An explosive new medical report has cast doubt on whether Melbourne alternative therapies guru Ian Gawler ever suffered the secondary cancer from which he has claimed for 30 years to have cured himself.
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The online report in the Royal Australian College of Physicians' monthly Internal Medicine Journal, says Dr Gawler, 61, Australia's most famous cancer survivor and founder of the Gawler Foundation, had advanced tuberculosis rather than the secondary bone cancer he was told he had in the late 1970s.
Dr Gawler's books on curing cancer without conventional medicine are best-sellers, with 1984's You Can Conquer Cancer reprinted 16 times.
His foundation's residential programs, including those at the Yarra Valley Living Centre at Yarra Junction near Melbourne, have treated more than 15,000 sufferers, many of whom swear by his methods involving strict diets, ''mind training'' and meditation. Another 75,000 have attended Gawler Foundation lectures and workshops.
Dr Gawler, OAM, told Fairfax it was ''ridiculous'' to claim his secondary cancer never happened.
''I would question the authors' motivations given my prominence in this field,'' he said. The report's authors are eminent oncologists, Associate Professor Ian Haines, from Cabrini Hospital in Melbourne, and Professor Ray Lowenthal, from the Royal Hobart Hospital.
Professor Lowenthal has been a long-time critic of Dr Gawler's methods but Professor Haines said he was a ''courageous fellow who I know, respect and admire''.
''But I don't want patients thinking this man cured himself of advanced cancer,'' he said.
''My motivations are pure. I have absolutely no guilt over this. It is scientifically rigid.''
Professor Haines said alternative or ''complementary'' therapies were fine in conjunction with conventional medicine but should not be the only treatment.
He said he was ''distressed'' at seeing terminal cancer patients who had chosen alternative therapies over conventional medicine after diagnosis.
''I've seen beautiful young girls with their whole lives ahead of them and they go into these holistic therapies and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and then in the end we have to look after them. They all eventually get to us.''
He said the Gawler case was cancer medicine's equivalent of the death of Phar Lap or the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain.
''This is a mystery that has lingered since the 1970s. Many of us always thought it didn't add up.''
He started research for the report two years ago after the publication of a detailed, authorised biography of Dr Gawler and two conflicting articles in The Medical Journal of Australia, one co-written by Dr Gawler's current wife, a GP, the other written by his ex-wife, Grace Gawler, an alternative healer. She helped Professors Haines and Lowenthal compile the new report.
''At that point those of us in cancer medicine who had grown up with this mystery said to ourselves it sounded a lot like he had TB,'' Professor Haines said.
Dr Gawler's right leg was amputated at St Vincents' Hospital in 1975, when he was 24, because tests proved he had osteogenic sarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer. He was a vet and promising athlete. A year later doctors found lumps near the amputation in his groin.
He was told the original cancer had spread and had reached his lungs. Crucially, no biopsy was taken. He was given three to six months to live, according to the Internal Medicine Journal report.
Dr Gawler embarked on an intense program of alternative therapies, prompted by Melbourne psychiatrist Ainslie Meares. The therapies included coffee enemas, massage and vegetarianism.
He lost weight and suffered night sweats, leg pain and back pain, according to the report, and in early 1976 was given only weeks to live. He had radiation therapy and went to India and the Philippines on spiritual retreats, including an audience with controversial Indian mystic Sri Sathya Sai Baba.
That year he suffered growths on his chest and started coughing up blood. In 1978 he saw a new cancer specialist in Adelaide who told him he had TB and gave him antibiotics to successfully cure it. The chest lumps had by this time gone but ''masses'' remained in the pelvis and a lung, according to the report.
Dr Gawler maintains he had TB at the same time as the secondary ''osteogenic sarcoma'' cancer, and that it went away because of the alternative healing.
''The nub of the argument is whether inadequate testing was done on me. But I don't feel any regret that no biopsy was done for the secondary cancer because we did all the things that were necessary.''
However, retired surgeon Dr John Doyle, who was part of the original medical team treating Dr Gawler at St Vincents in Melbourne, said after reading the report (given to him by Fairfax), ''If I was doing it again I would certainly do a biopsy.
''We didn't do them in those days to the same extent we do now. To be honest I didn't consider any other diagnosis because he had a highly malignant tumour before.'' Dr Doyle said the report was ''a hypothesis that is very worthy of consideration''.
''I would still tend to adhere to my original diagnosis. But I would also agree that if it happened today I would order a biopsy.''
The Internal Medicine Journal report says all Dr Gawler's symptoms between 1975 and 1978 can be scientifically explained by ''advanced ... disseminated ... mycobacterial infection'' such as TB. The report says Dr Gawler's disease was ''wrongly labelled''.
The Medical Journal of Australia was offered the report first but declined to publish it without Dr Gawler's permission.
Dr Gawler says he went back to all his original doctors recently, knowing the report might be published, but all stood by their diagnoses.
''A lot of people take hope from my story,'' he said.
''By using me as the vehicle for airing their concerns is to overlook the point that I have been a source of hope and inspiration for many, many people for 30 years.''
