INTERVIEW WITH LOTHAR HIRNEISE
for the Online Magazine: Cancer Whisperer
Mr. Hirneise, how did you come to Oil-Protein Diet?
This is actually a crazy story, because I had to travel thousands of miles, so I could learn about Dr. Budwig in the far IOWA in the United States from Frank Wiewel, the president of People Against Cancer in America. He was the first one who told me about Dr. Budwig and he was also the one who arranged for me by fax an appointment with her. The crazy thing is that I lived only a few miles away from her. But you certainly know the proposition that the prophet isn´t worth anything in his own country.
How old was Dr. Budwig back then?
She was already 89 years old, but still received patients and was mentally and physically extremely vigorous. Unfortunately, she lived otherwise very withdrawn and didn´t want to have anything to do with the outside world anymore.
Did you understand each other from the beginning?
No, not at all. Dr. Budwig seemed very unapproachable, and I was too determined and all my questions must have been very unpleasant for her. She invited me yet again and offered me to look into her records (patient records, her own statistics, etc.). This was frankly a big surprise for me and a great honor because I know that she had never previously allowed this to another person. She told me later that I would owe this happiness to really only one fact, namely to my great logical understanding, very well developed and that she had recognized this very quickly.
I have spent the next few years, many mornings and afternoons at her house. Sometimes we cooked something together, and we rarely went into a restaurant to Freudenstadt to eat there something together, because they were cooking there according to her recommendations. During this time we got used to each other. I learned which questions I can ask and above all how I had to ask these questions, and Dr. Budwig learned better to accept my many questions and understood that I did it everything for one reason only, namely to preserve her knowledge for the future. And so it happened that she offered me to write once again a book and that she would hold lectures together with me.
What impressed you the most on Dr. Budwig?
There were many things. On the one hand a woman who has lived for 70 years for science and for nothing else. Then the courage to face over the years the great power of the margarine and pharmaceutical industry, without regard to her own life. There were also her incredible memory and her great knowledge of various scientific departments such as chemistry, biology, physics, pharmacy and medicine. This knowledge and with it related deep power of deduction to answer medical questions I have always admired by Dr. Budwig.
And what impressed you that much on the Oil-Protein Diet, that you are such a big advocate of this nutritional therapy?
The answer is relatively simple. The successes of the Oil-Protein Diet. At first, I had the great fortune to be able to read countless letters of thanks to Dr. Budwig. I think that this kind of letters is more important and reliable in assessing a therapy than studies. There were also many former patients who I could meet either in person or who contacted me later and were talking about their successes. And then of course there are my personal experiences with countless patients I have personally counseled in the past 14 years. Everything together has convinced me that the Oil-Protein Diet is one of the best, if not the best, nutritional treatment in the whole world.
Why does the Oil-Protein Diet work?
Although I am now since more than a dozen years working intensively with this nutritional therapy, I think this question is very difficult to answer. I won´t certainly not make the same mistake as many others who restrict the Oil-Protein Diet on lipoproteins and unsaturated fatty acids. Of course, I also know what role oxygen plays in the organism and how important protein compounds, sulfuric acid and water-soluble oils are. But even Dr. Budwig has repeatedly told their patients that she cannot help them, if for example their family relations do not change. I see the Oil-Protein Diet primarily as an important help to again offset the energetic imbalance of a cancer patient. It is now only of secondary importance to me, whether the electrons jump from one shell to the other one or not.
But the science is still evolving, don´t we have today more possibilities to better understand the functioning of the Oil-Protein Diet?
