Studies on humans and animals suggest that Digestive Enzymes may also be of value in the prevention and
treatment of certain cancers. The Scot ish embryologist, Dr. John Beard, proposed in 1906 that pancreatic
enzymes represent the body’s main defense against cancer and would be useful in cancer treatment. Acting on his
hypothesis, a number of researchers pursued this line of investigation and the medical literature in the first two
decades of the 20th century provided documentation of several case reports of tumor regression and even
remission in terminal cancer patients treated with pancreatic enzymes.9
Dr. Beard (an embryologist) discovered that in all animals the pancreas is secreting enzymes well before birth.
Beard also noted that the placenta of all mammals invades the uterus and then on a certain day, its invasive growth
is shut off, which in humans is 56 days after conception. Beard realized that the day the placenta stopped growing
was the same day the pancreas started producing enzymes. From this he theorized that pancreatic Digestive
Enzymes were a signaling agent that stopped the cancer-like invasion of the placenta into the uterus. Despite the
ridiculing he received for this theory, Beard and others went on to shown that Digestive Enzymes can, in fact, stop
the growth of invasive cells, including many different human cancer cell lines.13 After Beard’s death in 1923, the
enzyme theory was largely forgot en until 1963, when Dr. Gonzalez, a doctor involved in the use of Digestive
Enzymes, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and treated himself with high dose oral pancreatic enzymes. The
treatment was successful and in 1993, Dr. Gonzalez was asked by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to present
some of his cancer cases. He presented 25 cases involving a variety of different cancers. Based on his
presentation, Dr. Gonzalez was a awarded a research grant from the NCI to perform a study on 12 patients with
diagnosed pancreatic cancer.9,13
The overall survival rate for pancreatic cancer is normally less than one percent at five years, after diagnosis. It is
one of the most highly malignant cancers of humankind, is considered to be incurable at this time, and is the fifth
leading cause of cancer death in the United States, claiming 27,800 lives in 1996. In the two-year study by
Gonzalez, he was able to significantly improve survival in the majority of patients who followed his protocol, which
included diet, nutritional supplements, detoxification procedures and large doses of proteolytic enzymes (25-40 gms
of porcine lyophilized pancreas product daily, taken in capsule form, away from meals, and spread evenly
throughout the day). Gonzalez has now gone on to receive full funding to do multi-institute studies using Digestive
Enzymes, based on these encouraging preliminary results.9