For years I have been involved in the clinical application of phytotherapy, nutritional supplements, amino acids, EDTA chelation therapy, hyperthermia using baths and saunas, and homeopathy for the treatment of chronic degenerative diseases. When I first began to study about an integrated approach to the treatment of these diseases, I recalled what I had learned at the Medical College of Georgia in my biochemistry class. My instructor was Ed Bresnick, PhD, who is now at Dartmouth Medical School. He made the biochemistry come alive by making application to clinical case studies. When we studied the cell, I was intrigued most by the powerhouses of the cell . . . the mitochondria. Things that he taught us in class kept taking me back to the mitochondria, which enumerated the importance of this important cellular organelle. As the battery of every cell, I learned that these units provide the energy that we need to run systems and functions of the body. I realized then that these were critical units and that if anything interfered with the Kreb’s cycle or the oxidative system that the body would have a considerable amount of problems.
In 1978 I began to study the nutritional (i.e., vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, amino acids) application to the human body for the correction of diseases. I studied Dr. Royal Lee’s writings from earlier years and was fascinated by what it revealed. I quickly went back to review Guyton’s physiology, Leninger’s biochemistry, and Dr. Bresnick’s notes to see if there was a connection and there was!
I began practice in 1979 applying nutritional products to different disease conditions and I began to see improvements. After six months, the cancer patients began to call and at first I turned them away. I had been trained as a Gynecologist and had had three and a half years of training with our Gynecologic Oncologist. I knew the standard treatments well but I saw very poor results. One case in my residency stuck in my mind and I recalled this case as I began to get these calls from cancer patients.
I was in charge of a case of ovarian cancer. She had gone to the Contreras Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico five years before to get on an integrated program along with Laetrile. When I investigated her old records I discovered that she had had stage IV ovarian cancer and was told about the normal conventional protocol but very little hope was offered. Here she was five years later with a recurrence in the right pelvic area blocking her right ureter. I convinced her that surgery was the right approach so that we could remove the mass and save the right kidney. At surgery, I discovered that there were no metastatic lesions as described by the previous post op dictation and that she had a mass in the right pelvis that was completely circular and approximately the size of a grapefruit. I simply lifted it out intact as there was no attachment to any organ. I told her after the surgery that she should continue her program because it had worked. When I discussed this with the chief of oncology, he simply rolled his eyes and stated that it couldn’t have been the nutritional supplements or the Laetrile.
I began to study the causes of cancer through books and materials of various physicians listed as follows: John Beard, PhD – “Enzyme Application to Cancer,” William Fredrick Koch, MD, PhD – “Survival Factor in Viral and Neoplastic Diseases,” Max Gerson, MD – “A Cancer Therapy – Fifty Cases,” Harold Manner, PhD – “The Death of Cancer,” Frank Shively, MD – “Multiple Proteolytic Enzyme Therapy in Cancer,” Albert Szent-Gyorgi, PhD – Electronic Biology and Cancer,” Otto Warburg – “The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer,” and many more. Through intensive study I began to realize that cancer and other chronic diseases were all due to blockage of the enzymes of oxidation. I began to search for ways of detoxification in order to free up these enzyme blockages. This search led me into the studies of herbology, homeopathy, nutritional medicine, environmental medicine, immunology, quantum physics, electrodermal screening, homotoxicology, EDTA chelation therapy, and matrix and matrix regulation. All of these areas of science and medicine helped me to formulate an approach to detoxification in which I saw reversal of cancer and other chronic diseases.
I began to lecture about 14 years ago about chronic degenerative diseases and cancer. One of my opening lectures I call “The Causes of Diseases” has been centered on oxygen, hydrogen and the mitochondria. I show how secondary causes interfere with oxygen utilization and block up the enzymes of the Kreb’s cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. After revealing the factors that block the mitochondria, I proceed to describe the proper steps of detoxification. A few years ago, Dr. Lewis Thomas, a physician and scientist at the Rockefeller Institute wrote a popular book entitled the “Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher,” in which he ruminated about the mitochondria:
“It is a good thing for the entire enterprise that mitochondria and chloroplasts have remained small, conservative, and stable, since these two organelles are, in a fundamental sense, the most important living things on earth. Between them they produce the oxygen and arrange for its use. In effect, they run the place.
My mitochondria comprise a very large proportion of me. I cannot do the calculation, but I suppose there is almost as much of them in sheer dry bulk as there is the rest of me. Looked at in this way, I could be taken for a very large, motile colony of respiring bacteria, operating a complex system of nuclei, microtubules, and neurons for the pleasure and sustenance of their families, and running, at the moment, a typewriter.
I am intimately involved, and obliged to do a great deal of essential work for my mitochondria. My nuclei code out the outer membranes of each, and a good many of the enzymes attached to the cristae must be synthesized by me. Each of them, by all accounts, makes only enough of its own materials to get along on, and the rest must come from me. And I am the one who has to do the worrying.
Now that I know about the situation, I can find all kinds of things to worry about. Viruses, for example. If my organelles are really symbiotic bacteria, colonizing me, what’s to prevent them from catching a virus, or if they have such a thing as lysogeny, from conveying a phage to other organelles? Then there is the question of my estate. Do my mitochondria all die with me, or did my children get some of mine along with their mother’s; this sort of thing should not worry me, I know, but it does.”
From The Lives of a Cell
by LEWIS THOMAS
A few years ago I began to review information about aging and the causes of aging. I again began to look at the different theories and discovered the articles of Dr. Wallace from Emory University. He was revealing how mitochondrial senescence was one of the causes of aging.
I began to get intrigued by this concept because of earlier studies from Otto Warburg, PhD. I began to look at the current literature on mitochondria and discovered over 90,000 articles published since 1980. I talked with a few friends about this and, together, we decided that the information about mitochondrial function and dysfunction emerging from the avalanche of published research probably offered the first systematic scientific basis for the empirical therapeutics we had all known for years to be effective. This gave an explanation of how nutrition and energetic therapies achieved their results in treating and curing degenerative diseases! Together we hurriedly compiled this beginning Reference Guide to bridge the gap from research to the clinical setting.
This Reference Guide for the Basic Science Aspects of the Mitochondria is a preliminary effort to cull out of the vast literature on the mitochondria, some guideposts for understanding how the mitochondria are not only involved, but pivotal in the etiology, function and reversal of these degenerative diseases.
Daniel G. Clark, M.D.
