Foundation for Advancement in Cancer Therapy
Non-Toxic Biological Approaches to the Theories,
Treatments and Prevention of Cancer

2024
Our 53rd Year

Bernie Nevins Recovered Patient By FACT

Ruth Sackman: I had occasion between the last convention and this to speak before the American Cancer Society Colostomy Group in New York City. At the end of the talk, typically, some people who didn’t ask their questions from the floor came up and surrounded me with questions. But there was one man in particular who said, “Well, isn’t the problem caused by genes?”

I looked at him strangely and couldn’t imagine what he was talking about, talking about colon cancer being in the genes. I said, “Well, what do you mean?”

He said that there were two or three a cousin or an uncle or a father, a brother, I can’t remember all of that exactly members of the family who also had colon cancer and so, therefore, he felt. he was a product of this family and it was in the genes.

Well, when we started to plan this convention, I immediately thought of a patient that we had helped, I think, 14 years ago, and periodically were in touch with.

And I told this to this patient: I said I don’t think so, because we have a patient who was a colon cancer patient whose mother had colon cancer, had a colostomy, died within a year, whose father had colon cancer, had a colostomy and died within a year. But this patient isn’t dead. He’s doing very well.

So when we started to plan this convention, I felt, this is the time for me to call Bernie Nevins and have him make a presentation because I’m sure there might be other people where there’s a member of the fa mily with cancer, assuming therefore, they’re automatically going to be victims. Especially, if they get breast cancer and have a parent die; they can be absolutely sure death is imminent for them.

So you can see the importance of this particular case history. He’s a very pleasant outgoing lcind of person with a smile on his face at all times. So how can a person like that possibly have a cancer problem and even succumb to cancer? I want him to tell you his case history. Bernie, it’s a delight to have you here.

Bernie Nevins: I hope I don’t pass out. I’m more scared than I was prior to the surgical procedure!

I made some memos while I was talking to a client one day and I’ll ramble on. Ruth Sackman will get me back in line if I drift too far.

Tomorrow, I’ll be 76. And that’s the truth, thanks to Ruth Sackman!

Fourteen years ago I was released from Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan where a resection of my colon was performed. It was a stage 2 cancerous growth. The doctor claimed it was the worst case he’d ever had. It seemed like fecal matter was backing up and coming out of my mouth. The pain was impossible to take.

I’d gone on with these attacks for.some 8 months. I wasn’t aware of what was going on because for the last thirty years prior to that I was* very health conscious a mixed diet: vegetables, fruits, nuts, meat, fish a whole foods diet. I felt wonderful. Twenty or thirty years prior to that, it was hell. I had seen every doctor in New York, constipation all the time, couldn’t accomplish anything bad student, you name it. It was a problem.

Immediately after I changed my diet a la Rodale, McFadden, Adele Davis the mixed diet I found that I was feeling great. Everything worked great: my business was doubling every few weeks or so. I couldn’t figure it out and today I haven’t been able to.

Well, I’m just going to continue … I thought this was just constipation so I consumed large amounts of figs and so forth. Nothing worked. The only relief I received during this period was taking an enema every 2 days or so. I was caught doing that down in Costa Rica. I was down in Costa Rica because for business reasons somebody gave me an award. I just got by. Without taking that enema every 2 days I would have died.

I was eating a good diet of whole foods; now why did I get cancer? Me of all people.

My mother died had a colostomy at age 54 and my father at age 62. My mother claimed “we have the best foods.” There were the chocolate eclairs and all the chocolate cake and the grease and the garbage. We had the best foods!

Apparently, we didn’t, because it didn’t do me any good. Until I was about 35 I didn’t get on my feet. My dad was 62 and Mom 54. Well, they’re never going to get me at 54! No more, it’s too late for that!

They both died one year after surgery at a young age.

I said to the surgeon, when he wasn’t fooling around at age 84 with nurses who respected his senility, I pulled him aside and I said, “Hey doc, how the heck did I ever get this thing?” And I thought I was gonna get the magic answer. I was walking around with tubes in me all over the place. I looked like I was wired for sound!