I´m not so sure, whether is the science really evolving. But you are right, we now know more about cell membranes, genes or mutations than ever before. But I haven´t really found anything new that would lead to any changes in the Oil-Protein Diet. Quite the contrary. Bruce Lipton´s work on genes and cell membranes confirms Dr. Budwig´s work as well as the discovery of the functioning of the p53 apoptosis gene. In recent years I have found a lot of proofs which confirmed the correctness of OPD and I was again and again wondering how brilliant was Dr. Budwig writing about 30 years ago about things that she could not prove during that time. But to be honest, I am now only partly interested in all these things, because I know, unlike many others, how successful Oil-Protein Diet is and don´t need to believe anything more. Since I am not a scientist and theoretical studies touch me only tangentially, the only thing I want today is to keep the great knowledge of Dr. Budwig in its original form and share it.
Apropos original form? What has actually happened after the death of Dr. Budwig? How has she settled the successor role?
If you had known Dr. Budwig, you wouldn´t ask this question.
What do you mean by that?
She told once me over a cup of tea, that she believes that with her will die the last generation of honest scientists who are interested just in the research and do not care about the money. And I think she was right. She was her whole life a lone fighter and never allowed another soul to come near her. I initially thought that it would be just because of her old age. However, I have later met many people inside and outside of her family who all confirmed to me that the aloofness accompanied her for her whole life. And so it was never possible that she would have tolerated a successor by her side.
So, there is no official successor?
Unfortunately, the answer is a clear yes.
And what about you or the direct heirs? You are the only students?
I can only speak for myself and I know what I have learned over many years. And as Dr. Budwig never addressed this issue, I too do not see myself as a successor of hers.
And after what I´ve heard and read so far from the official heirs, I cannot imagine that they have been really busy with the legacy of their aunt. While Dr. Budwig was alive, she hasn´t also held not a single time any lecture with someone from her family or written any book with a member of her family. Only I had this great luck, because I was able to produce two books with her and hold several speeches. To my knowledge I am also the only one who ever took the trouble to sift through the whole patient data.
What makes you think that the official heirs are not extensively engaged with the Oil-Protein Diet?
Several months after the death of Dr. Budwig contacted me her two nephews Arno and Armin Grunewald and said, that I would be the only one who was intensively involved in recent years with the Oil-Protein Diet and that I am the only one representing it in Germany in the public. And since I was also the only person who was by their aunt accepted as a pupil and with whom she had ever written a book together (Cancer - The problem and the solution), I would be the right man to establish with them the Johanna Budwig Foundation. I found this idea at first even for very good and so had the brothers Grunewald, my wife and I several meetings to discuss the structure of the foundation. But it quickly came out that our goals were completely different. I wanted to preserve the oncology heritage of the Oil-Protein Diet and to teach this to cancer patients, exactly as I had learned it over the years from Dr. Budwig. But the legal heir Armin Grunewald had and has an opinion that OPD isn´t anything for cancer patients, as he has literally written in his book. He wanted to “get away from cancer patients” and establish the Oil-Protein Diet as a “diet for everyone”, as he still tries today. However, my goals were and are completely different and so we stopped our work together before it even started.
Why is Dr. Grunewald writing that the Oil-Protein Diet isn´t suitable for people with cancer? Where not the most patients of Dr. Budwig cancer patients?
You have to ask him yourself. Certainly, 99% of all her patients were cancer patients and who says that the OPD is nothing for people with cancer, has apparently not made the same experiences as me. And it is obviously easily identifiable, why this is the case.
A rumor goes around that the heirs have sue you and that they wanted to ban you from selling books from Dr. Budwig or offer any Oil-Protein Diet seminars.
Yes, that is right.
And what was the result of the lawsuit?
The court has determined that I had together with Dr. Budwig written the book: Cancer - The problem and the solution – and so I own a joint copyright. Therefore, all rights to this book belong only to me and not the legal heirs. The complete content of the book: Oil-Protein Diet belongs to the legal heirs and to me together. This was very important to me, after all, this book includes all the basic recipes of the Oil-Protein Diet and these could have been by the legal heirs in the future falsified in a way that one day the Oil-Protein Diet would no longer be available in the original. However, you can be sure that I´m not going to do that and so the inheritance of Dr. Budwig will remain in its original form. And that I will teach in the future the Oil-Protein Diet as I learned it from Dr. Budwig is also beyond question.
