Customer Reviews

Dying to Have Known

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This was a really powerful movie. Very well done. It explores the Gerson therapy and the narrator interviews many conventional doctors as well. I went right home and juiced a carrot/apple/greens drink! He makes an excellent case for food based health care as opposed to the traditional chemical based health care that we have in this country. I did not want the movie to end, it was so enjoyable.

This is a powerful film that documents the underlying reasons why the medical establishment ONLY pushes drugs, chemotherapy and radiation for the treatment of cancer and not only dismisses alternative healing but the medical insurance companies won't even cover alternative therapy. The reason? There's no MONEY in treatments that actually eradicate disease! There's simply too much money to be made in the cancer industry! This is a chilling reminder that ignorance is not bliss! The American Medical Association and the National Cancer Society are merely organizations to ensure that the truth doesn't get out! They are in place to CAPITALIZE on the cancer BUSINESS! Truly a life changing film! I prepared myself a fresh fruit smoothie after watching it!

Like the other reviewers I have started vegetable juicing since watching this movie. So the movie is convincing and informative enough to cause a change in lifestyle just by watching for 1 1/2. That's pretty impressive. I have been interested in "alternative" health information for 20+ years but had never directly learned about Max Gerson and his work. In hindsight I am incredulous that such an important and exhaustive body of work has eluded me. This DVD along with it's 'companion' piece "A Beautiful Truth" presents the story quickly and well. Well or Sick, EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THIS MOVIE AT LEAST ONCE IN THEIR LIFETIME. Now is better than later. As an aside, A Beautiful Truth and Dying To Have Known both appear to have been produced by the same people and at the same time and either one can present the story. Each has some unique information and some similar/overlap.

This is a powerful documentary about the Gerson Therapy and how it's cancer cure has been (and still is) suppressed in the USA.

The cancer industry does not want you to know that you can prevent and reverse cancer and other diseases through a healthy diet which consists of organic fruits and vegetables. There's too much money to be made from chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and patented drugs for cancer patients and it's just not profitable to market fruits and vegetables that cannot be patented.

This documentary shows opinions from both sides, those in favor of the Gerson Therapy and those against.

Dr. Dean Edell, Dr. Wallace Sampson and Dr. Stephen Barrett who are against the Gerson Therapy, dismisses the Gerson Therapy as quackery.

On the other side, to name a few: Dr. T. Colin Campbell (Author of The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health), Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn (Author of Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure), Dr. Andrew Saul (Author of Doctor Yourself: Natural Healing That Works) and Dr. Carolyn Dean (Author of Death by Modern Medicine (All about Book).

What is good to know is that the Gerson Therapy is accepted in Japan and is being used to treat cancer patients in a few hospitals there.

For those who are interested in related DVDs or books after watching this documentary, here's a list:
The Gerson Miracle, The Beautiful Truth, Healing Cancer, The Gerson Therapy: The Proven Nutritional Program for Cancer and Other Illnesses, Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases, A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases and the Cure of Advanced Cancer

I am a huge consumer of fresh organic fruits and vegetables. I drink fresh-squeezed fruit and vegetable juices daily. I think there are many sensible reasons to pursue these food choices, including abundant nutrients, modest caloric intake, adds to liquid intake, impact on the environment, etc.

However, the Gerson Therapy goes far, far beyond these sensible activities. It advocates a number of specific treatment options which I think most people would find odd: calf liver extract, coffee enemas, massive vitamin supplementation, failed chemotherapy approaches (Laetrile), etc. It also prohibits seemingly normal choices as nuts, legumes, berries, cucumbers, pineapple, etc.

Why would anybody accept this? Because they claim it cures cancer.

Fair enough. What's the evidence? This movie basically relies on testimonials and anecdotes. Watching the movie one would think that Gerson Therapy cures 100% of all patients. There was simply no discussion of specific patients failing to recover. In fact, in the segment on the the Japan clinic it was mentioned that the success rate was "over 50%." That sounds like a large portion who didn't recover. If any other product was sold this way, I think most consumers would feel conned.

Why not address the actual success rates? It's not as if the Gerson Therapy would be considered a failure if it cured less than 100% of cancer patients. It would just need to cure more than other methods. Some cancers cure themselves. What is the rate of success versus natural remission? This is just one example of many about the strong bias exhibited by the filmmaker. The false balance of "skeptics" and "good" doctors was actually funny to watch. Dr. A claimed one thing, Dr. B claimed another. Who is right? Dr. B says Dr. A is wrong, and since the filmmaker is sympathetic to Dr. B that's that!