And he said, “Well, predisposition.”

I’m here today thanks to the good and constant advice offered by Ruth Sackman. I bought many books on the subject, but without Mrs. Sackman’s leadership and guidance I never would have made it. I use pancreatic enzymes daily with a diet consisting of vegetables, fruits, and nuts, a cup of yogurt daily with an egg, about 8 to 12 eggs or so a week. Carrot juice, freshly-made. I also run the urine test with Dr. Navarro occasionally. I’ve gone from 5 to 0 down to negative. I was negative 3 years ago. Then I got a little careless and didn’t take a test for 3 years. I took a couple of trips to Atlantic City, cheating here and there. I got the idea to take another test. It came back a 4 and I started to worry. I behaved myself again. I got in line and I ran another test a month or two later. It was down to 3. The 3 I’m not too happy with. I want the O. I was working on that and I think I probably got down to a 1 or a 2 or I will be shortly.

Now, all this was accomplished without a doctor, because I know more than all the doctors, more than Ruth Sackman! That was the problem she had with me. She still does. It’s that deluded ego that pops up all the time, and the fact that I was one of the organizers of the New York Natural Hygiene Group and all that. We think we know all the answers. Had I known what I do now, I wouldn’t have gone. around with this for 8 months. I could have called Ruth Sackman and asked her a couple of questions. I could have done a lot of things, but I felt, well, it’s nothing it’s constipation. I wasted those 8 months.

Well, let’s see the rest. The bottom line on all this, I guess, is a happy, positive attitude in life. I try. I’m a business man and I do business with the public and it’s not always that easy. You do the best you can with a good, positive attitude in life, with a good diet of raw, unprocessed foods that will heal the body. I don’t treat the tumor only only the host: me, the cause of the cancer. I avoid stress where possible, get plenty of rest I do that, I’ll guarantee you that. I lead the so-called “holistic life”: sunshine within reason and I don’t always do it within reason fresh air and organic foods, if possible. Now that’s the whole story, that’s what’s kept me alive…. I love life, I enjoy working and that’s about the whole thing.

Now if anybody wants to ask me, I’ll say, this is what I did. I’m not going to tell you what to do because I might have to or want to change some of these modalities tomorrow or 6 months from now. But without the Captain here… 

RS: “General!”

BN:…I’m all over the place. I’ve spoken to a half dozen practitioners today. They’ll all more or less start you out with a good basic raw food diet with all the live enzymes. A good deal of them, I guess, are recommending the pancreatic enzymes that I take after every meal. I don’t cheat on those. I don’t mind taking extras. I’ll get up maybe during the night 3 o’clock, 4 or 2 o’clock, or whatever time it is. If I wake up, I’ll throw 3 down on an empty stomach. I got some of that business from Dr. Kelley. I don’t know how good that is, but, here I am! You decide, if that will do you any good. I hope I’ve done something right. I know I’ve done a lot of wrong things and you be the guest. If anybody wants to ask me any questions….

Question: With 8 to 10 eggs a week, what’s your cholesterol level?

BN: I never checked it and I’m not so worried because, now mind you, I live on raw food, and I need a certain amount of cholesterol. I have maybe a half to a cup of yogurt a day. It might be a good idea to take a cholesterol test. We’ll get to that some day. I’m not too worried about that.

RS: I think there’s a mistaken impression about eggs and cholesterol. Eggs have lecithin in the yolk anti-cholesterol factor. Hard-boiled eggs I won’t say the same thing about. That can build cholesterol. But if you use the yolk of the egg and it doesn’t have to be raw keep the yolk uncooked. You’ve got lecithin there and it takes fat to dissolve fat. So it usually will dissolve cholesterol, not vice versa.

BN: Rodale wrote an article one time and my wife brought this to my attention. There was a chicken farmer who was eating 20 or 30 eggs a week. He had a cholesterol test taken it was normal.