Isn´t there an official Dr. Johanna Budwig Foundation that represents the legacy of Dr. Budwig?
There is a foundation with this name, that´s right. But I still didn´t find out HOW it represents the heritage, except that it is advertising on its websites just for a kind of food that I could only warn from. Dr. Budwig would surely turn in her grave if she would know that just a foundation that bears her name advertises indirectly for cocoa biscuits, nut cakes and strawberry jam.
How do you promote the legacy of Dr. Budwig?
In the last 14 years I was the only teacher of the Oil-Protein Diet who has also offered in Germany and worldwide lectures and trainings. In addition, I lead for almost 5 years the only international center (www.3e-zentrum.de), in which is the Oil-Protein Diet applied as a nutritional therapy for cancer patients. Also, I have interviewed over the past 15 years far more than 10,000 mostly final cancer patients to help people with cancer today, as we do at Krebs21 (www.krebs21.de) or 3E-center. You can also read about the extraordinary success of our 3E team in our study from 2010 (3E-study).
So, are you then the spiritual heir of Dr. Budwig?
No, I certainly would never describe myself as heir of Dr. Budwig. But it still annoys me when people in Germany or in the United States refer to themselves as “the Oil-Protein Diet experts”, but they represent completely different things than Dr. Budwig and sometimes out of ignorance cause even more damage than help.
Can you give us examples of this from the USA?
There are infinitely many. I would almost say that 90% of websites about the Oil-Protein Diet on the internet submit inaccurate data. There are websites that claim that with a bit of Budwig for breakfast or with flaxseed oil cancer could be cured. Others say the milk in breakfast muesli would not be mandatory and some even record videos with the title: A Day in the Budwig diet and recommend drugs, which completely contraindicate to the Oil-Protein Diet, and they even claim the Budwig Protocol could be learned in an hour. Please do not misunderstand. I think it is fantastic that so many people are interested in the Oil-Protein Diet and want to spread the word. I just think it is disastrous for cancer patients who spent so much time, money and energy to get better and the whole thing does not work, because big mistakes are made. In addition, this casts a bad light on the Oil-Protein Diet, because tumors do not go away and many people say afterwards that the Oil-Protein Diet would not work.
How can you prevent something like this?
Like everything else in life, the Oil-Protein Diet must be learned properly and a lot of time needs to be invested. To read a book or watch a DVD is not enough and sometimes causes the opposite of what wants to be achieved. Therefore, at the end of the year we will offer a compressed online training in English, so there could be finally qualified Oil-Protein Diet consultants in English speaking countries, as it is in Germany since 2005. Otherwise, only to read AND understand EVERYTHING from Dr. Budwig will help. However, it is not always easy for non-German speaking people, because Dr. Budwig´s books and works are almost exclusively in German language. In addition, she was even in German language writing very incomprehensible, which makes it sometimes partially impossible to learn everything from her books. And also she has never published anything about certain things such as ELDI oils.
What led to the development of the Oil-Protein Diet (OPD)?
I have learned during the last few years constantly something new by working daily with mostly final cancer patients and it made me think about what I can improve. Unlike many others, it was never my goal to improve or change the Oil-Protein Diet, I wanted to find a way how it could be better combined with other therapies, which have also proved that they can help seriously ill people.
That means that you haven´t changed the Oil-Protein Diet?
Of course not. I think that it is wrong and dangerous, because the Oil-Protein Diet is just like the Gerson therapy or macrobiotics a self-contained system where you cannot just here and there change something. I kept in terms of diet and consideration of the magnetic environment everything exactly as I learned it from Dr. Budwig and have added only detoxification measures and included mainly energetic work.
The 3E-Programe?
No, it doesn´t work that way. The 3E-program includes, in contrast to the oil-protein therapy, also cytostatic therapies like electro therapies or apoptosis initiating medication such as high-dose vitamin C. The oil-protein therapy, however, is for people whose symptom momentum in terms of Causanetic did not yet occur, or for patients who fundamentally refuse cytostatic therapies.
