Metabolic Aspects of Cancer

Cancer is the ultimate breakdown of life. Cancer is a disease which brings apprehension and fear into hearts and minds of all persons, patient and doctor alike. Early discovery and surgical removal of all nodules is accepted as the best available treatment. Programs of examination of susceptible areas are recommended by the American Cancer Society, with the implication that early discovery and removal of suspicious lesions leads to a higher rate of cure. This concept seems so natural, it is accepted as almost axiomatic.

Mortality from breast cancer however has not changed in the past thirty-five years.^1,2 According to Dr. Hardin B. Jones, survival times after breast surgery have not changed in the past seventy-five years.³This condition persists, despite the fact that this is an organ that lends itself best to easy examination and discovery of early lesions, and later to surgical excision and radiation. Before the lesion is large enough to be found by palpation, confirmed by mammography, and biopsied for final diagnosis, living cancer cells frequently migrate along the associated lymphatic ducts to lymph nodes in the axilla and through the chest wall into the lung. Tissue damage produced by wide dissection of chest muscles and complete removal of the lymph nodes in the neck and axilla, along with the possibility of re-seeding the operative areas with cancer cells, has produced a controversy among surgeons over the relative merits of the ‘complete Halstead operation’, compared to a simple mastectomy, the mortality rate being the same.⁴

Monthly examinations of her breasts by the patient, Papanicolaou smear of the cervix by a physician every six months, and the constant reminder by all the news media to be aware of the possibility of cancer, leaves one with a sense of expectancy and uneasiness about a condition that can appear any time without warning, and about which little or nothing can be done to protect oneself.

In March 1964, the then President, Lyndon B. Johnson set up a President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke. This was to be a concerted effort nationwide to collect data from carefully chosen regional centers–the entire Program to be under the direction of Dr. Michael E. DeBakey.

Heart disease was to be controlled by low cholesterol diets, physical exercise programs, and heart transplants. After ten years Dr. DeBakey declared that transplants were not successful enough to continue this program and that no more would be done. Long-term testing of low cholesterol diets are still progressing and the results are inconclusive. Physical exercise programs are still being promoted and their results are being evaluated. Thus far, no clearcut evidence has been found that diet or exercise are of any great benefit in controlling heart disease or stroke.

The National Cancer Act of 1971 was promoted by the then President Richard M. Nixon and passed by Congress in December 1971. This was to be a crash program to conquer cancer. The Program was to be under the direction of the National Cancer Institute, the largest and oldest section of the National Institutes of Health.

The New York Times of May 27, 1975 pointed out that over 1.7 billion dollars has been expended in the past three and one-half years, and not a single clue to the cure of cancer has yet been found. It was pointed out that cancer is really the study of the breakdown of the life force at its very foundation, and that it is quite likely that regardless of the expenditure of any amount of money, even over a prolonged period of time, the answer as to why we get cancer, or how it is cured, may not be found. In all fairness to this program, it must be pointed out that this great expenditure of money was not even for direct research into the problem of cancer, but ended up in production buildings for Research Institutes, stocked with the necessary hardware to carry on research at almost all the medical schools in the country. Most of these buildings are not yet completed and will not be ready for active cancer research for several years.

Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of England under Queen Victoria, once said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Much of the research associated with cancer is done by statistics, and certainly a review of these statistics leaves one in a confused state of understanding. Most of the time the real cause of cancer is not being discussed at all. The statistics are collected on environmental contaminants that poison the cell and produce cancer. There are literally thousands of these toxic agents. They are the secondary causes of cancer and tell us nothing of its prime cause.

There is a paper entitled: “The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer”, the English edition of the work of Dr. Otto Warburg of Berlin, Germany.⁵ This German chemist and physicist was awarded two Nobel Prizes for his study of cellular metabolism in normal and cancerous cells. His work was published in German and subsequently translated by Dr. Dean Burk of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A. An analysis of this work, supplemented with critical comments, is the subject of this paper.

Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoades supervised the expenditure of large amounts of money over a period of twenty years as Director of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute of Memorial Hospital in New York City, trying to find a procedure to cure cancer by chemotherapy. He finally had to agree in 1962 that this was an impossible goal. Immediately the research was directed into the production of cancer by viruses–hoping that a specific virus would be responsible for a specific type of cancer, and that when this specific virus was found, a vaccine could be made to protect the population from this virus and hopefully the cancer it produced.

