A friend brought my attention to a review of Aajonus Vonderplanitz's book
"We Want To Live" by cancer researcher Ralph W. Moss, P.hD. which can be
found at http://www.ralphmoss.com/Vonderplanitz.html -  Check out his
website which is quite interesting.

paragraph) whose improved blood work was instrumental in spurring Michael
Schachter's interest in=20
Aajonus' work died about six weeks ago as previously reported by me.=20

On the issue of cancer remissions/cures (see the fourth & fifth paragraph
from the end) Aajonus at a recent lecture pointed out that most of the 336
cancer remissions mentioned in his book are not true reversals and that
actual cancer cures in his experience take many years to bring about.

Best, Peter
[log in to unmask]

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Book Review: We Want to Live by Aajonus Vonderplanitz

                          "From the Planets"

                          =A9 1997 Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.
                             (www.ralphmoss.com)

Michael Schachter, M.D., an old friend who treats many cancer patients,
returned from the September meeting of The Cancer Control Society in
Pasadena all fired up: he had heard a presentation by one Aajonus
Vonderplanitz on the latter's new book, "We Want to Live."*

Mike had also seen the blood work on a multiple myeloma patient who had
failed to respond to all other conventional and unconventional treatments.
The man went to Mr. Vonderplanitz and in a very short time most of his
blood parameters had completely normalized.

Shortly thereafter, Mike spoke at the panel that Mary Ann Richardson, Ph.D.
and I organized at the Third International Congress of Alternative and
Complementary Medicine in Arlington, VA. There, he made his enthusiasm for
what Mr. Vonderplanitz was doing public. And so I ordered and read this
book. It annoyed, fascinated and challenged me.

I was very skeptical. There is the question of authority. I am certainly
not hung up on academic credentials, and know that some very excellent
discoveries can come out of left field. But essentially Aajonus has little
on his resume that reassures us that he knows what he's talking about. He
is a self-appointed "nutritionist," who tells us that he was featured in
Disney's Epcot Magazine and has "fostered nutriton on several talk TV and
radio shows and children's programs." Fine, but hardly promising for an
expert on cancer therapy.

                                Dick Something

This book is odd, as odd as the author's name. (His real name, he
confesses, is Dick something, but not liking the sexual connotations of
"Dick," he chose a new name that he calls "more Graeco-Roman sounding."
Graeco-Roman? "Aajonus," he is constantly explaining, "like homogenous but
without the hom." "Vonderplanitz" seems also made-up German meaning "From
the Planets."

Little things about this book and its author annoyed me. He says "effect"
when he means "affect," (twice on page 22 alone); that sort of thing. The
organization of the book is maddening: the first half is a novelistic story
of his estranged son's recovery from a severe head injury, interrupted by
numerous appendices. He suggests that the reader go through the book
consecutively but, hungry for details, I found myself constantly flipping
back and forth.

The core of the book is how Mr. V. barged into the hospital where his
comatose son was dying from his car injuries and took charge of his
treatment. At one point he went so far as to break open the nurses'
medicine cabinets, pour his son's medication down the drain, and replace
them with certain formulas of his own.

What were these formulas? Well, Aajonus is a total fanatic for raw foods.

His prescription for health for everyone (his comatose son included) is to
get back to basics, and start eating the way our ancestors reputedly ate.
His basic philosophy is that (a) food is to be eaten in a live, raw
condition; and (b) a diet rich in raw fats and raw meats from natural
sources is essential to health. According to the introduction to his book,
"we must think of them as new food groups, utterly different in their
biochemistry from the fats and meats we have been taught to avoid in cooked
form." Thus, his diet primarily encompasses:

     raw animal meats (beef, fish, poultry, organic eggs)=20
     raw dairy products (unsalted raw butter, raw milk, raw cream, unsalted
raw cheeses,      raw kefir)=20
     raw whole fruits and vegetables (especially vegetable juices)=20
     unheated honey=20

Weird? Well, this is not unheard of in the holistic health movement. In the
1930s and 1940s there was fascinating work done by Francis Pottinger, M.D.,
who showed that raw foods contain nutrients that seemed to be vital for
health. Then came Weston Price, D.D.S., a dentist who believed that
deterioration of the dental arch and of teeth in general could be
correlated with the switch towards an adulterated food supply. Price
traveled the world studying so-called "primitive" diets. According to
Price, most of the native cultures of that time ate many animal foods raw
(milk and milk products
in Switzerland and Africa, Eskimos, even Japanese with their sushi).

                                 Raw Meats

According to this point of view, "civilization" brought with it a taste for
cooked meats, and a consequent decline in general vitality and health.
First, I am not initially convinced by Mr. V.'s contention that raw meat
and dairy products are entirely safe to eat, especially for those who have
compromised immune systems. (I will not attempt to deal with the
intricacies of the potential bacterial contamination, a discussion too
involved for this book review.)

Also, from a historical point of view, the opening sentence in the
"Encyclopedia Britannica" article on Gastronomy reads: "The first
significant step towards the development of gastonomy was the use of fire
by primitive man to cook his food." There are in fact prehistoric cave
paintings such as those in Les Trois Fr=E8res in Ari=E8ge, southern France,
depicting these gastronomic events. These sites date
from 15,000 - 10,000 B.C. Our ancestors apparently had a yen for cooked
meat going back many thousands of years. Not for nothing was Prometheus,
the bringer of fire, considered the culture hero of the Greeks.

