4/29/66 (Friday) Virginian-Pilot newspaper article:
CANCER'S ANTIBODIES PRODDED BY SCIENTISTS by John Barbour
NEW YORK (AP) - in dozens of laboratories, scientists are
focusing on one tantalizing question: Does man harbor a
secret defense against cancer - and can it be called upon
to fight human tumors?
Most researchers believe the answer is yes, but the way of
proving it is elusive.
Dr. Lloyd Old of the Sloan-Kettering Institute of Cancer
Research works with ways of mobilizing the weapons of
immunity against cancer. He believes it will be proved that
such a defense exists and will be a powerful weapon when it
finally is understood.
But despite some recent reports which imply promise, he is
unsure how long the search will take. No one at present can
tell how close or how far research is from a proven vaccine
against cancer or a proven anti-serum against tumors.
Scientific opinion, faced with some recent heroic efforts, is
varied. It is encouraging but preliminary. It is promising,
but use caution.
Little more than a week ago, at Wayne State University in
Detroit one research team told of preliminary work on a small
number of cancer patients and a tentative effort to prod
their body defenses against their disease.
The group is young. Dr. Norbert P. Czajkowski, a resident at
the Receiving Hospital, and Dr. Fred R. Cushing, a resident
at Harper Hospital, are 27. The group's immunologist, Melvyn
Rosenblatt, a sophomore medical student at Wayne State, is
29. But the group has some experience overseeing from Dr.
Paul L. Wolf, professor of pathology, and Dr. Richard Bing,
head of the university's Department of Medicine.
They have treated 20 patients with what they hope is an
antibody-stimulating method. Two had complete loss of
tumors, eight showed some tumor abatement and 10 others died.
The medical school issued this statement:
"The cancer method so far has been primarily used as an
experimental tool and has been found promising in animals.
It has shown some hope of being scientifically interesting
in patients.
"We feel that because of its primary scientific interest, its
clinical use should be carefully controlled; therefore, this
university will continue its research and make its findings
available in the scientific literature as they develop."
In New York, Dr. Harold Diehl, American Cancer Society vice
president, urged caution. "This is an encouraging report of
some further work in the promising field of immunology," he
said. "It is clearly preliminary, based on a few cases."
Still, even critics concede that the work could hold an
interesting idea on how the body's defenses might be
mobilized against cancer.
The Wayne Researchers sought a way of doing this by linking
sample cells from a patient's tumor to material the body
would recognize as foreign and by reinjecting the linked
material into the patient.
To obtain known foreign material, they chose the rabbit -
clearly a genetic stranger to man, separated by hundreds
of thousands of years on the evolutionary scale. From the
rabbit they took globulin, a protein part of the blood.
The cancer cells were taken from a patient at biopsy and
linked to the rabbit globulin by an organic chemical.
When injected back into the same patient, researchers believe
they have recognized a spectrum of antibodies - including
agents against the rabbit globulin, against the tumor
itself and against the larger complex molecule.
Outside researchers would like to be sure, by testing the
method and the serum in their own laboratories, that there
was indeed a response by the patient to the tumor in terms
of antibodies.
The tests for proving antibodies are difficult and varied.
Such outside verification is a normal requirement in
assaying a new development.
There would be two items of import in the Detroit work,
besides a usable therapeutic technique. First, they may have
demonstrated that human tumors do have the ability to awaken
the antibody defenses. Second, the presence of the more
recognizable rabbit protein may have enhanced the body's
antibody response.
If - and outside researchers react with everything from
"prove it" to convinced skepticism - they have these effects
in reality, it would mean a great step toward what all the
research is trying to achieve.
The Wayne scientists say that they are intent on having
others duplicate their work, and that they are trying to
disseminate in private communications the details of the
technique to other laboratories.
They intend, too, to pursue the experiments further
themselves. They estimate they will need some $200,000 a
year to support a new research team - including full-time
chemists, immunologists, cancer experts and surgeons.
Next they want to try to refine whatever it is that seems to
be producing the antibody response. Then they would like to
see if there is some cross-reactivity between tumor antigens,
and third, they would like to know the biochemical nature of
the antigens. Dr. Bing said the group may be a year and a
half away from a controlled study in humans.
