They die of something else pneumonia, failure of one or another organs. Cachexia accelerates that process of infection and the building-up of metabolic poisons. It causes death a lot faster than the tumor would, were it not for the cachexia. Halting the wasting syndrome instead of directly attacking the cancer cells with poison was Dr. Gold's plan of attack. In the interest of treating the totality of malignant disease, each of these processes warrants intervention.
Cancer cells gobble up sugar ten to fifteen times more than normal cells do.
The sugar consumed by the cancer cells is generated mainly from the liver, which converts lactic acid into glucose. Lactic acid the waste product of this incomplete combustion spills into the blood and is taken up by the liver. The patient's healthy cells starve while the cancer cells grow vigorously. Some healthy cells even dissolve to feed the growing tumor. In 1968, he outlined his theory in an article published in Oncology.