For many years the mass of cancer cells forming the malignant tumor was considered to be a foreign body and therefore subject to immunity response and reaction. Much research has been done to discover the antibodies produced by the cancer cells and to develop immune reactions against them. So far this has failed. However, many research projects are still proceeding on virus production of cancer and immune reaction to cancer tissue cells.

While all of this massive research effort was proceeding, Dr. Otto Warburg quietly and systematically carried on his work in cellular respiration at the Max Planck Institute for Cell Physiology in Berlin, Germany. He was awarded his first Nobel Prize in medicine in 1931 for his discovery of the oxygen-transferring–enzyme of cellular respiration. He was awarded his second Nobel Prize in 1944 for his discovery of the active groups of the hydrogen-transferring-enzymes. His main interests throughout his professional life had been the chemistry and physics of life. In both fields no scientist has been more successful.

Dr. Warburg points out that all diseases have prime causes and secondary causes. The prime cause of malaria is the malarial parasite. The secondary causes are the Anopheles mosquito and stagnant pools of water in which their larvae develop into mosquitoes.

The prime cause of the plague is the plague bacillus. The secondary causes of the plague are filth, rats, and the fleas that transfer the plague bacillus from rats to man.

The prime cause of trichinosis is the parasite trichinella spirallis. The secondary causes of trichinosis are the pig and poor sanitation. Millenia ago the Jews treated the disease by avoiding the pig to the extent of making this avoidance a part of their code of moral laws.

Cancer is a disease for which thousands of secondary causes have been discovered and tested. Cancer, however, has only one prime cause. The prime cause of cancer is the replacement of oxygen in the respiratory chemistry of normal cells by the fermentation of sugar. Cancer is not a disease of acquisition. Cancer is a disease of degeneration. Cancer cells are not truly foreign bodies. They are normal cells which have changed their utilization of energy by conversion to a more primitive state used in the earlier stages of evolution.

There is a sign in a large American research laboratory which reads:

“THIS PROBLEM TOO, WHEN SOLVED, WILL BE SIMPLE.”

Thirty years ago no one believed the problems of heredity and protein design would ever be understood. The visualization of the Double Helix of the DNA Molecule by Francis H.C. Crick, James D. Watson, and Maurice H.F. Wilkins, earned them the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1962. Its remarkably simple structure of six parts: adenine and thymine, cytosine and guanine, desoxyribose and phosphate, has opened the door to the understanding of the replication of life by the DNA Molecule.⁶ The complexity of the mechanism and the almost astronomical numbers of repetitions involved (in the billions), make it impossible for us to reproduce what nature has done, but we can understand and appreciate its magnificence and simplicity.

When it was finally discovered that the prime cause of cancer was the loss of the ability of cells to utilize oxygen in their respiratory cycle and to continue living in a state of fermentation without oxygen, it was difficult to accept. It seemed too simple an answer to such a complex problem. It is the complexity that confounds us, because we do not understand completely all the intricate steps required for oxygen to release energy within the cell and form carbon dioxide and water. When this is discovered, it, too, will be simple. This knowledge may eventually show us the way to cure cancer once it is established.

Fermentation was shown to be the mechanism of respiration in cancer cells as early as 1923. Only in recent years, however, has it been demonstrated that cancer cells can actually grow in the body with almost only the energy of fermentation. Life without oxygen, in a living world that was created by oxygen was so unexpected, that it would have been too much to ask all scientists to accept the thesis that the prime cause of cancer is simply the loss of the ability of cells to utilize oxygen in their respiratory cycle and revert to fermentation for their energy to live.

It has been suggested, and even supposed, that the embryo growing inside its mother’s uterus has many of the properties of a growing cancer tumor. Its remarkably rapid rate of growth was one of the characteristics that suggested this possibility. With the knowledge that a tumor of cancer cells grows only under low oxygen pressure, while a tumor of normal cells (baby), requires high oxygen pressure, a simple and convincing experiment was performed by two Americans, Malmgren and Flanegan. They injected tetanus spores, which can germinate and ferment only in very low oxygen pressure, into the blood of healthy mice. The mice did not become ill with tetanus, because the spores could find no place in the animal’s body where the oxygen pressure was sufficiently low for them to germinate.

