Is Dr. Makoto Kondo, the Japanese Doctor Who Opposes Anticancer Treatment, Right? Should Cancer Be Aggressively Treated?

Last September, I went to Shaoxing, Zhejiang, to pay my respects at the hometown of a patient and close friend who had passed away. I stayed one night in his home. In the empty house he had left behind, I was all alone; my old friend was gone, but the books on his shelves still remained.

At night I slept in the bed he had once slept in. To be honest, I felt more than a little uneasy, so I did not sleep very soundly. I got up and began browsing through the various books on cancer he had left on his shelves. There I saw the works of Dr. Makoto Kondo, which had once caused a huge stir in Japanese medical circles, as well as books about the Gerson therapy.

This patient and close friend of mine was a very kind person; he came to know me and became my friend because he sought me out for treatment. He was generous, decisive in action, and quite far-sighted. While alive he made a great deal of money and harbored the ambition of founding a nonprofit anticancer organization in China.

He was a patient with malignant melanoma and also a devoted fan of Makoto Kondo. For a long period he rejected standard cancer therapy. But in the final stage of his life, he had no choice but to receive the standard treatment at the Edson Cancer Center in the United States—because his family no longer agreed to his stubborn insistence. In the end, after undergoing oncolytic virus therapy there, his disease progressed rapidly and he passed away.

His treatment cannot be said to have had no effect, but it must be said that he was a victim of Makoto Kondo. When he first came to me for treatment, I combined several patent medicines such as Compound Cantharis Capsules, Ping Xiao tablets, and Xi Huang pills, along with a decoction, and quickly shrank a very large metastatic lesion in his groin considerably. His life was no longer disrupted as a result, and afterward he went to North America—he had his own house and land in Houston, USA.

Because he had long worked in finance and investment, once his condition went into remission he could not stay idle. After going to North America he traveled to Europe and South America as well, searching everywhere for investment opportunities. He was also thinking about leasing a large tract of land for me to grow medicinal herbs, inviting me to join him in working for his vast anticancer philanthropy plan.

He was very young—only 40 when he fell ill. He deeply hoped to cure his cancer once and for all. Financially he was also very well off, so he could afford any expensive treatment in the world today. But it was plain to see that he was fascinated by Makoto Kondo's theory that cancer need not be treated and by the theories of the Gerson therapy. Therefore, once his condition went into remission, he stopped using both TCM anticancer drugs and Western anticancer drugs.

When he passed away, his family gave me all the various Chinese and Western medicines he had left. Only then did I realize that although he had asked doctors to write prescriptions and had bought the medicines, he had barely taken them at all.

Regrettably, under the guidance of Makoto Kondo's philosophy of doing nothing about cancer, his disease progressed rapidly. Only later, when widespread metastases had finally appeared and his mobility had already been greatly impaired, was he willing to accept active treatment.

But it was already too late. By then, whether it was PD-1 or Chinese medicine, or the chemotherapy he later had to accept at his family's insistence, none of it had much effect on him.

After he bravely tried oncolytic virus therapy in the United States, within less than half a month his disease exploded in its progression. The various side effects were also extremely severe, and his body was devastated. By the time I saw him again on a video call, a vigorous, hearty adult just one year before had already become a wizened, decrepit little old man.

He invited me to come to the United States to treat him, but unfortunately, after several trips to the U.S. Embassy to apply for a visa I was never approved. By then he could no longer fly back to China. When he returned to China, it was as his forever-sleeping remains, shipped back by air cargo.

I went to the funeral parlor in his hometown to bear his coffin and see him off. Seeing this familiar, kind face sleeping forever like that, my heart was both grief-stricken and heavy. Eight months later, I came to his hometown again to pay my respects at his grave and express my sorrow.

He was the patient-friend I had grown closest to over all my years of practicing medicine. By the time I reached his grave that day, night had already fallen. The green mountains were lush, the insects chirred, and the grave of this brother with such lofty ambitions was already overgrown with weeds.

I wonder how Dr. Makoto Kondo would feel if he encountered patients like this one, who died young under his influence. This patient initially responded very well to treatment—he was sensitive to both Chinese medicine and PD-1. It was only because he was bewitched by Kondo's claims that he chose to give up on his own.

After he met me, I was involved in his entire course of treatment. Even on his deathbed, his last instruction to his family was that whatever treatment the doctors at the Edson Cancer Center requested, they had to obtain my consent before proceeding—otherwise they should not do it.