The filmmaker and many of the people interviewed show a profound lack of understanding of science. It was claimed that "science" can't evaluate something like the Gerson Therapy because it can only analyze one compound at a time. That is patently absurd to anybody who is even remotely scientifically literate, but it is a common defense of treatments that fail to present evidence for their effectiveness. Moreover, Gerson's daughter is quoted on 3-4 occasions saying the Gerson Therapy has been scientifically proven to treat cancer and most other diseases. Well, which is it? Can science settle whether Gerson Therapy works or not? Gerson's daughter seems to think it can. If so, why not present evidence in a way which follows best practices?

If I thought I had a real cure for cancer and most other chronic diseases, and that a significant barrier to adoption was the lack of high-quality research demonstrating its effectiveness, I would make my number one priority getting that research done. Having high-quality research supporting the Gerson Therapy would do far, far more for its adoption than speaking at "Health Freedom" conferences to like-minded attendees. Don't say the research funding isn't there. The NIH and NCCAM, for example, has spent $2.5B funding just these kinds of therapies. And there are many more avenues of funding.

I was not surprised to hear the usual conspiracy theories presented. "Big pharma" doesn't want anybody to know about Gerson Therapy because it makes too much money treating cancer. "They" don't want "you" to know about Gerson Therapy because it doesn't make money. Many doctors are morally equivalent to Nazi's according to Gerson's daughter.

First of all, in terms of commercial interests, the insurance industry dwarfs the cancer treatment industry. If there were a known effective and cheap way to treat cancer, the insurance companies would make sure it was available, wouldn't they? They currently pay for various alt-med treatments with suspect effectiveness in part because they are cheaper than science-based medicine.

Also, if cancer strikes 1 in 2 Americans as suggested in the movie, presumably millions of cancer patients are sons / daughters / wives / husbands of oncologists, pharmaceutical employees and cancer researchers. Does it really make sense that the latter would employ science-based treatments on their own family members just to line the pockets of the "cancer industry"? Of course not. It's much more likely they are simply unmoved by the quality of evidence for Gerson Therapy's effectiveness.

If this film gets more people to increase the fresh fruits, vegetables and juice they consume, great! I would applaud that. Yet I fear this movie will also turn people towards a point of view hostile to science and filled with conspiracies.

A thoroughly enjoyable documentary, well crafted & edited, with a great story line. Presenting the Gerson Therapy, a system of preparing raw & cooked foods for maximum health & cancer curing, the filmmakers studies lead him around the country & to Japan to interview both the naysayers & the proponents of this controversial diet. Wonderful juxtaposition of the establishment doctor "experts" (who have little nutrition education & are perhaps funded by food industry giants) with the Gerson doctors, who have collected massive data on nutrition & the healing of many diseases with a plant-based diet.

Dr. Max Gerson was a German doctor who began studying nutrition in the 1920s. He documented over 50 cases of curing cancers with his method of an organic raw food diet that cured(s) many cancers. His assistant turned out to be a spy (hired by another rogue doctor) who stole his manuscript of 50 Case Studies (of cancer cures) & poisoned him with arsenic. Dr. Gerson realized the manuscript was missing & he was feeling poorly, so he fired the person & then figured out he was poisoned by arsenic and cured himself well enough to spend the next two years recreating his manuscript, & then died from the effects of the poison. His daughter Charlotte got the manuscript published in 1958 and she has been carrying on his work in her San Diego clinic ever since. The Japanese are building two clinics based on the Gerson method, as they are more open to alternative methodologies.

I quickly bought the other related films on the Gerson's & I am reading the 50 Case Studies now. I also read The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell cover to cover, which changed his diet and I changed mine as well. I have cut my triglycerides in half in 3 months & don't have to go on cholesterol lowering medicine. Yay! My doctor was astounded & said to keep doing it.

This should be required viewing for all...it will open your eyes...NOW is the time to educate yourself about Cancer and your alternatives...inform yourself,your loved ones, and friends with this excellent amazing video!!!

Ok, I assume I'm going to get ripped for this review but here goes.