But the human patient is already a part of other experiments,
although information is scarce. At Roswell Park Memorial
Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., several studies involving
humans have been performed recently.
Dr. Sigmond H. Nadler and Dr. George E. Moore reported they
had exchanged small parts of tumors between individuals to
try to get one cancer patient to develop antibodies to the
tumor of another. Then, they reaped the white blood cells
from each cancer patient and reinjected them into the
original tumor donor. They have been quiet about results.
Of 26 full-term patients, 7 showed some response, 2 showed
complete loss of tumor at least temporarily, and 5 showed
some decrease in tumor size. All but one case was black
cancer of the skin.
At the same institute, a year ago, Dr. James T. Grace
reported he was working on a tentative and experimental
vaccine against leukemia, cancer of the blood and
blood-forming organs. It was being tried on humans, but
no results have been reported.
There are also plans elsewhere to use animals to develop
antibodies to human tumors, but the questions persist in
these instances on whether the human body would develop
antibodies to animal-produced antibodies, negating the
effect.
Besides these rather spectacular approaches, there are a
hundred more quiet projects involving long and difficult
serum work, trying to find if cancer cells do have a prod
the body's defenses will recognize.
Some researchers have found immune proteins produced by
leukemic cells and suggest that such cells might be mobilized
to produce large amounts of antibodies in test tubes when
challenged by other tumors.
Some researchers are probing normal cells to find the nature
of antigens on these cell surfaces in hopes they will tell
something about abnormal antigens.
Whatever the approach, the impact of the slightest hint of
good news often brings a great but premature reaction from
patients prepared to grasp at a straw.
After one recent report, one hospital recorded 1,200
telephone calls and hundreds of telegrams and letters,
most of them pleading for the yet incomplete experimental
material. In this and similar cases, researchers must reply
that access to the experimental work is simply impossible.
And none of the immunity techniques to date are desirable
for use on human patients at the expense of conventional
treatment, they emphasize.
For the present, immunity, vaccines and serums against cancer
remain merely a hope. But the work goes on.
5/04/66 (Wednesday) Virginian-Pilot article:
TREATMENT HELPS BODY STAY YOUNG by Omer Anderson - North
American Newspaper Alliance
BONN - A German neurologist, Dr. Fritz Wiedemann, is
attracting wide attention with a "regeneration" treatment
designed to keep the human body 10 to 20 years younger than
its calendar age.
Dr. Wiedemann's method is based on the single serum
"rejuvenation" method originated in the 1930s by the late
professor A. A. Bogomolets at Kiev, and said to have been
used on Stalin.
Dr. Wiedemann, however, objects to describing his treatment
as "rejuvenation." He says the process is accurately one of
"regeneration." It involves five sera obtained from rabbits
after they have been injected with cells from five organs or
tissues of the human body.
The resulting serums from the rabbit is then injected back
into the area of the human body from which the cells were
obtained.
It is claimed that the result is to regenerate the cells of
all essential parts of the body, from the skin down to the
internal organs. The effect is to enable anyone over 40 who
receives the treatment to "put the clock back" a decade or
more.
Dr. Wiedemann's "regeneration" serum is prepared by West
Germany's largest medical research laboratory.
He has opened a clinic at Lake Starnberg, outside Munich,
where he is treating patients from all over the world. The
charge is nominal (under $90 for the three week treatment),
and patients come to him once a year.
Dr. Widemann says the effect of the treatment lasts for
several years, but that the normal body needs refresher
treatment every one or two years to keep the process active.
7/06/72 GD's note: A.R.E. Librarian, Jane Killen,
prompted by Norrene Leary (HLC's sec'ty) in answering an
inquiry from a member, obtained from our local library
these pages from a book published in 1956 ["The Peculiar
Institution - Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South" by Kenneth M.
Stampp] mentioning "hare or rabbit skin" for treating cancer
of the breast [year 1807]:
...Dr. James Ewell's PLANTER'S AND MARINER'S MEDICAL
COMPANION, which went through several editions and guided
many slaveholders, advised that cancer of the breast be
treated by "wearing a hare or rabbit skin over the part
affected..."
Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993, 1994, 1995 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation