Note: Approximately 450 people attended last week's SCD seminar

Seminar Origins

Earlier this year, Rochel Weiss received a letter from a friend, whom we will call "David" to protect his privacy. In 1992, David was diagnosed with Crohn's disease which worsened.

Several years ago, David heard of the SCD and tried it for a short time but did not feel he had the support system to keep it going and dropped the diet.

In its place, in 2004, he started Remicade and Immuran. The Remicade stopped having an effect in 2007 and the doctor began treatment with Humira which resulted in great physical pain. As David described it:

After many tests (and a hernia operation) the pain continued. Exploratory surgery discovered lymphoma which was caused by the Remicade/Immuran/Humira treatments.

In a letter to Rochel, David described his cancer experience as follows:

I don't want to take you through the nightmare of chemotherapy, and going in and out of hospitals with the most debilitating side effects. I do want to beg and plead parents, and patients who are being offered these magic drugs . . . please inquire, and read carefully the side affects of the drug prescribed by your doctor. Please do consider this harmless, wonderful remedy: the SCD diet. Though it's true that this side affect, affects only one in 3,000 people . . . this time it happened to be ME. I hope that, in the merit of publicizing this unfortunate situation, and alerting others to use these drugs as a last resort and not as a first resort, I will be fortunate enough to have a complete refuah [healing], and be a healthy father to my beautiful family.

Rochel knew that biologic drugs can potentially cause cancer. But speaking with her friend David--and talking to more people receiving biologic drugs as a first-line treatment instead of a last resort--Rochel decided to organize the conference to inform her community of other options . . .