The entire movie is basically one testimonial after another. My wife and I kept waiting for the "data" to be presented. It never came. We watched a parade of people telling us how great the Gerson Therapy is and at the end we still had no idea what the Gerson Therapy was.

We got the impression that if we sent $39.99 somewhere we could find out.

You get just enough info to ascertain it's a juice and coffee enema diet. I guess I don't need to know why puffing organic coffee up my butt is good for me or not.

Never mind if the info presented is correct, never mind if it cures cancer or anything else because the info just isn't there. You do get tidbits of info such as over half the patients at a clinic in Japan are either cured or in remission after following the Gerson Therapy. This statistic is meaningless when you don't put it in some sort of context.

For example:

1. How many patients are cured?

2. How many are cured vs in remission?

3. What standard was used to determine "cured"?

4. What standard was used to determine "in remission"?

5. What sort of confounding variables might be at play? I assume this regimen restricts calories, processed foods and by extension sugar intake. Since cancer cells lose the ability to reproduce aerobically and rely on anaerobic activity to reproduce, one could logically form the hypothesis that would allow you to ask the question, was this a confounding variable. Many others could also be raised.

In fact, according to "Overview of the Gerson Regimen". Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. March 18, 2009. Updated April 22, 2009. Alt medical facilities have a poor track record of accounting for confounding variables and state the following when they tried to critique Gerson's literature, "A serious flaw in this study is its failure to control for additional variable therapies used by patients, and failure to specify any prior or concurrent conventional treatments used."

6. Why have the people for the Gerson Therapy not applied for the NCI (National Cancer Institute) Best Case Series Program? If they have and have been denied and they have complied with all NCI criteria, then they should be screaming about this. It should have been in this documentary. It should have been in 4 more documentaries. It should have been on there website, paid print, billboards and anywhere else you could write the words "shafted by the system." It isn't, because I don't think they have and I don't believe they intend to.

According to ^ "Gerson Therapy Overview". National Cancer Institute. September 6, 2007. Updated April 22, 2009. The National Cancer Institute states, "The NCI Best Case Series Program, which was started in 1991, is one way Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) approaches that are being used in practice are being investigated. The program is overseen by the NCI's Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM). Health care professionals who offer alternative cancer therapies submit their patients' medical records and related materials to OCCAM. OCCAM conducts a critical review of the materials and develops follow-up research strategies for approaches deemed to warrant NCI-initiated research."

Worst case scenario they could fund there own double blind study and at least get the "no published hard data" monkey off their backs.

At the end of the day, what anyone wants to know is this; If one opted for the Gerson therapy would your odds of survival be greater than or less than that of traditional treatments? The Gerson therapy does not have to bat .1000 but it does need to bat greater than something else. At the end of my day this documentary did nothing but parade a bunch of people at me, telling me a story that if true, God bless em'. What I want to know is how many people can't tell me their stories because they didn't make it.

These are questions that could be answered. These are questions that need to be answered. This is in no way a complete list of questions that should be answered. This documentary does not even ask these questions so if you're looking for answers...skip this one.

I would like to conclude on a positive point lightly touched by this documentary.

What is the true cause of cancer and most diseases in our society today?

I think the film hit it dead center. Toxicity. When our bodies toxicity surpasses its ability to overcome that toxicity, I believe we begin to suffer all sorts of problems. Cancer and a whole host of other diseases is an acute manifestation of our body's inability to regulate itself. Remove the factors that caused the toxicity and you give yourself a chance to heal. That may be one of the reasons why the Gerson therapy may or may not be effective.

However, I can't tell from this documentary, it doesn't go that deep.

This film will change your life for the better. If you or anyone you know has a degenerative disease such as cancer, MS, or heart disease, or if you simply want to prevent developing one, this movie opens the doors on a ton of incredible information, as well as sheds light on the fact that many corporations and special interest cancer groups want this information suppressed in the name of preserving the status quo and, of course, big profits. As the movie states: "There are more people making a living off of cancer than dying from it." Do you think they're actually going to let that cash cow be taken away, even if it means millions are dying because of it?

Every time I watch one of these alternative medicine documentaries I find myself wondering why everyone I know is not watching them because the content is that valuable. This is just another well thought out and well done documentary in a long string of great docs that have come out in the past 5 years. I just ordered the Gerson book and can not wait to study it. Good luck to everyone, and enjoy the good health that natural therapies bring!