Spontaneous Remissions

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Spontaneous Remissions

By Dr. Ralph Moss

from CancerDecisions.com Newsletter (9/11/02)

One of my clients wrote to me in desperate search of a treatment for

his wife. Her doctors, using all the methods known to them, held out

little hope. He therefore sought my advice. " Over the years I have

heard of spontaneous remissions, " he wrote, " but have never met

anyone who personally experienced one (including our doctors). Is

there any truth to them? If so, was there any common denominator in

them? "

Serendipitously, his letter came just as I was planning to write a

newsletter on this very topic. My immediate inspiration was an

article that appeared earlier this year in the journal Medical

Hypotheses with the provocative title, " Spontaneous regression: a

hidden treasure buried in time. " However, the topic of spontaneous

regressions, or remissions, has galvanized me since I first learned

about them almost 30 years ago.

A spontaneous remission is the disappearance of cancer without any

immediate medical cause. As my former employer, Memorial Sloan-

Kettering President , MD, once said: " The rare but

spectacular phenomenon of spontaneous remission of cancer persists

in the annals of medicine, totally inexplicable but real, a

hypothetical straw to clutch in the search for cure. . . . No one

doubts the validity of the observation. "

For centuries, such observations astonished attentive doctors and

gave heart to desperate patients. Cancer is called a " progressive "

disease, but (unlike in politics) the adjective is not meant as a

compliment. If not successfully treated, cancer " progresses " to its

seemingly inevitable endpoint: death. The fact that cancer sometimes

just disappears on its own is an amazing fact. The number of

patients who experience a spontaneous remission has always been

small, and (according to the authors of the aforementioned article)

is growing smaller. But it is a fact, and seeing it, or even reading

about it, alters one's view of reality. It is like suddenly seeing a

UFO appear in the night sky. It shakes your ordinary convictions and

demands a profound change in worldview. After all, if Nature can do

this, why can't we mortals learn the trick and start to do it

ourselves? Shouldn't medicine imitate Nature and its ingenious cures

rather than trying to devise artificial cures that are inimical to

what the body does best?

The classic work on the topic in English is Spontaneous Remission,

by n O'Regan and Caryle Hirshberg. This 713-page " annotated

bibliography " was published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences in

1993. The scientific advisory board included Drs. Lerner,

Naomi Remen and Lucy Waletzky, all experts on the mind-body

connection in cancer. This large book considered 1,574 citations,

and discussed in detail hundreds of cases of malignant tumors that

partially or completely disappeared with no curative medical

intervention. n O'Regan died tragically of melanoma while the

book was in progress, but Caryle Hirshberg still lectures on its

conclusions.

Perusing this scholarly book, you find that while there is no single

cause for all the spontaneous cures of cancer, the majority of such

patients experienced an acute infection just prior to the regression

of their tumor. This is a striking fact. These infections were

usually accompanied by fevers. This microbial attack stimulated some

powerful immune responses. The riled-up immune system then turned on

and destroyed a different kind of enemy, the tumor. It was as if an

army had mobilized to fight one adversary but continued marching to

defeat a second, even more dangerous, foe.

Our own ingenious solutions to the cancer problem seem puny compared

to the perfectly natural way that the body sometimes gets rid of it.

Why not learn from, and harness, this tremendous natural force? For

hundreds of years, the phenomenon of spontaneous remission has

fascinated the greatest minds in cancer, seeming to point the way

out of a hopeless morass. In 1976, Warren Cole, MD, wrote in a

celebrated paper:

" After years of thought concerning the cause of this phenomenon

[spontaneous regression], this author is convinced that most of the

cases are examples of development of an immunologic process, and if

we knew the explanation of the regression, we would be able to

develop a method for regression of many types of human cancer. "

However, lately, there has been a disturbing trend: spontaneous

remissions are becoming rarer. I myself have seen but a few examples

(and sometimes it is hard to distinguish those from " alternative

cures " ). I knew a young woman who had such a fear of doctors that

she left her breast cancer entirely untreated. By the time she

sought help, the tumor had ulcerated and spread. At one point, the

tumor became infected. What happened next was amazing. One day,

while she was in the shower, the tumor simply fell out of her chest,

leaving a smooth scar.

Sadly, the tumor had already metastasized and, despite subsequent

chemotherapy, she died of metastatic disease. Nonetheless, it was a

fascinating example of what might be the natural course of some

cases of this disease. I have seen a few other cases of partial

spontaneous remission, such as the disappearance of lung metastases

when an affected kidney was removed.

In the article " Spontaneous regression, " the authors attribute the

decline in spontaneous remissions to the modern " anti's " :

antiseptics and antibiotics and, I would add, antifever medications.