In the second experiment, tetanus spores were injected into the blood of healthy pregnant mice. Again the mice did not become ill with tetanus–showing that the growing embryo in its mother’s uterus had no region where the oxygen pressure was sufficiently low to permit spore germination and fermentation–thus proving that the growing embryo in its mother’s uterus does not grow as a cancer tumor.

In the third experiment, tetanus spores were injected into the blood of mice having cancer tumors. Immediately these mice became ill with tetanus–showing that the oxygen pressure in the tumor was low enough for the spores to germinate and ferment.

These experiments demonstrate in a unique way the low oxygen tension and poor utilization of oxygen in the cancer cell–and the high oxygen tension and excellent utilization of oxygen in normal cells; particularly those of the fast growing embryonic cells of the fetus.

In another experiment, it was shown that the more malignant a tumor is, the higher its rate of fermentation and the faster its rate of growth. Much of the work done on the structure of cancer cells has been with cells in tissue culture, that is, with cells growing in an artificial medium in a glass dish in which they can be spread out in a single layer and studied under the microscope.

Cancer was studied in tissue culture in 1942 by Dr. George Gey, with the collaboration of Dr. Warfield M. Firor, at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Pictures of these cells growing in tissue culture were taken by time-lapse photography, and in a fortunate study normal cells were seen to change into cancer cells. This was serendipity at its best, but no reason for the change from normal to cancer cells was understood.

An experiment was performed at the Max Planck Institute For Cell Physiology in Berlin, Germany, by Dr. Otto Warburg and his co-workers, K. Gawehn, A.W. Geissler, and S. Lorenz, which had far-reaching significance and uncovered one of the most remarkable aspects of tissue culture. Embryonic mouse cells were placed in a suitable culture medium under normal oxygen pressure (atmospheric pressure). These cells grew normally outside the mouse’s body with pure oxygen respiration, without a trace of fermentation. As the growth proceeded the oxygen pressure in which the cells were growing was gradually reduced. It was found that when the oxygen pressure was lowered by 35%, these normal cells changed to a metabolism characteristic of fermenting cancer cells. This change took place in 48 hours, which is the time required for only two cell divisions. This was a most remarkable discovery. The lowered oxygen pressure, depriving the cells of oxygen by 35%, produced inhibition of oxygen respiration and brought about a complete change of cellular respiration in the remarkably short time of two cell divisions: from normal oxygen respiration to fermentation; and from normal cells to cancer cells. The speed of this transformation alone is unbelievable.

When the oxygen pressure was brought back to normal, the cancer cell metabolism did not return to normal. The changed cells continued to live, obtaining their energy from fermentation. The transformation of normal embryonic cell metabolism into cancer cell metabolism was shown to be irreversible. It is important to realize, however, that once transformed into cancer cells with a metabolism of fermentation, they continue to grow in the body and do so at a rapid rate, eventually producing the dreaded malignant tumor of which we are all so familiar.

It is important to realize that lowered oxygen pressure, which can inhibit respiration by 35%, can occur at the ends of the blood capillaries in living animals. Thus the possibility arises that cancer may result when lowered oxygen pressure occurs during normal cell growth in animal bodies. The induction of cancer by solid materials inserted into animals is a further experimental proof of this possibility. Discs of solid substances placed under the skin of rats soon become surrounded by capsules of living tissue that are nourished by blood vessels from the skin. Sarcomas frequently develop in these capsules. It is immaterial whether the solid discs are chemical plastics, gold or ivory. The cancer is not produced by the chemical nature of the solid discs. It is controlled by the special kind of nourishment supplied by the blood to the tissue encapsulating the discs. This blood supply varies with the site and the absorption of oxygen in the given animal, and cancer is induced by the low oxygen pressure in the blood capillaries surrounding the encapsulated discs.

