Paul Kraus: 27-Year Mesothelioma Survivor

Paul Kraus was not supposed to live. When surgeons opened his abdomen in 1997 expecting to repair a hernia, they found something far worse: tumors and fluid throughout the lining of his abdomen. The diagnosis was peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer with a grim prognosis.

His doctors gave him months to live. Twenty-seven years later, Paul Kraus died in July 2025 at age 79—not of mesothelioma, but having outlived his prognosis by more than a quarter century. He was the longest-documented mesothelioma survivor in the world, a title he never sought but that became central to his mission of helping others face the disease.

His story is neither a template nor a promise. But it demonstrates something important: statistics describe populations, not individuals. Some patients defy the odds.

Born in a Labor Camp

Paul Kraus’s improbable survival began with an improbable birth. He was born in 1944 in a Nazi forced labor camp in occupied Austria. His mother, a Jewish woman from Hungary, had been separated from her husband and older son during the war.

When the war ended, Paul’s mother escaped with him and his brother through Budapest, eventually emigrating to Australia, where Paul would spend most of his life. The early experience of survival—of circumstances that should have been fatal but weren’t—may have shaped his later approach to facing cancer.

An Unexpected Diagnosis

In 1997, at age 53, Kraus underwent what was planned as routine surgery to repair a hernia. The surgeon instead found extensive disease throughout his peritoneum—the membrane lining the abdominal cavity.

The biopsy confirmed peritoneal mesothelioma. Kraus’s cancer was too advanced for surgical removal. His oncologists offered chemotherapy and radiation, but warned that these treatments were unlikely to significantly extend his life and would cause substantial side effects.

Kraus faced a decision that confronts every cancer patient: how to balance potential benefits of treatment against certain costs to quality of life. His answer was unconventional.

The Holistic Path

With his physicians’ knowledge but not their endorsement, Kraus chose to forgo conventional treatment. Instead, he pursued what he would later describe as a holistic approach—one that addressed his body, mind, and spirit rather than targeting the tumor alone.

His regimen reportedly included:

• Nutritional changes: Emphasizing whole foods, eliminating processed foods and sugar
• Supplements: Various vitamins, minerals, and herbal preparations
• Mind-body practices: Meditation, stress reduction, and psychological work
• Lifestyle modifications: Exercise, adequate rest, and reduced toxic exposures

It must be emphasized that this approach has not been validated by clinical trials. Kraus himself was careful to note that what worked for him might not work for others, and that his survival could have been due to factors unrelated to his treatment choices—including the biology of his particular tumor.

Oncologists observing his case from a distance have suggested several possible explanations:

Tumor biology: Not all mesotheliomas are equally aggressive. Some patients have slower-growing tumors that respond better to the body’s natural defenses.

Diagnostic uncertainty: While Kraus was diagnosed with mesothelioma, it is possible that his tumor had unusual characteristics that made it less aggressive than typical cases.

Unknown factors: Medical science does not yet fully understand why some cancer patients dramatically outlive their prognoses. Immune function, genetics, and factors not yet identified may all play roles.

What is certain is that conventional treatment was not the explanation for Kraus’s survival—he didn’t receive it.

Becoming an Advocate

As years passed and Kraus remained alive, he became increasingly prominent in the mesothelioma community. Other patients wanted to know his secret. Researchers wanted to study his case. Media wanted to tell his story.

Kraus responded by becoming an author and advocate. His book Surviving Mesothelioma and Other Cancers: A Patient’s Guide became a resource for newly diagnosed patients seeking information beyond what their oncologists provided. He eventually wrote eight books on health, healing, and history.

His message was not that patients should reject conventional medicine. It was that patients should be empowered to make their own informed decisions, to ask questions, to seek second opinions, and to consider all their options—including options their doctors might not suggest.

“I’m not against conventional medicine,” he would tell interviewers. “I’m for patients having all the information they need to make their own choices.”

Surviving Multiple Cancers

Mesothelioma was not the only cancer Paul Kraus faced. During his 27 years with the disease, he was also diagnosed with:

• Metastatic prostate cancer: A separate malignancy that he also addressed through his holistic approach
• Meningioma: A type of brain tumor that required monitoring

His survival of three distinct cancers made his case even more remarkable—and even more difficult to explain through conventional medical understanding.

The Limits of Exceptional Cases

Medical professionals who discuss Paul Kraus’s case often emphasize the importance of not generalizing from exceptional outcomes.

For every long-term mesothelioma survivor, there are hundreds of patients who die within the expected timeframe despite trying every available treatment—conventional, alternative, or both. Survival stories, while inspiring, can create unrealistic expectations for patients and families.

The uncomfortable reality is that we often cannot identify in advance which patients will beat the odds. Kraus’s tumor was not tested with modern genomic tools that might have revealed unusual characteristics. His immune function was not systematically studied. The factors that contributed to his survival remain largely mysterious.

This uncertainty is frustrating for patients who want to know if they might be a similar outlier. The honest answer is that predicting who will have exceptional outcomes remains beyond current medical capability.

What Can Be Learned

While Kraus’s specific approach cannot be recommended as treatment, his experience offers several insights:

Prognosis is not destiny: Statistics describe what happens on average. Individual patients can and do deviate from averages in both directions.

Quality of life matters: Kraus prioritized how he lived over how long he might live. For him, avoiding the side effects of chemotherapy was worth the uncertainty about whether his alternative approach would work.

Patient empowerment has value: Kraus felt that taking an active role in his treatment—making his own decisions rather than passively accepting physician recommendations—contributed to his well-being and possibly his survival.

Long survival is possible: Even if we cannot explain why Kraus lived so long, his case proves that extended survival with mesothelioma is biologically possible. This should inform how patients and physicians approach the disease.

The End of a Remarkable Journey

Paul Kraus died in July 2025, just weeks before his 80th birthday. The cause of death was not publicly disclosed, and it remains unclear whether mesothelioma ultimately contributed or whether he died from unrelated causes.

In a sense, the cause matters less than the duration. For 27 years, Kraus lived fully with a disease that was supposed to take him in months. He traveled, wrote, advocated, and connected with thousands of patients around the world. He watched grandchildren grow up. He experienced nearly three decades that his doctors never expected him to have.

Whether his survival was due to his treatment choices, his tumor’s biology, his attitude, his luck, or some combination of all of these, Paul Kraus demonstrated that the human experience of cancer cannot be fully captured by survival curves and median statistics.

For patients facing mesothelioma today, Kraus’s story offers neither false hope nor a treatment protocol. What it offers is permission to hope—to know that exceptional outcomes are possible, even if they cannot be guaranteed or fully explained.