Many people have problems with OPD because they are intolerant to dairy products or lactose. What do you advise in cases like this? Is there any substitute to quark?
Here we must distinguish two groups of patients. The first ones are people with lactose intolerance. My experience with this is that from 20 people with this diagnosis 10 haven´t got any and nine can be “cured”, e.g. through simple measures such as juice fasting in combination with flaxseed, just as Dr. Budwig did it with her patients. And people who don´t want to eat any dairy products should not even start with the Oil-Protein Diet.
So you do not recommend the Oil-Protein Diet to all cancer patients?
I consider the OPD to be one of the major cancer therapies in the world. But I´ve also learned that it´s not worth it to try to convince people of anything, because in most cases people won´t change their opinion anyway, no matter how good the arguments are, take for instance supporters of the CSU and the Greens. So I´ve stopped many years ago to be as a missionary on the road. If someone has something against milk, he can do Gerson, raw vegetables, or some other nutritional therapy if he has cancer. That is absolutely OK for me. I´ll be happy to be there for the people who want to learn more about the OPD, but I won´t proselytize the Oil-Protein Diet.
Are there any important points of the Oil-Protein Diet that have died with Dr. Budwig?
Unfortunately, yes. At first there is the laser irradiation, which I think is brilliant or new diagnostic possibilities of cytochrome oxidase. Also the further development of the recipes, adapted to today´s cooking, considering of the magnetic fields which can be today much better measured or new ELDI oils would be with Dr. Budwig possible too.
There is only a little written about ELDI oils anyway.
That is correct. Dr. Budwig and I planned to write more about these oils in a new release of the Oil-Protein Diet book. Unfortunately, her illness intervened, so it never came to publishing new recipes or new ELDI oils. However, as I own the original ELDI-Ol recipes and I also know the principle and applications, there will be more information about these in the future. At the end of the year my new book (The big manual of the Oil-Protein Diet) about the OPD will be ready and in this book I will also discuss in detail issues such as ELDI oils.
How do you see the future of the Oil-Protein Diet?
For me personally is the most important thing to preserve the legacy of Dr. Budwig in its original form. Therefore I refuse changes such as reduction of honey or carbohydrates, so it could be sold as an improvement. Do these people really think that Dr. Budwig wouldn´t also consider problems with glucose or milk? The fact is and remains that nobody knows exactly on 100% why the Oil-Protein Diet works so well. Until we know that for sure, we cannot just change things that easy. This could be catastrophic especially for people with cancer. However, what we can do is to consider, whether there are other therapies that can be combined with the Oil-Protein Diet. But beware, I´m not talking here only from additional vitamin pills or newer foods, but also about causes uncovering therapies or detoxification measures. Dr. Budwig herself was a big fan of Sebastian Kneipp. I can still very well remember a conversation with her about Father Kneipp and how she praised his water and regulations treatment. Here I can see many opportunities for the oil-protein therapy and have been working for years on how to combine such therapies, without reducing the positive effects of the Oil-Protein Diet. But this is in detail much harder than it appears. It took me years before I knew what to do in addition and more importantly, what should be avoided, especially when it comes to oral vitamins.
Another important point for me is the adaptation of the Oil-Protein Diet to local conditions. I was e.g. in 2010 in Saigon / Vietnam where I met a group of Vietnamese who are followers of the Oil-Protein Diet. In a country like Vietnam, it seems at first impossible to recommend to cancer patients an Oil-Protein Diet, because their eating habits are totally different. But I´m convinced anyway that we can apply the basic principles of the Oil-Protein Diet in each country and help many cancer patients. Although it is a lot of work, it is possible and it would be a great help especially for people in poor countries in Asia or Africa. I´m just about to establish in 2012 a helping program just like this and hope that we can in the future help this way specially cancer patients who have no financial possibilities as we do in the West.