Nevertheless, I am prepared to admit that rare or even raw meat may have a
role to play in the dietary control of cancer. Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D. of
New York City has observed that some of his cancer patients tend to thrive
on diets that include fatty and very rare meats. These tend to be
particularly the leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma patients. Dr.
Gonzalez is not saying this to promote a book or to entice people to his
clinic. I can only assume that this is an honest observation on the part of
an intelligent and innovative clinician.

So there is some precedent for this in at least the holistic end of medical
practice. But Aajonus takes it a few giant steps further. He believes that
raw food and particularly raw meat is a cure for whatever ails us,
especially but not limited to cancer.

Aajonus is the type of person we have all met: the health food nut with the
crazy diet that will cure everyone of everything. He himself has done
everything, and his Theory can explain everything. He is pure California:
has a cantaloupe- and honeydew-colored kitchen, paints houses, does a
little acting (on "General Hospital") on the side. His jacket photo is a
glamourous head shot.

He tells us he lived in the California desert for years, met fabled
American Indian medicine men (long departed) on vision quests, and has
certain other-worldly connections (hence, I assume, the "from the planets"
name). He also has suffered=ADand cured himself of various diseases and
conditions: first and foremost cancer, but also a massive dose of "death
head" mushroom poisoning.

There is an essential sloppiness to the science of all this. I do not trust
his scientific "facts" or misuse of statistics. For instance, like many
people in the alternative health movement, he is very down on vaccinations.
At one point he trots out some figures to "prove" that "polio vaccines
create polio" (p.270). The figures he gives purport to show that in five
areas there was far more polio reported in 1959, after compulsory
vaccination was introduced, than in 1958, before it was required. No
references are given for these figures. But even if they are true, they are
probably part of a larger picture whose context is not provided. Polio is
an epidemic disease and so large differences are to be expected in
occurrence rates from year to year. By Aajanous' own reasoning, there
should be explosive outbreaks of polio in the Western world by now. But, as
every child knows, the opposite is true. The rates of polio plummeted
following introduction of the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Many
advocates of alternative medicine paint themselves into corners with this
type of dogmatic reasoning.

                            Documentation Needed

There are many other scientific and factual boners in this book. But with
all that I suspect that Mr. Vonderplanitz has a future in the world of
alternative cancer treatments. He claims to have cured himself of multiple
myeloma (a cancer of the bone marrow) and also tells in some detail the
cancer history of his former companion, Owanza di Mdina, who (he says) was
diagnosed as having thirty very small malignant tumors in her spine,
sixteen in her liver, six in her utreus, and innumerable nonmalignant ones
in her brain. Instead of taking radiation and chemotherapy, she went on Mr.
V's
raw diet (p. 281). She is alive and well with no sign of cancer years later.

In a well-written introduction to the second half of this book, Mr. Ron
Strauss writes that Aajonus "apparently facilitated 236 cancer remissions
(of 240 cases) as well as many recoveries from heart disease, chronic
fatigue and other serious illnesses." This 98+ percent cure rate is
certainly of great interest to anyone who is dealing with cancer on a
personal or professional level. We can assume that many of these cases,
like Owanza's, were considered incurable by conventional doctors. This sort
of claim cannot help but generate a great deal of excitement in the cancer
world. The name of
Aajonus Vonderplanitz may soon be on everyone's lips.

The problem is, On what basis are such claims made? How are Mr. V's
proponents defining
"remission" or "cure"? What sort of documentation can they offer? As I
mentioned, my initial interest in this topic was stirred by the report on
one patient. At the Arlington meeting, I looked at a copy of the blood
work. It was very impressive and looked as if something remarkable was
happening. But who is following up on this case? And are we sure that this
man had not concomitantly been taking other treatments that might also
result in the same effects. It is certainly impossible to make a case for
anything based on one case.

Then what about the "236 cancer remissions"? If Aajonus can predictably get
such results, he should be able to document them. No amount of paranoia
about the medical profession will serve as an excuse for failure to do so.
In fact, one of my disappointments with this book is the lack of
documentation of his own case, that of Owanza's, or any of the other
patients mentioned. Where were they treated? By whom? Exactly what
conventional treatments did they receive? What proof is there that they are
currently in remission?

Claims of cancer cures are social dynamite. They get peoples' hopes up, set
them off on sometimes fruitless paths, just when there is little time to
waste. And so claims should be made with the greatest degree of
responsibility and circumspection. And advocates of alternative medicine
should raise their standards as to what they are willing to accept or
promote. We have witnessed over and over again the phenomenon of the "cure
du jour." Kathy Keeton's apparent remission on hydrazine sulfate generated
tens of thousands of hits to Web sites and calls to cancer agencies. I
would not be surprised if Aajanous's book will set a similar phenomenon in
motion.

I believe that Aajonus is sincere and that himself "walks the walk" of raw
foodism. It is certainly conceivable to me that some individuals need and
crave raw foods, even raw meats. Although I am healthy, I myself went out
and bought raw nuts, nut butters, a wonderful jar of raw honey, and some
raw cheddar after reading this book! For me, personally, this message is
insidiously seductive. It is precisely because of this that our left brains
have to get into the act and demand facts to support instinctual urgings.

For cancer patients, there is a lot at stake.

* We Want to Live: Out of the Grips of Disease and Death and Healthfully
(the facts), Carnelian Bay Castle Press, P.O. Box 7100-47, Santa Monica, CA
90406-7100, ISBN 1-889356-77-8, $29.95). I ordered it through Barnes &=
 Noble.



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