When he knew the game was up, he even wanted to allocate some of his estate to me to support my medical research. I politely declined, because I did not want to end up falling out with his family over an inheritance dispute, and I was also capable of raising the necessary funds for my own research.

So a patient like this had absolutely no problem trusting me. It was just that, at that time, what I could do was also limited. When his disease raged out of control, all I could do was relieve his various sufferings—the pain brought by the illness and the various side effects brought by Western treatment.

After he died, I went to his home to pay my respects. When I came out, his family saw me looking through his books. They told me that among these books, whatever was useful to me I could pick and take away. Among the stack I took were Dr. Kondo's various works opposing cancer treatment, books on natural therapies such as the Gerson therapy, and some famous medical classics.

Dr. Kondo's works won the Japan "Kikuchi Kan" Prize, which shows how great his influence is. Only recently did I finish reading through these works of Dr. Kondo left by my late friend.

It must be said that Dr. Kondo's articles and books are extremely eloquent. Using abundant data, he argues that chemotherapy and other anticancer therapies are useless for adult cancer patients with solid tumors such as lung and gastric cancer, and that cancer patients who forgo treatment enjoy better survival and quality of life than those who are treated.

Many of the phenomena Dr. Kondo describes objectively exist. Many doctors refute his theories, but patients are not fools either. Especially in this modern age of convenient communication, patients obtain a great deal of real data from fellow patient communities, and these confirm what Kondo says.

Moreover, it is an undeniable fact that pharmaceutical companies collude with doctors and research institutions, fabricate data, exaggerate the efficacy of anticancer drugs, and drain cancer patients' wallets through expensive medications. It is not without reason that readers hail Dr. Kondo as the conscience of the medical world.

But it cannot be denied that the views Dr. Kondo raises have far too many biases. He overstates the dark side of medicine and overstates the harms of cancer treatments such as surgery and chemotherapy, and the cases he followed were too few—he only followed a little over 150 cancer patients.

Moreover, because he formed a biased opinion from the very start, he also overlooked the large number of patients who benefit from conventional anticancer therapies such as chemotherapy. Judging from how Kondo personally stopped his own younger sister from undergoing surgery, chemotherapy, and other anticancer treatments, he genuinely believes in his own views rather than using them to mislead readers.

Over the years, through various cancer organizations I have come to know a great many cancer patients with very long survival times. It must be said that there are many who have benefited from surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, or Chinese medicine. Many cancer patients achieve remission and long-term survival under doctors' care.

These are overlooked by Dr. Kondo. He unilaterally emphasizes the side effects and ineffectiveness of cancer treatment, which is going to the other extreme. Although the side effects of cancer treatment do exist, and although a great many patients' anticancer treatments indeed end in failure.

The ugly phenomena in the medical world that Kondo criticizes also objectively exist; this cannot be denied. The overtreatment of cancer and the profit-mongering of anticancer drug manufacturers who collude with governments and the medical establishment to reap huge profits have become a global medical disaster.

Giving chemotherapy and targeted drugs to patients who absolutely should not receive them ultimately destroys the patient's body, drains the family's savings, and brings about the patient's early death—yes, many treatments do indeed accelerate patients' deaths rather than prolong their lives.

So personally, I believe that when patients and their families read Dr. Kondo's works, they should bring a critical spirit: they must recognize both that the many ugly medical phenomena he points out do exist and that his views are extreme.

Here I especially want to remind those patients and their families who blindly trust the level of cancer treatment in Japan and the United States: many of the phenomena Kondo criticizes are precisely what happens in these developed economies of Japan and the United States. Foreign medicine is also full of pitfalls.

The Emperor of All Maladies by the American physician Siddhartha Mukherjee also mentions scandals of fabricated clinical data at some American medical institutions and by some doctors. I recommend everyone read it when you have time.

I have treated many wealthy patients. Some of them went to developed countries like the United States and Japan seeking so-called cutting-edge anticancer technologies, but few of them ended up with good outcomes.

My personal advice is that when cancer patients and their families choose a medical plan, they should take "moderate treatment, within one's means" as their guiding principle. Here, "means" includes both financial resources and the patient's physical strength and original qi. Do not make treatment decisions that would financially crush your family or exceed what your body can bear, because such decisions often bring about catastrophic consequences.

I have read the works of doctors from many countries; relatively speaking, the concepts I most respect belong to India's traditional medicine, Ayurveda.

Only in Ayurvedic works have I seen doctors treating a patient's care as a systematic project that takes into account comprehensive factors such as the family's financial capacity and psychological factors. They advise patients to make financial plans and psychological adjustments while treating their disease.

