Dr. William Kelley
Dr. William Donald Kelley was born in Kansas in 1925. He graduated at the Baylor University in Texas and became both Master of Science and Doctor of Dental Surgery (D.D.S). Later on, he was working hard as an orthodontist, sometimes more than 12 hours per day. Thus, he did not have much time to eat healthy, and was mostly consuming candy bars and junk food. In the 1960’s, Dr. Kelley started to feel very unhealthy. He was having pains all over his body and started feeling depressive. Doctors diagnosed him with advanced pancreatic cancer with metastasis and no option for surgery. They claimed he had just a few weeks to live and gave up on him. Luckily for Dr. Kelley, his mother advised him to get rid of junk food and start eating healthy. That’s how he started eating fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts, and that’s when he started feeling better. After some months he was not progressing anymore, so he started using pancreatic enzymes to aid his digestion. As he had healed himself, he started treating and helping other people as well. He invented an alternative cancer treatment, known as metabolic therapy. He believed that “wrong foods” would make cancer cells grow, while “good foods” would enhance the body to defend itself from cancer.
Dr. Kelley developed his cancer theories based off of the work of Dr. Beard, who purposed the pancreas is one of the main organs which protects the body against cancer as it regulates insulin as well as produces over 30 enzymes. Some of which dissolve proteins such as those that cover cancer cells from being identified by the immune system. He claimed that cancer is a single disease that’s caused by the lack of enzymes. He strongly believed that pancreatic enzymes are the main defense of the body against cancer. Thus, his treatment was based on the injection of pancreatic enzymes, along with the use of vitamins, minerals and coffee enemas, as well as the adherence to a specific diet. He discovered that not all patients had the same reaction to the same type of diet. That’s how he postulated his theory of metabolic type. He believed that genetics and environment determined different people to have different dietary requirements (i.e. requirements for carnivorous or vegetarian diet, raw or cooked food).
Dr. Kelley published several books (“One answer to Cancer” as the first one) and invented tests for cancer, such as the Enzyme test and Index of Malignancy, named by him. Unfortunately, his theories were not well accepted. The American Cancer Society added his treatment approach to unproven methods in 1971. By the 1980’s, Dr. Kelley lost his dental license, just some years after he had been convicted for practicing medicine without a license. Years later Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez a young undergrad set out to prove Dr. Kelley wrong investigating 50 case studies of Dr. Kelleys previous patients. Dr. Gonzalez pursued this comprehensive, five-year analysis of Dr. Kelley’s approach as partial fulfillment of his immunology fellowship under the direction of Robert A Good, Ph.D., M.D., “founder of modern immunology.” Dr. Gonzalez wrote the book “One Man Alone” published in 2010 about his investigation into Dr. Kelley’s work illustrating the value of this nutritional-enzyme regimen, as well as Dr. Kelley’s remarkable success with patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Dr. Kelley never got to see his work recognized as he died in 2005 of a heart attack.
