hi I'm max Gail and I was asked to narrate this film because the filmmakers
knew that my wife had died of cancer and I had dealt in a deeply personal way
with the dilemma their film addresses choosing a therapy for her was confusing
paralyzing anguishing sometimes enraging on the one hand the doctors held little
hope that they would have a cure for her on the other hand they were resistant to
the many alternative approaches they seemed to have a definite and sincere
point-of-view and yet they seem to know so little about these other therapies I
had to wonder if a cancer cure were discovered outside of formal medical institutions would these doctors ever
know about it would it ever reach the general public of course it would you might say but consider this there are
scores of alternative cancer clinics around the world claiming high success rates yet most of these treatments have
been banned in the United States are driven out of the country without an
investigation why the dissident practitioners say that it has to do with
medical politics that their medical point of view is being suppressed there
is a disturbingly similar pattern that actually does run through most of their
stories to get to the heart of the dilemma we have chosen to look in-depth
into one of these alternative clinics because the story of the hoxsey cancer
treatment is a classic case history of these medical politics many patients
believe the hoxsey treatment cures cancer she had one bridge removed and
then later they found cancer in the other breast and they wanted to take the
other one off and she wouldn't allow it but of course she was getting worse and
like I said she heard her family her funeral and she got up out of her
sickbed bid and said Dayton in Mexico so they brought her down here on
wheelchair now she she looks on great and she feels great and she's fine and
they had given her just a few weeks to live my father died of cancer
my brother-in-law died of cancer of our best friends of Yakima died of cancer
and they were they all went the operation chemotherapy radiation through
they're all dead but the people who we know so many
people who have come here and they're still alive
I decided me that if I was not gonna take chemotherapy I was not gonna take
radiation I told my doctor that I said I'll die first I just soon go out but no
none of that could I've had friends I've seen had what happened to him so what
when they mentioned Hoxie to me I lit up I said hey let's go
medical authorities claim Hoxie is a hoax they outlawed the therapy in the
United States without a scientific investigation
hoxsey nurse Mildred Nelson took the treatment from Texas to Tijuana in 1963
her biomedical Center was the first alternative clinic to go from the u.s.
to Mexico she has been treating cancer with oxy
for 40 years she claims impressive results we still
run approximately 80 percent cure rate and I know you're not supposed to say
cure for at least five years but I've known some of them 40 years that are
still surviving so I guess maybe we should still say a survival rate but
nevertheless they have no problems so we assume they no longer have cancer
because we cannot pick it out
an 80 percent cure rate if Mildred Nelson is even partially right the
number of people dying needlessly is a scandal but her claim is unproven
because a definitive scientific test has never been done but we do know what the
medical profession has achieved in its celebrated war on cancer we've lost the war on cancer since the 1950s the
outlook for most cancer patients has remained the same a 1 in 3 chance of
living for five years after diagnosis using conventional therapy surgery radiation chemotherapy drugs the fact is
that today two out of three American cancer patients will be dead before five years if conventional therapy has such
limited results why isn't the medical profession willing to investigate alternative approaches apparently there
is more than a political border between country and country but also a
philosophical border that these doctors will not let their patience cross and
it's bad this doesn't work on behalf of the patient this is a battle apparently
between them and us and we don't want a bottle to exist this should be united
work you know working together to bring people health in a fight for their lives
some patients cross those borders each day a van full of hopeful cancer
patients travels from San Diego California to Tijuana Mexico doctors in
the u.s. classified 90% of them as terminal cases over the years thousands of such patients have said the hoxsey
treatment cured limb well I had a melanoma in my arm and they operate on
my arm but they said I had to have chemotherapy and radiation and I was too
weak for that my husband thought so he said no we're going to the clinic and I
have gotten real good results from coming to the clinic I know when I first
started I only weighed a hundred and eleven pounds and now look at me and now
I haven't been back for five years for any treatment on my arm I just come back
now for a check out when Milda did get the cancer out it was like a ball hard
ball in fact when she dropped it in the trash can I thought it was a golf ball cuz it bounced it was at least the size
of golf balls larger yes it went up into this muscle and it's tied down with scar
tissue now because as I said it extended up in this muscle we just took out a
huge big play hammer about two years ago actually two years ago to the day found