These ubiquitous drugs have certainly reduced the incidence of

postoperative infections, much to the relief of doctors and

patients. Fevers and chills are soothed away by acetaminophen. An

uncontrolled fever in a cancer patient would be seen as a profound

failure by the medical staff.

At the same time, modern treatments, especially radiation and

chemotherapy, have decreased the body's ability to mount a rip-

roaring immune response if and when an infection does occur. So much

so that a recent review of the topic ended with the

conclusion, " Immunotherapy applied to patients with established

tumors rarely leads to an objective response " (Forni 2000). This

wasn't the opinion fifty or one hundred years ago.

Some of the mysteries of medical history can be explained by the

untutored activation of the immune system, or the " vis medicatrix

naturae, " as the ancients called it. In 1742, for instance, the

French doctor H. F. Le Dran reported on a young patient who had an

inoperable cancer of her left breast. The tumor ulcerated and a

gangrene infection developed. Within two days, the entire tumor

sloughed off with profuse bleeding and pus (suppuration). The wound

healed in five weeks. Unfortunately, the disease recurred, causing

death eight months later.

In 1783, a Dr. V. Trnka described another patient with breast cancer

who came down with malaria (associated with chills, fever and

sweating). The patient's tumor went into permanent remission within

a few weeks. A physician of the time stated: " This mortification

could have been advantageous to the patient, for it could, as we

have seen sometimes, destroy the whole tumor, procuring a salutary

amputation [of the tumor] without pain. "

Wonderful Toads

Because of these accidental infections, eighteenth-century

physicians started to experiment with deliberately induced

infections and fevers. In 1768, G. White discussed in a letter " the

wonderful method of curing cancers by means of toads. " A woman in

Hungerford, England, he said, was treating patients with breast

cancer by applying a toad to the lesion until its death. (In many

cultures, animals such as guinea pigs or pigeons are applied to

diseased parts of the body.) Some might consider this " toad cure "

the height of quackery. On the other hand, it is possible that the

skin of the toad contains some poisonous substances that might

adversely affect cancer cells. Since the dead toad was affixed to

the breast lesion for several weeks by means of a poultice, it also

provided an excellent breeding ground for local infections.

One patient treated by this unorthodox method had been reduced to

a " meer skeleton, " we are told, but had a regression of her

metastatic lesions and was able to swallow once again with ease

following the " toad cure. "

Other doctors in the eighteenth century deliberately applied

dressings from wounds. Some surgeons even encouraged the formation

of infections in their incisions. Doctors of the time called

this " laudable pus. " Today, this practice is ridiculed as a relic of

bizarre and outlandish medical customs. But one doctor of the time

said, " I was often struck by the slowness with which [cancer]

recurrence developed in such cases. . .I asked myself if

suppuration, in eliminating the traces of cancer which had escaped

the knife, did not play a role in delaying recurrence, and if

therein lay the secret of success " (cited in Hoption Cann 2002).

By the mid-nineteenth century it was widely accepted that leaving an

infection in the surgical wound after a cancer operation could

actually benefit the patient. Stanislas Tanchou (the same doctor who

formulated the doctrine that cancer was a " disease of civilization " )

commented: " It is remarkable that. . .gangrene [has] caused the

largest number of cures. Gangrene may be considered as a therapeutic

agent, whether it occurs spontaneously or is induced medically. "

When Sir ph Lister's methods of aseptic surgery gained

ascendancy in the late nineteenth century, however, these profound

observations were forgotten. In addition, a fear of lawsuits made it

all but impossible to deliberately infect a patient with live

bacteria. By the start of the twentieth century, this crude sort of

immunotherapy with live (and admittedly dangerous) bacteria was

rejected as a relic of pre-scientific medicine.

No one is suggesting that cancer patients today be deliberately

infected with gangrene. However, there is another option. Over one

hundred years ago, a brave surgeon in New York City named B.

Coley, MD, began a clinical experiment in the use of bacterial

byproducts that still offers hope to desperate cancer patients. In

another article, I will tell the story of what happened to that most

promising treatment.

Note from Chet: Be sure to sign up for Dr. Moss's excellent

newsletter at his website.

References

Cole WH. Relationship of causative factors in spontaneous

regression of cancer to immunologic factors possibly effective in

cancer. J Surg Oncol 1976;8:391-411.

Forni G et al. Immunoprevention of cancer: is the time ripe? Cancer

Res 2000;60:2571-5.

Hoption Cann SA et al. Spontaneous regression: a hidden treasure

buried in time. Med Hypotheses 2002;58:115-9.

Le Dran F. Traité des opérations de chirurgie. Paris: C. Osmont,

1742.

Trnka V. History of remittent fevers. Vienna: Vidnobonae, 1783.

White G. Letter XVIII to Pennant, 27 July 1768. In: The

Natural History of Selborne. London: G. Routeledge and Sons, 1890:56.