William Donald Kelley

William Donald Kelley, DDS, MS (November 1, 1925 — January 30, 2005), was an orthodontist and one of the most significant figures in the history of alternative cancer treatments. He developed the Kelley cancer therapy, which was based around large doses of pancreatic enzymes, coffee enemas and a juice diet. Dr. Kelley claimed that he cured himself of pancreatic cancer using this method.

Kelley was the author of several books, including a self-help book, One Answer to Cancer, (1967).

In the 1980s, New York physician Nicholas Gonzalez started practicing Kelley's methods, gaining some notoriety. In 1999, he published a pilot study of patients with inoperable, late-stage pancreatic cancer, showing that 81 percent survived at least one year, 45 percent two years and 36 percent three years, much higher than typical of other cases in the National Cancer Database. He then received a National Cancer Institute grant for a larger randomized trial (Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, 6/1/03).

Metabolic diet
Kelley developed the concept of the metabolic type, in which different people, because of genetic heritage and environmental factors, may have different requirements for vegetarian or carnivorous diets, raw and/or cooked. He was influenced in his thinking about meat by Vilhjamur Steffanson, the Harvard trained explorer who is said to have shown that Eskimos remain cancer-free on a fatty red meat diet.

Controversy and decline
In the 1970s, Kelley was tolerant in speaking about medical orthodoxy and looked forward to a fair and proper evaluation of his metabolic diet methods, which had become controversial, but he eventually became despondent that this could ever happen. He also became paranoid. By the 1980s, his marriage had broken up, he lost control of his once-thriving organization, and his mental and physical health deteriorated.

Kelley also had a dispute with Gonzalez and filed a lawsuit against the younger doctor, which was dismissed.

Publications

 * 1967, One Answer to Cancer External source
 * 2001, Cancer: Curing the Incurable Without Surgery, Chemotherapy or Radiation