Failed Hatchet Job on Larry King, Suzanne Somers, Knockout

Suzanne Somers Larry King Knockout Interview

by Jeffrey Dach MD. Original article here.

I was astonished, and very curious that the networks allowed the Larry King - Knockout interview to air Friday night, Oct 23. I recorded the show and watched it Saturday night. Here is my review of the TV interview.

Suzanne's Cancer Scare Nightmare

Suzanne was solo for the first segment, and related her "cancer scare nightmare". One day, suddenly, she entered the hospital with respiratory distress, examined and told by six doctors her lungs were filled with cancer. She was offered chemotherapy treatment, and told to "put your affairs in order". Luckily it was all a false alarm. Eventually, a lung biopsy showed a common fungal infection called valley fever. During this cancer nightmare she contemplated her own death, and became more thankful for the love of friends and family. Additionally, she was motivated to examine alternative cancer treatments other than chemotherapy. Hence the book, Knockout, in which she interviews doctors curing cancer with non-conventional treatments.

Suzanne's Two Medical Heretics

In the next segment, Larry King introduces two doctors from Suzanne's Knockout book. The first was Stanislaw R. Burzynski, M.D., Ph.D. who isolated peptides called antineoplastins which have anticancer activity. Results have been impressive for brain tumors, such as the one that killed Ed Kennedy, and another type of cancer called lymphomas.

The second doctor from Suzanne's book was Nicholas Gonzalez MD who treats cancer with high dose pancreatic enzymes along with a nutritional supplement program. Gonzalez has considerable success with cancer remissions in advanced cases, especially pancreatic cancer. This cancer treatment is based on the Trophoblast Theory of Cancer.

The Defenders of Conventional Medicine

To balance off the medical heretics, two heavy weight cancer MD's defended the cancer establishment, Otis Brawley and Keith Black.

Otis Brawley MD is Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society, and professor of hematology, oncology, and medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology at the Emory Rollins School of Public Health. I actually like Otis. He is a very likable guy, speaks well and makes a good impression. He has taken some very courageous stands, for example, he opposes mass screening with PSA tests for prostate cancer, and has personally declined a PSA test.

The second defender, Dr. Keith L. Black, is chairman of the department of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was on the 1997 cover of Time Magazine as a "Hero of Medicine". I haven't seen him before, but on this TV appearance, he seemed stressed out, disagreeable, and out of sorts. He did not make a very good impression. We will find out why below.

Transcripts

The complete transcripts of the interview can be found here.

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