In real life I often encounter patients and their families who pursue cancer treatment recklessly. While fighting the cancer they suffer one misfortune after another, their own experience confirming the old Chinese saying that "when the house leaks, it rains all night."

The reason is that these families, under the threat of death, have already lost their reason and have landed in a total mess in their financial planning and treatment decisions. As a result, other members of the cancer-stricken family often collapse physically and mentally under the overwhelming pressure, and eventually the entire family falls into a catastrophic predicament.

Many years ago I tried to incorporate some Ayurvedic ideas into how I communicate with patients and their families. But I find that in a country like China, with a strong filial culture and insufficient death education, although Ayurvedic ideas are excellent—the traditional medicine of ancient India is known as the mother of world medicine for good reason, and many of its ideas are more sophisticated and more down-to-earth than Chinese medicine—they are not easily accepted by Chinese patients and their families.

India's spiritual philosophy is remarkable worldwide, and the fact that Buddhism arose in India has its social roots. Travelers from all over the world who have visited the cremation temples in India and Nepal should have a deep impression of the death-related elements in Indian culture.

Indians give the world a profound lesson: when death is inevitable, how to peacefully bid farewell to life under the threat of death is a necessary life practice. Whether it is the equanimity of atheists or the comfort theists find in the idea of reincarnation, as long as it helps humans leave this world peacefully, it is a necessary spiritual solace for us mortals.

Moreover, Indian spiritual philosophy also helps humans balance their minds. The widely held idea of karma in Indian society is always far gentler than guns and cannons in calming human indignation. A calm state of mind benefits anyone's physical and mental health.

We must admit that they are more advanced than us in death education. Some may regard some Indian ideas about death as spiritual opium poisoning the human mind. But I do not think so: transcending life and death is one of the unavoidable themes of a lifetime.

For cancer patients, transcending life and death is a life theme they must immediately confront after receiving the hospital's diagnosis. No matter how advanced science and civilization become, they cannot change the limits nature has set for life.

Only after cancer patients have transcended life and death, yet without treating death recklessly, can they calmly, rationally, and peacefully make decisions that are in their own best interest.

The inaction Dr. Kondo advocates is certainly not advisable, but the overtreatment promoted by the modern medical system also has many problems. The profit-mongering in the medical world that Kondo criticizes objectively exists.

The reason so many doctors labor to discredit Kondo yet he still has so many devoted followers is that ordinary people, in their actual lives and in the real examples of their own relatives and friends close at hand, have seen that the phenomena Kondo criticizes truly exist.

Ask yourselves: among the relatives and friends of a cancer patient who dies within half a year of chemoradiotherapy, in torment from its effects, who could still easily believe in the so-called standard and regulated treatment regimens doctors recommend?

There are countless such examples around us, and the educational impact of these cases on the public cannot be underestimated. Even without Kondo's books sweeping the world, these real cases alone are enough to influence many people's decisions.

I have never advocated that cancer patients spend their families into ruin to treat cancer, and I myself firmly refuse to design treatment plans that would bankrupt any cancer patient. On the one hand, doing so really is irrational; on the other hand, it is also my own strategy to avoid medical risk—driving cancer patients' families into bankruptcy breeds a great many doctor-patient disputes.

I also oppose the attitude of doing nothing about cancer that Dr. Kondo advocates; the fact is that this attitude is utterly wrong. When financial circumstances permit, necessary and well-judged treatment greatly helps improve cancer patients' quality of life and prolong survival.

At the same time, I do not advocate that cancer patients, disregarding their physical condition, over-treat themselves. If the body cannot withstand the strong toxic side effects of chemoradiotherapy, one should not force oneself through it—for the vast majority of frail cancer patients, chemoradiotherapy lowers their quality of life and shortens their survival; this is an undeniable fact. What Dr. Kondo says—that cancer patients with widespread metastases are not suitable for surgery, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy—is correct and matches the real situation.

When reading anyone's articles and weighing any viewpoint, you should think rationally and not be easily swayed by anyone's opinions. On the road to fighting cancer, you need the help of doctors and medicines, but you also need your "brain."

Overall, I recommend reading Kondo's works, because they do contain plenty of "nutrients" sufficient to resist the brainwashing of many doctors who are deep in their own prejudices. But you should also be careful not to be poisoned too deeply.

As Kondo himself said, what he opposes is not medicine, but people's excessive faith in medicine.