My Position Regarding the Nicholas Gonzalez Foundation

by Linda L. Isaacs, M.D.

After my long-time colleague and friend, Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D., passed away suddenly in 2015, his widow, Mary Beth Gonzalez, started the Nicholas Gonzalez Foundation, with the goal of training other practitioners to continue his work. I am not and have never been involved with the Foundation or its training materials and methods, because I believe that a different approach is needed.

My main concern is preserving the integrity of the treatment methods that Dr. Gonzalez and I devoted our lives to. If inadequately trained practitioners get bad results and decide to publish those bad results, that will be profoundly counterproductive. If they can say that I was involved in their training, it could destroy the credibility of this work.

Dr. William Donald Kelley, our predecessor in this method, trained people in a seminar setting, using lectures, books, and examinations. While a few of his students applied his work well, most of them failed to understand basic principles. They omitted the coffee enemas, decided that diet doesn’t matter or that everyone should eat the same thing, insisted on using the fad diet or nutrient of the day without consideration of its effect on autonomic physiology, and/or added a host of other alternative therapies. They then blamed Dr. Kelley for their bad results.

Dr. Gonzalez and I frequently discussed how to train other practitioners. We agreed that the best method would be an internship. There is simply too much to learn, and in some cases to unlearn, for it to work any other way. We also agreed that it would be important for practitioners to follow the program themselves, as Dr. Gonzalez and I did.

I appreciate Mary Beth Gonzalez’s dedication to preserving her husband’s legacy, and have helped her when I agreed with the methods and goals. As an example, I have provided assistance with some of the posthumous publications of his writings, such as Nutrition and the Autonomic Nervous System, and the two volumes of case reports. And while I am not involved with the Nicholas Gonzalez Foundation, and have chosen to invest my time and energy elsewhere, I wish Mrs. Gonzalez and her practitioners well.