It was a trial that captured the imagination of the public. Gaston Naessens stood accused of criminal negligence in the death of a cancer patient who had been treated with his elixir 714X instead of undergoing conventional treatment. Not only Naessens, but all of “alternative medicine” seemed to be on trial in that courtroom in Sherbrooke, Quebec, back in 1989. The French-born biologist claimed that his studies had led him to investigate the true cause of cancer, which he found to be the uncontrolled growth cycle of “somatids,” living organisms distinct from bacteria and viruses. Mainstream medicine had missed their existence, he said, because they were too small to be seen with an ordinary microscope. But Naessens had devised an instrument, “the somatoscope,” that allowed these organisms to be visualized, and the presence and progress of cancer to be monitored. He then theorized that somatids could be returned to a normal state by injection with a drug he had developed. Naessens took great pride in his creation, naming it 714X. The numbers 7 and 14 served to represent his initials (the seventh and fourteenth letters of the alphabet), and X, the twenty-fourth letter, stood for the year of his birth, 1924.
Desperate patients will do desperate things, so it came as no surprise that cancer victims beat a path to Naessens’ door. After all, he offered them hope of victory over a disease that too often proved more than a match for radiation and chemotherapy. The fact that the medical establishment maintained there was no scientific basis for the treatment, or indeed for the existence of somatids, did not seem to be a deterrent. Naessens presented himself as a latter-day Galileo who would be vindicated soon, as his successful cures multiplied. Patients were charmed by the man who appeared to be toiling not for money, but for the benefit of mankind, and were seduced by the idea of a maverick researcher with no formal training who found a solution to a problem that had stymied hordes of MDS and PhDs. Had Gaston Naessens really found the answer to the mystery of cancer? Not as far as Angele Langlais was concerned. She had visited Naessens after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and, after hearing his claims, she decided to forgo conventional therapy and rely solely on 714X. When Angele developed kidney pain, Naessens urged her to get an x-ray, and upon viewing it suggested that she was merely suffering from a pinched sciatic nerve, and needed a chiropractor. The painful injections of 714X into lymph nodes in the groin continued, but within fourteen months, Angele Langlais was dead. Throughout this period, Naessens kept comforting her by repeating that she was getting better and would be in her garden by the spring. After her death, the Crown decided to prosecute Naessens for criminal negligence, and tacked on a couple of counts of assault and fraud for injecting patients with a drug that had no established scientific merit.
Prosecutors maintained that 714X, a concoction of camphor, ammonium chloride, ammonium nitrate, sodium chloride, ethanol, and water, had not been properly evaluated as a cancer treatment and, in fact, had no theoretical foundation. Naessens, according to the Crown, had no basis for suggesting that 714X, injected into lymph nodes in the groin daily for twenty-one days, would improve immune function. Furthermore, researchers who had investigated 714X had found no effect on tumors in animals. The defense countered by lining up a number of patients who claimed that they had been helped or cured by Naessens’ regimen. The witness with the highest profile was Quebec politician Gérald Godin, who had been battling brain cancer. He told the court that the size of his tumor had been reduced by 60 percent after treatment with 714X, and that “Naessens’ potion is curing my cancer.” Others also gave emotionally charged accounts of being helped by Naessens after physicians had given up hope.
The jury deliberated for no more than four hours before returning a verdict: “not guilty.” Naessens and his followers hailed the victory as a triumph for alternative medicine, and proclaimed that the stage was now set for the truth about 714X to emerge. Why had the jury found Naessens innocent? It couldn’t have been because they had been swayed by the scientific evidence on behalf of 714X. There wasn’t any. Rather, in the opinion of the six women and five men, patients diagnosed with a dire disease had a right to freely choose their course of treatment, whether this had been shown to be effective or not.
Following the trial, three highly regarded cancer specialists offered to meet with Naessens to examine the evidence for cures he claimed to have documented. Contrary to suggestions by “alternative” practitioners, mainstream oncologists would be delighted to offer any effective treatment to their patients. After all, they, better than anyone else, know the limitations of current therapies. Unfortunately, Drs. Gerald Batist, Jean Latreille, and Jacques Jolivet found no evidence of miraculous cures after examining Naessens’ files. In many cases of “success,” patients had also undergone conventional treatment, and in others, there was no adequate follow-up. Gérald Godin, it turned out, was actually a patient of Dr. Jolivet, and had undergone surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Although he claimed during the trial that he had been cured of cancer by 714X, Godin died of the disease in 1994.
Naessens’ 1989 acquittal was interpreted by some as a validation of 714X, and patients besieged the government to make the drug available. Health Canada acquiesced and provided the concoction to physicians under the emergency drug-release program. Over 4,000 patients have apparently been treated. And here we are, twenty-five years after American writer Christopher Bird wrote an impassioned book, The Life and Trials of Gaston Naessens, suggesting that the truth about the cure was now primed to come out. He was right. It has. Not a single clinical study of efficacy has been published. Naessens may have meant well, but if 714X were an effective cancer treatment, we would have known it by now.