PUTNEY — I'm under no illusion that doctors know everything. My mom died in 1986 at 66, largely as the result of an overdose of a drug administered in an emergency room. And my dad - a doctor - died in 1995 after being misdiagnosed for three weeks at Brigham and Women's Hospital by colleagues who were really looking out for him.
So I love to read anything that questions Western medicine's typical response to the world.
I remember being taken to another doctor only once as a kid. But that doesn't mean Dad got involved when we were sick. He believed that each viral infection had to run its course and that no medicine on the planet would reduce its course.
He would never do anything more when we complained of feeling sick than ask why we were still running around and tell us to go to bed.
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I've just been reading about bacteriophages (viruses that eat bacteria), spontaneous cancer regression after any febrile (marked by fever) infection, the reduced risk of cancer associated with a history of febrile infections, and the remarkable story of Dr. William Coley.
In France and Georgia and Russia and Poland, they've been practicing “phage” therapy with great success since the early 1900s, often eliminating entirely antibiotic-resistant infections by just introducing the right natural killer virus.
These viruses are usually found right among the bacteria they like to feed upon. You just have to look for them, gather them (often into a multi-phage cocktail), and make sure they get introduced to the patient.
Interestingly, I read in Discover that the injection of such phages, as opposed to oral administration, can cause an antibody response that can attack and neutralize these beneficial viruses.
This “bad” antibody response results in an undesirable “couple of hours of mild fever.” (While I was musing on this surprising preference for not provoking an antibody response, an image came to me of a defeated Popeye, downing a can of phage-fortified spinach.)
However, in another scientific abstract, the sentence “Lower risk for cancer has also been associated with a history of febrile viral diseases” jumped out at me and eventually led me to three fascinating papers.
In a 2006 issue of the journal Cancer Detection and Prevention, three authors published a paper that “provided support for an antagonism between acute infections and cancer.”
“Exposures to febrile infectious childhood diseases were associated with subsequently reduced risks for melanoma, ovary, and multiple cancers combined, significant in the latter two groups,” they reported.
Furthermore, “[s]pontaneous tumor regression has been observed in association with a wide range of infectious organisms including those of bacterial, fungal, viral, and protozoal origin.”
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This infection vs. cancer idea was amplified greatly for me in the largely forgotten story of Dr. William Coley.
Coley, a surgeon “whose career spanned from 1891 to 1936,” according to a paper in the Postgraduate Medical Journal, discovered that our natural immune system processes could fight cancer surprisingly successfully. He developed a vaccine comprised of two killed bacteria, Streptococcus pyogenes and Serratia marcescens.
The purpose of this vaccine, which became known as “Coley's toxins,” was not to prevent infection but to induce infection. “Coley confirmed his impressions that mimicking a repetitive acute febrile response was the key factor necessary to provoke and maintain tumor regression.” His vaccine and the resulting fever also often promptly eliminated cancer-related pain.
The article describes the benefits of not suppressing moderate fever accompanying illness and explains how Coley's amazing success treating cancer became forgotten. Infection following surgery was seen as very undesirable. Antibiotic use and anti-fever medication use became widespread. And then radiation therapy and chemotherapy swept in.
Another publication, Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients, describes how powerful forces conspired to help bury Coley's very effective treatment. Dr. James Ewing, a friend of James Douglas (president of Phelps-Dodge, a radium producing company), head of cancer treatment at Douglas-funded Memorial Hospital, and an early pioneer of radiation therapy, came out swinging against the use of Coley's Toxins. The American Society for the Control of Cancer (which Ewing helped to found) and its successor, the American Cancer Society, followed suit.
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I am struck by the thought that paid medical leave - so that people can go to bed (as my dad yelled at us) and take care of themselves or their children, when they come down with the flu or any number of rather benign illnesses - might be more beneficial to the overall health of the American population than our current pharmaceutical welfare program of 69 inoculations recommended (or made mandatory) through young adulthood.
It might also be much more cost effective in the long run. It might lower the incidence of cancer!
Perhaps we've been looking at a whole host of viruses the wrong way around since the days of Pasteur.
Perhaps we should not be trying to incessantly keep them at bay, genetically modify them, and/or kill them.
Perhaps a good case of the flu now and then, a guilt-free excuse to read a stack of good books, should be just what the doctor ordered.