out I had cancer and the doctor recommended mastectomy so we went into
the hospital and had a mastectomy and then he suggested that perhaps I needed
chemotherapy once a week for a year well at the time I also had spots on my liver
and when I recovered from my mastectomy I was going to probably have liver
surgery so we decided against the chemotherapy because we thought there it
wasn't such a good idea really meanwhile friends of ours drove down
- tell us about this clinic biomed clinic that she had found my husband and
I decided we would investigate and I think that's the best decision we ever
made my surgeon knows I go he didn't probably didn't like the idea so we just
kind of ignore the fact that I come although he himself admits now that my
liver is completely cleared up no cancers sales at all
the clinic uses two treatments and internal and an external the internal
treatment is the hoxsey tonic the tonic comes in a bottle like this and the
tonic is basically it's concentrated for ease of handling you should mix it
before you take it you don't take it directly from the bottle what happens is
this the tonic on the inside of the body works by several methods first of all it works by a process of detoxification
second of all and what I consider the most important it helps build up the
immune system it's very simple it doesn't make you ill your hair doesn't
fall out like chemo and it's almost too good to be true you might think but it
does work it consists of herbs and potassium iodide and the diet is very
very easy to follow they start with a dot they're not allowed pork vinegar
Tomatoes carbonated drinks alcohol bleached flour bleats sugar and the salt
is really limited probably the greatest success comes with the patient's
attitude and when they come in the front door said I'm in here to get some
medicine because I want to get well then I'm just as happy as they are and when
they come through the door saying well I don't think anything's gonna help but
they wanted me to do this you can't make them get well they have to want to do it
themselves a non-toxic herbal tonic a nutritional program an attitudinal
approach to healing harmless though it seems this treatment
ignited one of the most bitter controversies in medical history it
started a cancer war between organized medicine and one man founder harry
hoxsey the trouble began with what seemed like good news and we now have in
our files my records many many thousands of case histories and records
pathological proof x-ray photographic studies that we do positively cure
cancer both internal and external and we now have records proving that the Cure
stands up for many many years as far back as over 20 years you're in Texas I
think my god he's telling me the biggest lies I ever heard this couldn't be right and I'd listened to this for a few days
and finally I'd pick out the biggest one I thought he told me and I'd go check
and when I got checking it was right the man had lied about it at all and
finally I realized he didn't have to lie he was telling the truth
but it was the wildest stories I'd ever heard in my life when it came to
medicine he had this great skill as a salesman clearly however he had no belief that this treatment was was
useful he was a he was a great liar you know it takes lots of nerve to put up a
big nice place in a big city like Dallas and hold yourself out is being able to
furnish medicines that will cure cancer it takes nerve to do that I don't
believe a man that knew he was lying about it could do it he was doing his
thing and he had no business doing it in fact Hoxie met both the legal and the
dictionary definition of a quack one who pretends to medical skill which he does
not possess it was easy for the medical profession
to paint Hoxie as a quack he fit the image perfectly this book entitled you
don't have to die as she is filled with dynamite in fact it should have been
printed on asbestos paper I give you names times dates names of doctors names
of institution the doctors labelled Hoxie the worst cancer quack of the century but Hoxie supporters called him
an effective healer persecuted by a medical trust after now they have never
proven that this treatment don't cure cancer the ex coal miner with an eighth
grade education became a legend in his own time according to the hoxsey legend the remedies were discovered by his
great-grandfather experimenting on a sick horse Hawks he said his father was
the first to try the medicines on people he gave young Harry the formulas with a
deathbed wish to make the treatment available to people whether or not they
could pay he insisted it carry the hoxsey name prophetically he warned the
boy against the high priests of Medicine who would fight him jealously it didn't take long
Hoxie started his first clinic in Illinois in 1924 and he immediately
incurred the wrath of organized medicine he was arrested more times than any
other man medical history yet by the 1950s the hoxsey clinic of Dallas Texas was the
largest privately owned Cancer Center in the world hoxsey clinics reached through
17 states endorsing the treatment were senators judges and even some doctors
two federal courts upheld its therapeutic value if the treatment was worthless how did it gain so much
support to claim a cure for cancer is to invite evaluation while the medical
profession turned its back on Hoxie numerous individuals did make personal
investigations these experiences repeatedly turn skeptics into believers