little while, about as long as one would be OK having cancer and doing nothing at all or following a placebo "treatment."  Then the precious and devoted Christian who had the type of cancer that was probably curable by scientific medicine died, not having lived any longer than one could live with nothing but a placebo.

The Budwig video's lie about curing 90% of all cancers remains on Youtube, of course, as do the other videos that these poor deluded Christians placed their trust in and promoted to many, many others.  The death toll will, doubtless, continue to rise even higher among those who continue to trust YouTube videos with their lives and reject scientific medicine based on the Biblical scientific method (Genesis 1:26-28) in favor of quackery.

Whatever your state--whether you have cancer or not--please read Do You Know You Have Eternal Life? by clicking here.

TDR