Even when we accept the experimental observation that the lowering of oxygen respiration in the normal cell leads to fermentation, it is even more intriguing to inquire: “Why does cancer result when oxygen respiration is replaced by fermentation?” The early history of life on our planet indicates that life existed on earth before the earth’s atmosphere contained free oxygen as a gas. The living cells must therefore have been fermenting cells, and as fossils show, they were undifferentiated single cells. Only when free oxygen appeared in the atmosphere some billion years ago, did the higher development of life produce the plant and animal kingdoms from the fermenting undifferentiated single cell. What the philosophers of life have called ‘Creative Evolution’ is therefore the work of oxygen.

No one would dispute that the development of plants and animals and man from unicellular fermenting cells is the most improbable process of all processes in the world. According to the thermodynamics of Boltzmann, improbable processes require the expenditure of energy. It is the oxygen respiration that provides this work in the living cell, and the inability to maintain cellular differentiation begins at once when this oxygen respiration is inhibited in any way. The de-differentiation of life takes place in the greatest amount before our eyes today in cancer development. To be sure, cancer development takes place even in the presence of free oxygen gas in the atmosphere. However, this oxygen either does not penetrate in sufficient quantity into the growing body cells, or the respiratory enzymes of the growing body cells are not supplied with sufficient quantity of the active groups of vitamins and minerals to efficiently utilize the available oxygen. During the development of cancer, the oxygen respiration ceases, fermentation appears, and the highly differentiated cells are transformed into fermenting single cells which have lost all of their body functions and now retain only the useless property of growth. Thus when oxygen respiration ceases life does not disappear, but the meaning of life disappears and what remains is a mass of growing cell-machines that destroy the body in which they grow.

The study of the respiratory activity of the cell shows an extremely complex mechanism of energy transformation. This is accompanied by a complex mechanism of genetic transfer and replication by the fantastic Double Helix of DNA containing the gene information to guide the cell in producing an identical duplicate of itself. When one examines the process of energy-production alone in the respiratory cycle, one is amazed at the number of steps required for the breakdown of the glucose molecule into carbon dioxide and water. Much of this complex chemistry has been worked out and one of the most amazing pieces of that puzzle is the Kreb’s Cycle, which earned a Nobel Prize for its discoverer.

Throughout this energy transfer mechanism, vitamins and minerals are used to activate the steps of energy release along the way. It is well known that an insufficiency of these active agents will disrupt this respiratory cycle. It is recommended that you view the colored motion picture made available by The Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company, entitled: “Energy Release From Cells.” It shows the release of energy from the glucose molecule to form carbon dioxide and water, with the aid of thiamine, riboflavin and niacin and associated minerals. Present knowledge of the chemistry of this transformation is much more complete and detailed than when this picture was made thirty years ago, but it is still a very impressive picture for those who are just becoming interested in the study of cellular respiration.

As was pointed out previously, the maintenance of this oxygen respiration is vital to the life of the cell and ultimately the organism. As soon as this mechanism is reduced in efficiency the patient begins to complain of being tired and cold. These are two symptoms that we accept and rather expect of old age. Thus age is a dimension of time, during which there is a gradual reduction in the available vitamins and minerals and respiratory enzymes in the cell, so that it cannot utilize oxygen efficiently to carry on its respiratory function. With the processing of our food, staleness, preservation with heat, and eventually cooking and sterilization many of these active vitamins and minerals are inactivated and are no longer available to the cell; and so in varying amounts and at varying times the respiratory activity of the cell is jeopardized, leading to chronic disease and eventually to cancer.

It is interesting to review our understanding of the biochemistry of cellular respiration, so that we can show why fermentation arises immediately when oxygen respiration ceases. Figure I shows that the pathways of respiration and fermentation are common as far as pyruvic acid. Then the pathways diverge. The end product of fermentation is reached by one single reaction, which is the reduction of pyruvic acid by dihydro-nicotinamide to lactic acid. On the other hand, the end products of the oxidation of pyruvic acid to carbon dioxide and water, are only reached after many additional reactions. Therefore, when the activities of the cell are strained by having the respiratory cycle overwhelmed by viruses, by increased demands from infection, by healing after surgery, by undue fatigue; all combined with an insufficient reserve supply and poor replacement of the vitamins and minerals of the respiratory cycle, this complex oxygen mechanism of respiration is damaged. The cells lose their ability to function in the normal use of oxygen and revert to a pre-evolutionary state of energy formation called ‘fermentation’–and as was pointed out previously, within the time of two cell divisions after losing its oxygen mechanism, the cell is on its way to becoming cancerous. It also loses its identity and no longer looks like cells of the tissue from which it started. It is now a more undifferentiated cell.

