The Unnatural Vegan vs. Durianrider vs. Gerson Controversy.

fully five years ago there was a
controversy raging on youtube about gerson therapy this was a controversy that drew in such luminaries of the medium as a natural vegan and durianrider sooner or later i myself also voiced my opinion on the issue but one of the reasons why i'm making this video today is that i think a great deal of the evidence about what happened and why has now disappeared it's become inaccessible or just impossible to find yes this is in part because some people just deleted their whole channel quit the game it's in part because some people uploaded apology videos and then deleted the earlier videos they made on the controversy and it is in part because of the changing system of censorship here on youtube that makes some things impossible to find even if they're here and erases others from existence entirely this is the year 2020 when mainstream inoffensive channels like leafy leafy is here can disappear in the blink of an eye over a minor controversy so how much more likely is it that some of these voices have been silenced because of the provocative nature of gerson therapy and the incredibly hot-tempered disputes it inspired within veganism and the shall we say unwanted critical attention it drew in from non-vegans ex-vegans anti-vegans without right gerson therapy is not vegan it never was vegan it has nothing to do with veganism in principle it is anti-vegan the man who invented it dr gerson recommended that people ingest raw calf liver raw veal liver exactly how it was they were to ingest it whether it was through eating or injections i think varies now this in part reflects a more 19th century notion that the internal organs of animals have some kind of miraculous healing powers that eating their muscle tissue does not but it in part reflects the underlying hypothesis of gerson therapy that what dr gerson was going to do was to cure cancer by stimulating or regenerating the activity of the liver now it's just worth pointing out even if that hypothesis were valid it is incorrect you can't cure cancer that would even if you remove someone's liver and give them a whole new liver that's not going to cure them of lung cancer that just it can't possibly work now of course secondarily eating or injecting yourself with the liver of a cow or a calf is not going to regenerate the function of your own liver right this is like a little kid who's read superman comics and really is thinking in a very mechanistic way about health you know how does superman's x-ray vision work oh we just draw draw a dotted line going from his eyes and then he sees the x-rays don't shoot out of your eyes do they it doesn't really make sense that eating a cow's liver or even injecting yourself with a cow liver paste would improve the function of your liver in this same way the fundamental principles of the plan of gerson therapy has nothing to do with modern claims 21st century claims that veganism will reduce your chances of getting cancer or will help you cope with cancer if you've already got it you only have a few years left to live those claims however controversial they may be have absolutely nothing to do with gerson therapy in theory arm practice now how did this become such a behemoth of a controversy that again if you weren't alive at that time or if you weren't on youtube watching these youtube videos before they were deleted in a storm of controversy you cannot imagine how intensely felt the passions were surrounding this controversy there was a particular woman named jen journey who made some very emotive videos weeping into the camera talking about how she was dying of cancer and how she was asking for donations so that she could undergo this frankly insane gerson treatment that is illegal in most modern western countries and it is banned by health regulations in others but you know there are some operations and some procedures where if you can't get them in the united states you can go somewhere south of the border and it's either legal or the laws are simply not being enforced so this was indeed a case where she wanted to leave the united states of america and seek this quote alternative close quote medical treatment elsewhere and some of these videos were very emotive now you can't look at those emotional moments captured on video in isolation just to understand the emotion she was pouring out on camera requires a little bit more analysis a little bit more context a little bit more research a little bit more fact-checking than that this particular woman she had watched her mother suffer with cancer suffer through conventional cancer therapy cancer treatment medical treatment hospital system and she felt that this was so awful this was so terrible to behold and i believe eventually her mother did die of cancer or complications thereof she took a vow she swore that if she were ever in that situation herself she would simply refuse all treatment and die with dignity depending on what country you live in you may or may not have the legal right to do that okay the right to refuse medical treatment no matter how valid no matter how it may save your life or improve your condition you may or may not have the right to make that decision no matter where you are and the authorities may or may not be interested in forcing the law wherever you are also um nobody wants to force someone to undergo cancer treatment against their will very messy sort of situation that is really the fundamental key to understanding the situation this didn't have to do with veganism it had to do with a kind of crackpot alternative medicine therapy and to this woman's credit she was not embracing that crackpot therapy as a miracle cure she was embracing it as an alternative to conventional treatment that she refused to participate in she was if you like wanting to embrace it as a kind of palliative care the precise meaning of palliative