William Donald Kelley, DDS, MS

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, April, 2005 by Ralph W. Moss

William Donald Kelley, DDS, MS, one of the most significant figures in the history of alternative cancer treatments, passed away on January 30, 2005, at the age of 79. The cause of death was congestive heart failure. He had a long history of heart problems, with severe rhythm disturbances, beginning in the 1960s.

Dr. Kelley was born on November 1, 1925 on an 80-acre "dirt farm" in Winfield, Kansas. His father had died young of a heart attack and, during the Great Depression, his mother raised three sons alone. All three sons went to college, then graduate school, and became successful professionals.

William Kelley was an unusual child. He once told me that when he was three he had a vision of Jesus approaching him, as he was playing in a sandpile. He took him up into his arms and instructed him to become a medical missionary. Kelley later moved to Texas and studied at Baylor University. Under the influence of his father-in-law, he became a successful orthodontist, working 12 to 14 hours per day putting braces on the teeth of the children of Grapevine, Texas. He and his first wife adopted four children and lived the typical suburban existence of the 1950s. In what little spare time he had he restored antique cars. Always a determined worker, he practically lived on candy bars and other junk food.

Around 1960, his health began to deteriorate. The first thing he noticed was diminishing eyesight. He also developed muscle cramps and severe chest pains and went into a severe mental depression. The culmination came in 1964, when he suffered a gastric distention and was hospitalized. A series of X-rays showed the signs of advancing pancreatic cancer, including lesions in his lungs, hip and liver. His surgeon refused to operate, saying that Kelley had only four to eight weeks to live. The doctors were so certain of their diagnosis that they felt no need to take a biopsy of the tumor, an omission that was to hound Kelley in later years.

Kelley was ready to give up, but his redoubtable frontier mother came from Kansas to rescue him. She threw out the junk food and meat and instructed him to eat only fresh and raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains and seed. After several months on this regimen Kelley began to feel better. He was even able to return to work. In a health food store he then discovered the work of dietary pioneer, Max Gerson, who had written the book, Cancer Therapy: Fifty Cases, which advocated a similar program.

After six or seven months, however, Kelley stopped improving and developed severe digestive problems, probably from the advancing cancer. He therefore began taking pancreatic enzymes, at first simply to aid his digestion. He eventually increased the dose to 50 enzyme capsules per day. He then discovered the work of the Scottish embryologist, John Beard, DSc, who early in the 20th century had postulated that pancreatic enzymes were a natural control for cancer. He also encountered the writings of Dr. Edward Howell, author of Enzyme Nutrition, and an early apostle of the raw plant food diet. In time, Kelley healed from his own disease and went on to treat over 30,000 other patients.

Initially, Kelley discovered that while many people did well on this diet, others did not. His second wife, Susie, was one of these. It turned out that she needed rare red meat in order to control her severe allergies. Thus was born Kelley's concept of the Metabolic Type, in which different people, because of genetic heritage and environmental factors, had different requirements for vegetarian or carnivorous diets, raw and/or cooked. Kelley was influenced in his thinking about meat by the work of Vilhjamur Steffanson, the Harvardtrained explorer who, among other things, had shown that the Eskimo remained cancer-free on a fatty red meat diet.

One Answer to Cancer

Kelley was the author of several books, including his self-help book, One Answer to Cancer, first published in 1967, and an updated edition, Cancer: Curing the Incurable Without Surgery, Chemotherapy or Radiation (2001). His tests for cancer included the Kelley Enzyme Test and the Kelley Index of Malignancy. In 1970, Kelley was convicted of practicing medicine without a license, and in 1976 the courts suspended his dental license for 5 years. For a while in the late 1970s he worked in a clinic south of Tijuana.

Dr. Kelley's high point of fame came in 1980, when he treated the popular US film actor Steve McQueen for advanced mesothelioma, a form of chest and abdomen cancer generally caused by asbestos exposure. McQueen died after undergoing surgery in 1980. Kelley later claimed that McQueen had actually been cured, but then murdered because he "was going to blow the lid off of the cancer racket." In the public's mind, however, this failure dealt a blow to all of Kelley's claims of success with cancer.

In the 1970s, Kelley was reasonable in his statements about medical orthodoxy and, although he appreciated the difficulties of changing America's lifestyle, looked forward to a fair and proper evaluation of his method. As time progressed, however, he became increasingly despondent that this could ever happen.