Cancer is defined by the dictionary as “A malignant growth anywhere in the body.” When viewed under the microscope in its early stages, it is a mass of undifferentiated round cells that have no specific characteristics and can be mistaken for other round cells in the body, such as lymphocytes or monocytes. It requires a trained eye to recognize the difference, and sometimes this is impossible. The characteristic that makes this mass of cells ‘cancer’ is rapid cell division, recognized by the presence of many cells in mitotic division; and its invasive action into surrounding structures. This is what gives it its malignant character and the connotation ‘crab-like’. Thus, without positive evidence of mitotic division and invasion, the pathologist has no way of being sure he is looking at early cancer cells. Sometimes, to be on the ‘safe’ side, suspicious groups of normal cells are called ‘cancer’ and treated as such by both surgery and radiation, and statistically entered into the records as a cancer ‘cure’.

From our previous discussion we can see that a cancer cell is a normal cell that has lost its oxygen respiratory cycle and has reverted to a lower state of energy utilization called ‘fermentation’. This can happen in the remarkably short time of two cell divisions. In doing so the normal cell loses its identity and reverts to an undifferentiated round cell. It now has the ability to grow rapidly and to invade surrounding tissue. It can also metastasize to other places in the body and grow there equally well and form the characteristic malignant tumors of which we are all so familiar.

In making the change from the normal cell to the cancer cell, the genetic pattern has not necessarily changed; only the method of energy utilization has changed. Thus the cancer cell is not a true foreign body and does not stimulate a defense reaction against its invasion. As no defense reaction is produced, no immune antibodies are generated and so the usual immunological techniques do not as yet produce a reaction against the cancer.

A virus is composed of chromatin without a self-sufficient mechanism of replication. It cannot exist on culture medium alone such as is usually used for growing bacteria. It was a great discovery when it was found that virus could be cultured in living cells. The virus mixes its chromatin with the chromatin of the cell and uses the replication apparatus of the cell to reproduce itself. If the invasion is severe enough, it may kill the host. In any case it will leave him tired and depleted. If the depletion is such that the respiratory cycle of the cell is harmed because of the lack of vitamins and minerals to carry on the respiratory use of oxygen, the cell may revert to the stage of fermentation and cancer. Thus a virus is not the prime cause of cancer; it is a secondary cause, no different from the chemical irritants of pollution, smoke, etc. From this discussion it can be seen that cancer will never be conquered by immune reactions to an invading virus.

Three scientists shared the Nobel Prize this year for physiology: Dr. Howard Martin Temin; Dr. Renato Dulbecco; and Dr. David Baltimore. Their work was on viruses and genes. It was hoped that their findings would open the door to the relationship of viruses to human cancer. In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, October 17, 1975, Dr. Temin stated unequivocally that in recent years studies of tumor virus in animals have produced a high degree of certainty that most human cancers are not caused by viruses. He does not believe that viruses play a central role in the problem of human cancer.

When the normal cell loses its oxygen respiratory cycle by low oxygen pressure and reverts to fermentation, it cannot return to the normal state by supplying high pressure oxygen again. Thus, cancer is incurable by such physiological means; but it is preventable by maintaining the vitamin and mineral agents that are required to keep the respiratory cycle in a high state of efficiency. Indeed, millions of experiments in man have shown that cell respiration is impaired if the active groups of the respiratory enzymes are removed from the food; and that the cell respiration is repaired immediately if these vitamins and minerals are added to the food again. Dr. Warburg states: “No way can be imagined that is scientifically better founded to prevent and cure a disease, the prime cause of which is impaired respiration. Neither genetic codes nor cancer viruses are alternatives today.”

What can be achieved by supplying the active groups of vitamins and minerals when tumors have already developed? This is a question that requires great consideration. The answer is equivocal. Equivocal because tumors live in the body almost without oxygen, under conditions that no longer accept help or involvement by the respiratory enzymes. Sometimes the cancer cells die trying to return their metabolic pathway to normal, and we have what looks like a spontaneous cure.