care is worth emphasizing here it was something she wanted to do to make herself feel better to enjoy her last few months or last few years of life however you want to put it now i have no doubt that some people who subscribe to the gerson therapy uh philosophy really do believe that it's a medical cure i think a lot of people give in to wishful thinking there are different there's a different set of ethical questions to be asked if people are choosing this not as a false cure but as a real form of palliative care it's like one of the comparisons i made was what if someone told you that they wanted donations so that they could fly around the world and go and see the pyramids and the great wall of china before they die they want to go to egypt and china it's not going to cure cancer it's just something you could call it palliative care it's something they want to do with something i want to experience for the day i do not know why anyone would want to frequently have coffee stuffed up their bum before they die yes yes y'all along with the other completely air sats non-vegan non-scientifically valid um treatments gerson therapy involves yes the the almighty coffee enema for some people reason people find it easy to talk themselves into believing that says miraculous benefits the list of things you would do um when undergoing gross in therapy much less appealing than going to see the pyramids uh in egypt going to visit with china nevertheless already there's a real difference between how this story was reported and what it actually meant for this woman okay unnatural vegan entered into the controversy at that time she was interested in defending the principles of reason skepticism and science she has lost all interest in that in the years since maybe maybe that event itself was really what shook her out of being interested in that kind of science reporting a skeptical approach because it it stopped that disappeared from her act that's not what her channel is about at all anymore um durianrider entered into the controversy because he just stated his sheer speculation that he thought that what this woman was doing was a fundraising scam like he didn't believe the story was was credible at all he later made an apology video for that in which he explained that basically he is a bumpkin who grew up in a small town with no education and that he basically regards everything he sees on the internet as a scam until otherwise proven to be valid although that is not a useful reasonable or intelligent explanation i think that really was his perspective i think that's i think there's some honesty even if that's a wildly irrational account of what happened from durianrider's side a much stranger apology video was put on the internet by a natural vegan where it's really not clear what she's apologizing for or why why it is that she's not standing up and saying hey either you believe in scientific treatment for cancer you don't and if you allow these types of lies to be spread on the internet about so-called alternative therapies those are lies that have a body count those are lies that'll actually kill people i'm sorry what i've just said is in a parallel universe what a natural vegan could have said or should have said she said nothing of the kind she made this weird stammering self-contradictory apology video where it really just seems she was pandering to every part of the audience she wants to be loved and adored by people who are pro-science and pro-skepticism and she wants to be loved endured by hippies hippies who want to believe in coffee enemas and you know crazy alternative science you think it's a terrible thing that she made this video criticizing uh you know a fundraiser for a woman who was dying of cancer so that is how the controversy ended here we are in the year 2020 when due to the changing face of youtube as a corporation due to the changing rules of internet censorship it would be more difficult than ever for someone to put together the pieces of this puzzle and learn the lessons i think really important lessons that were there for all of us to learn in this strange clash between the hippie alternative medicine self-healing through diet subculture and veganism as it was then just starting to emerge five years ago as a new 21st century ethical and political movement because at that time in terms of who was on the internet and who was using youtube the hippies who believed in coffee enemas really outnumbered the people who were involved in veganism for ecological reasons ethical reasons political reasons uh we were badly badly outnumbered by people who believed in magic uh put it that way i make this video today as a gift to my number one fan fandar fandar is a youtuber who has for about five years actually bitterly hated me harassed me and defamed me on the internet and just within the last few days fandar tried to make a video talking about this controversy this carnivorous that i haven't thought about for about four years now hasn't hasn't come up hasn't crossed my mind and i was struck that there were a lot of factual errors in fanduel's video which i think was a well-intentioned video it was the thing was trying to offer critique and look at why did doreen writer do the terrible things he did and why did the natural vegan do the terrible thing trying to make sense of this but of course it occurred to me if people like myself don't stand up and tell the story now it really would be very difficult for anyone else to put the the pieces of the puzzle back together again but fandaar and i say this to you assist anyone out there who's aspiring to get their own youtube channel rolling right you have to start taking yourself seriously as a journalist what we do here on youtube in the year 2020 it's really much more important than journalism it really relies much more on honesty and integrity as i used to say five years ago i mean keeping it real is all that we've got