RS: You know, for years, the doctors were saying to patients, cardiac patients, that you can’t have this fat or that fat. And now, of course, they’ve come to a sounder conclusion which fortunately happens in many instances: you’ve got low density lipoproteins and high density lipoproteins. So that there are some fats that the body ought to use to reduce the cholesterol and some fats that will cause the rise in cholesterol.

Take something else into account: if you’ve got a grease stain on your clothing, you know, what will take it out faster than anything-else? Grease. You rub grease in it and then wash it out and it will usually take out the grease stain. So you’ve got to have oil to dissolve the cholesterol.

Q: I have two questions. It sounded like your first diet wasn’t really that unreasonable. You seemed to be very conscious of trying to eat a good diet. Was there some kind of a stress factor that may have occurred at some point?

BN: There was a stress factor. My wife conked out, she had a mental depression for 2 years. I had her in a state mental institution four or five weeks. She was wonderful. Then we stopped the tranquilizers and the body uses that up in a few weeks and it started all over again. And I was ready to jump.

You go through something like that and that’s stress. Now this was 10 years ago. She’s wonderful now and twice as nasty. Aren’t you sorry you asked me?

Q: The other part of my question was, since your diet was pretty decent to begin with, before you had the cancer, and since now we lcnow there was some stress a mind factor my question is with the diet. When you made the changes, was the basic change the fact that you went from some cooked to all raw food? Are you on all raw foods now?

BN: I’m on the raw food diet. I don’t like the taste of raw potatoes. I can sit down and eat 4 or 5 baked potatoes, a big bowl of rice with more garlic than I care to discuss in public here. I can eat that.

BN: The flesh foods, sure the meat, the fish, the chicken.

Q: If you get organic fish and organic chicken, do you think that would be helpful?

BN: That’s a dirty word in my lexicon. It’s a relative term “organic”.

Q: You use no meats, no fish, no chicken?

BN: Well, in another few months if I run down to Atlantic City and I cheat, I might eat a piece of fish or something, but I’m trying to behave myself and keep away from that.

Q: So you think that was the big difference then in turning you around?

BN: There was the stress factor, there were many things. I don’t know the answer.

Q: I just wanted to know what he did for himself?

RS: Well, he’s been on a hygienist system primarily. But he does take the pancreatic enzymes and the other….

Q: Which ones?

RS: Which ones? It doesn’t matter, enzymes can’t be doctored too much. What I want to say is the real key is the balance in the diet, not whether he has cooked food or raw food. He does have baked potatoes.

Q: Do you still use enemas and things like that?

BN: That’s a situation…. You know, I don’t want to get too personal because then there’ll be nothing left. You’ll know so much about me, I’ll lose my identity!

I called Ruth. There’s a stress factor and I’m working under stress not so much in my insurance business, because if I didn’t like it I’d dump it. But some
of these problems are in my wife’s end of things. Maybe I’m a coward looking for a cause, but it’s kind of hard to close your mind to serious problems.

Q: So is it possible if you’d gotten some help in counseling along those lines that…?

Q: Seems like you’ve had quite a lot of overwhelming problems….

BN: Well, the stress is still there and I’m trying to build a fence around it.

Q: Good luck!

BN: Thank you. Good luck to you!

RS: Again I’m commenting about something. If you heard Dr. Goldberg yesterday and what she said. If you’ve got negative thoughts, some people say you must have positive thoughts. But if you have negative thoughts, the thing to do is express them. Well, I think Bernie Nevins is expressing all of his feelings about it and in spite of the fact that he might find some anguish with his wife, he’s a good husband, takes care of her, and they’re together.

BN: Well, I’m the cancer personality: loves to get beaten down. The psychologist who spoke about the cancer personality maybe enjoys having all these big things to face. I don’t know, I think about the worst of everything has come my way and I rose above it. Maybe I’m looking for this.

RS: Thank you, Bernie. I told you it would be an interesting talk. And I enjoyed it, too!