In 1967 it was unexpectedly discovered by Dr. Warburg that low concentrations of some selected active groups added to growing cancer cells in tissue culture, stopped fermentation and the growth of cancer cells completely in the course of a few days. From these experiments it may be concluded that the de-differentiated cells can die if one tries to normalize their metabolism.

The procedure in caring for a patient who already has malignant tumors is as follows:

1. Remove all compact tumors by surgery, electro-desiccation, radiation, etc.
2. Add active groups of vitamins and minerals to the food in the greatest possible amounts for many years–maybe for life.
3. See that the patient gets an adequate amount of oxygen to saturate the blood and growing body cells.
4. All carcinogens which can impair respiration directly or indirectly must be eliminated.
5. While these procedures are recommended for patients who already have cancer, it is to be understood that once the tumors are diagnosed, it is very doubtful that they can be reverted by any procedures; but this is the best way we have.
6. Cancer is not yet a curable disease; but it is often a preventable disease. It is prevented by maintaining the high efficiency of oxygen utilization in the respiratory cycle of the cell. This can be done by supplementation of the patient’s diet throughout his life with vitamins and minerals that enter into this respiratory cycle. It is noted that nicotinamide and riboflavin play a great role in this cycle and are used more often, and should be especially recognized in the supplemental schedule.

Dr. Warburg points out that the experts agree that 85 percent of all cancer could be eliminated by separating the patient from environmental carcinogens.

The highest rate of cancer is produced by smoking. Just recently the World Health Organization published a statement from Geneva, Switzerland, stating: “The control of cigarette smoking could do more to improve health and prolong life in developed countries than any other single action in the whole field of preventive medicine. Until recently it was the smoker himself whose health was considered jeopardized, but now it is recognized that non-smokers may be exposed to harmful concentrations of smoke.” In particular, he may be exposed to unsafe concentrations of carbon monoxide, a most deadly poison to oxygen respiration. They recommend that ‘NO SMOKING’ areas should be expanded on public transportation and in other public places, and the smokers be required to obtain permission from non-smokers before they light up on the job, in restaurants, or any other place where people are congregated.

Why does it happen that in spite of all that we have outlined, so little is done towards the prevention of cancer–even to the official dissemination of this knowledge that we have discussed? The answer has always been and still is, that one does not know what cancer is or what the prime cause of cancer is, and consequently one cannot prevent something whose cause is not known. On the contrary, Dr. Warburg states: “There is no disease whose prime cause is better known.” It is true that the damaged chemical mechanism of the respiratory cycle of the cell is mostly unknown, and as The New York Times pointed out, it may never be completely known, despite the expenditure of any amount of money. But while research proceeds to find the answer to this respiratory puzzle, we already have the means to prevent it from losing its integrity and becoming cancer.

As it is understood today, cancer is not a curable disease. It is preventable in high degree, however, by two simple procedures that do not require expenditures of large amounts of money by people or government:

1. Air pollution control and elimination of smoking.
2. Supplementation of vitamins and minerals to a good diet, to support the oxygen enzyme mechanism of the respiratory cycle of the cell.

Unfortunately, smoking is a pacifier and a status symbol. Many people use cigarettes in an attempt to ease nervous tension. Many more, especially young people, use it to give themselves poise, dignity and a sense of importance. Prevention is never considered a treatment if it requires the patient to do all the work, or give up things he enjoys so much. Patients consider prevention to be control of disease by sanitary engineering supplied by the government, such as for malaria, typhoid, etc.; or they accept prevention as vaccines against polio, smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, etc. supplied by public health physicians. To give up alcohol, sugar, cigarettes, and replace them with a good diet supplemented with vitamins and minerals, is not considered ‘prevention’. The patient with a chronic disease who must take care of himself, is most likely to avoid cancer. Generally speaking, however, cancer is a disease that will be around and begging for cure as long as man exists. Not until he is a victim of the disease can he be persuaded to apply prevention. Then it will be too late. He wants ‘cure’, not ‘prevention’.

