A Second Opinion on Harry Hoxsey

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Though two federal courts upheld the therapeutic value of Hoxsey’s treatment—and a tacit admission by both the AMA and the Food and Drug Administration that his external salves were effective—the FDA launched a massive "quackdown" on Hoxsey and others. The last Hoxsey Cancer Clinic was finally outlawed in 1960. Shattered, Hoxsey in 1963 dispatched his chief nurse, Mildred Nelson, to Tijuana, where she quietly treated another 30,000 patients until her death in 1999. (The Bio-Medical Center she established continues to operate.)

If the Hoxsey treatment remains "unproven," it has never been disproven. In fact, as I detail in my book When Healing Becomes a Crime, all the Hoxsey herbs, formerly dismissed by organized medicine as "a bunch of weeds," have now been shown to possess anti-cancer and anti-tumor properties. As for the supposedly "proven" treatments of surgery and radiation, those too were put into practice without the rigorous clinical trials that are considered the medical standard of proof. The Hoxsey treatment and other alternative approaches have often been banned on what amounts to a medical double standard.

With treatment and other costs total-ling more than $110 billion annually in the United States, cancer is big business. Much of the system is based on the pursuit of patents that give their holders, usually major drug companies, 20-year exclusive monopolies. As an herbal product that cannot be patented, the Hoxsey tonic is a threat to this system.

After 30 years and $33 billion, the American government’s "war on cancer" is a qualified failure. In fact, since the 1950s, evidence has steadily accumulated that surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy are far less effective than the public has been led to believe. Survival rates have remained essentially flat, while the incidence of many cancers continues to rise. Pressure from cancer patients and activists finally pushed Congress to create what has become the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a branch within the NIH with an $89 million budget this year and a special priority to research unconventional cancer therapies. The Hoxsey report and several clinical trials of other promising cancer therapies is one result of this program. A recent survey at Houston’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, one of the largest in the world, found 83 percent of patients already using alternative approaches. This represents a great stride forward for cancer patients, who for a half-century have been caught in a crossfire, not just fighting for their lives but forbidden to use alternative treatments that are at least harmless and might help them.

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