A large part of the research against cancer today is in the area of non-specific immune reaction. While no specific antibodies have yet been produced against cancer, there is now a tremendous effort to conquer cancer by non-specific immuno-therapy. One of the scientists carrying on this work in the United States is Dr. Robert A. Good, President and Director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, and Director of Research at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He says: “We know there are certain substances the body views as foreign. We have a system of soldier cells that eat up foreign substances, and that is what we are trying to harness. The problem now is that the cancer cell has ways of ‘getting around’ the immune system. It sends out a ‘smoke screen’ so that somehow the body doesn’t recognize it as foreign. The trick is to make the body look on the cancer cell as though it were foreign, and destroy it.” He also says: “We found that we could increase or decrease immunity efficiency by varying the nutritional content of the diet. In fact, we have doubled the life expectancy of a certain strain of mice through nutritional manipulation.”

In Europe, Dr. Lucien Israel is carrying on research in immunology by using non-specific bacterial antigens. Non-specific immunology means that the introduction of certain foreign micro-organisms into the body can stimulate the body’s resistance to a broad spectrum of diseases. The micro-organism that Dr. Israel works with is the corynebacterium parvum, a non-toxic organism in the diphtheria family, which he calls ‘CP’. Previous to his work with the ‘CP’ organism he had worked with ‘BCG’, an agent of the anti-TB vaccinations and which is the organism most commonly used in America today for non-specific immunology treatment of cancer.

Dr. Israel stated that in 1898 the American surgeon, Dr. William B. Coley, reported that he noticed that certain cancers were cured after patients were accidentally infected with other diseases. He went on to treat a number of inoperable cases with a mixture of germs and produced several cures. Dr. Coley’s experiments fell on deaf ears in his profession. “At that time no one could conceive of the idea because no one could explain why non-specific immunity worked,” Dr. Israel said.

Dr. Linus Pauling has suggested that a large intake of Vitamin C can protect a patient against cancer. He defines ‘orthomolecular’ as the use of substances that are normally present in the human body to achieve the best of health, to prevent disease, and to treat disease. The vitamins are among the most important of these, but there are many other factors that are normally present in the human body, such as hormones, enzymes and antibodies. He does not claim that these materials effect a cure from cancer that is already well developed. He feels that an increased intake of Vitamin C protects one to some extent against cancer, and that patients with cancer when given large amounts of Vitamin C have a greater chance of living for a longer time than those who do not.

Dr. Linus Pauling’s orthomolecular medicine is nothing more than the supplementation of vitamins, minerals and hormones to support the body’s cellular respiration in exactly the same way that Dr. Otto Warburg recommends for protection against cancer. It is a pattern of work which I have carried on for forty years, and which I reported in the Spring 1975 Issue of The Journal of Applied Nutrition.⁷

The non-specific immuno-therapy is another technique which I have used throughout my rehabilitation therapy to challenge the body’s reaction to set up a defense mechanism. It is like a slap in the face to turn an individual on, so that the immune response to bacteria or foreign bodies of any kind sets up a non-specific defense reaction. In my work I have used Krueger’s Vaccine of undenatured bacterial protein from Hemolytic Streptococci, Pneumococci, N. Influenzae, Staphylococci, and N. Catarrhalis.⁸ These are the most common bacteria of the upper respiratory tract to which the body is constantly setting up defenses against their invasion. These are the organisms that riot when the body’s defenses are depleted with a virus invasion. Maintaining the body’s defenses constantly against these ever-present invaders keeps the cell in a high state of healthy offense. Supplementation of vitamins, minerals and hormones gives the necessary basic elements for the cell to use in developing its antibodies in this front line of defense. This entire mechanism promotes the health and well-being of the cells in line with Dr. Warburg’s thesis that keeping the cellular respiration at a high degree of efficiency is the best protection against cancer. The present non-specific research in immunology adds nothing, in my opinion, to the solution of the cancer problem.

For many years reports have come from various parts of the world extolling the health and longevity of its people. Three of these areas were discussed in the National Geographic Magazine, Volume 143, No. 1, January 1973, on pages 93-118. The first is in Russia, called Abkhazia, an autonomous republic in the Georgian S.S.R., situated at an elevation of about 4,000 feet in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. The second is in the Hunza Valley in the Karakoram Range of the Himalaya Mountains, at an elevation of 8,000 feet, a part of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. The third is in Ecuador, at an elevation of 6,000 feet in the Andes Mountains, called Vilcabamba.

These people have been visited and carefully investigated and there is no doubt that there are many of them living to 100 years and older–some to 110 and still working. Evaluations of their diet and their genetic pattern does not show a clear-cut pattern that would indicate the reason for their good health, longevity, and absence of cancer.

Each of these villages have rivers flowing through them that wash minerals from the high mountain ranges surrounding them into the valleys where these people live. This water carries mineral elements dissolved from the rocks and is used to water the crops and flocks, and is also used as drinking water for the community. It is reported by Tobe, Editor of Provoker magazine, who visited the Hunza Valley, that the water served on the table from the river had a ground-glass appearance, indicating its suspended sediment. The Hunzas avoid the crystal clear spring water and drink the water from the river. The same is true of the other two villages. The people live close to the land and consume particles of dirt attached to the vegetables and other food they eat. This, plus the water, gives them an excellent supply of mineral elements from the area, which are fortuitously balanced.

It is my thesis that it is from these mineral elements that these people gain their excellent health, longevity, and freedom from cancer. This is in line again with the metabolic support to the cell and its respiratory enzyme mechanism as outlined by Dr. Otto Warburg.

The study of life sciences is being carried on in some degree in all of the research laboratories in the world. It is a subject of great interest and the knowledge of the basic mechanics of life itself appears to be a never-ending quest. When we consider the extremely complex and varied phenomena of life and of basic cellular metabolism, we are faced with two contradictory and almost irreconcilable facts:

First, life seems to reproduce itself in exact patterns, regardless of the exigencies of living conditions and available nutrition. Closer examination reveals a second fact, that life is in a never-ending pattern of change by hereditary modifications of the chromatin chain, both by sexual reproduction and virus invasion. It is this constant variability in the life processes that makes it impossible to predict a pattern of support that will keep the organism in a state of good health over a long period of time. Dr. Roger J. Williams promotes the genetotropic concept of nutrient requirements of each individual.⁹ Genetotropic means that the amount of nutrient required is based on cellular requirements as a pattern of heredity. Even though we know that vitamins and minerals are the materials that will maintain the integrity of the cell, there are so many factors involved, and so many exigencies of life to contend with, that we cannot protect the cell indefinitely.

It was pointed out in the first sentence of this paper that cancer is the ultimate breakdown of life. The experimental work of Dr. Otto Warburg shows clearly that cancer is caused by the loss of the ability of the cells to utilize the oxygen in their respiratory cycle. It also shows that this respiratory mechanism is maintained, supported and enhanced by supplementing the diet with vitamins and minerals.

Summary

This paper is an interpretation of Dr. Otto Warburg’s lectures on the relationship between oxygen respiration in the cell and cancer. He shows that cancer is produced when the cell loses its ability to utilize oxygen in its respiratory cycle and derives its energy of life from fermentation of sugar. A 35% drop in oxygen utilization or oxygen availability can produce this change from normal to cancer cells in the length of time of two cell divisions, and the resulting energy state is irreversible. Cancer is thus shown to be a preventable disease; but not a curable one. Supplementation of the diet throughout life with vitamins and minerals to support the oxygen respiratory cycle of the cell is recommended as a preventive measure against cancer.

Discussion and appraisal of some of the major current research efforts on cancer. Review of life patterns of three isolated groups of people who have great longevity without cancer or heart disease. Conclusion: that good health, free of heart disease, stroke and cancer is produced by diet containing adequate and balanced vitamins and minerals–especially minerals.

Acknowledgement

I have distributed about one hundred copies of a publication by Dr. Otto Warburg entitled: “The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer,” in its English Edition by Dr. Dean Burk of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., recently retired after thirty-five research therein. I have found some recipients not impressed after reading this paper. In fact, they frequently say that they did not understand its story or comprehend its significance.

This paper represents an effort to present the contents of the pamphlet by Dr. Warburg in non-technical popular language, and in a continuity that carries the reader to the logical conclusion of ‘prevention’. All of this is to the credit of Dr. Warburg and his Associates. It is hoped that this interpretation may reduce the fear of cancer by showing how it comes about, and how it might often be prevented.

 

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