A Last Stand, Cancer treatment option

A Last Stand, An American Tragedy.

By David James

Sample Chapters

Prologue

Chapter One

A cancer is a group of cells (usually derived from a single cell) that has lost its normal control mechanisms and thus has unregulated growth…

Even when a cell becomes cancerous, the immune system is thought to be able to recognize it as abnormal and destroy it before it replicates or spreads…

However, even when a person’s immune system is functioning normally, cancer can escape the immune system’s protective surveillance (The Merck Manual-Second Home Edition 2001).

***

He can’t see it through because he doesn’t have the physical capabilities nor the knowledge of the basic sciences. He’s a biologist, but the basic science is very deep and broad. No one man can encompass it all. You need a National Cancer Institute to take a concept like this and really go into it in depth (Rottino, 1978).

***

Fifteen years ago…he believed immunology offered promise in treating cancer, but the leaders in cancer were convinced viruses were the answer. Now viruses are out, immunology is in, but Burton is still out, and out of the country (Harry Reasoner, May 18, 1980, 60 Minutes, “The Establishment vs. Dr. Burton”).

July 29, 1974 cover of New York Magazine. New York Magazine's cover ran independent of this book. New York Magazine has not endorsed this book and this cover is being used as a reference.

Prologue:

In the summer of 1974, cancer patients, their friends, and families rushed to newsstands across the country to buy the July 29 edition of New York Magazine. They ran with high hopes to open to page 42 to read in awe about the two scientists who had graced the cover. The cover story was entitled “The Politics of Cancer: Why Won’t the Medical Establishment Pay Attention to These Two Men?” That year, Americans were pleased that the war in Asia was coming to a conclusion and our troops were preparing for a final return from Vietnam. On another front, President Nixon had waged another war, “The War on Cancer.” The world of science was furiously determined to solve this dreaded mystery, and all were scrambling for governmental and charitable funding. A great number of scientists and famous medical institutions were in the process of developing hopeful cancer drugs and refining radiation therapy. At that time, most were looking for the cause of cancer in the form of a virus. The two scientists on the cover of New York Magazine were beating a drum to a different beat. They were looking within for the answer. The photo on the cover showed the two scientists sitting at a table with their important-looking beards and lab coats. The scientist closest to the camera, a Dr. Frank Friedman, held out a brown laboratory mouse in the palm of an outreached hand. The other scientist, Dr. Lawrence Burton, sat behind him with his arms crossed in a defiant manner and a tight-lipped smirk with a sarcastic grin trying to sneak out, as if he knew what the coming years had in store. In retrospect, no one could have imagined.

Alan Anderson Jr. was a freelance writer on science and medical subjects and had written the article for New York Magazine. The title of the inside article of that famed edition was “The Politics of Cancer: How Do You Get the Medical Establishment to Listen?” Mr. Anderson starts:

The demonstration held before several hundred journalists in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1966, was surely a milestone in science writing, if not in cancer research. Two researchers unveiled a special strain of mice which, they explained, were valued for their unvarying tendency to get mammary cancer. All of the mice had it, visible in the form of bulky malignant tumors as much as an inch across. Four of these mice were selected for injection with a potion that was said to be able to shrink the tumors. As the journalists gripped their pencils, one of the men picked up the mice, one at a time, and jabbed the needle expertly beneath the quivering skin of each back.

Less than an hour later, the journalists and other researchers stepped up to see for themselves. Just as the two men had predicted, the tumors had shrunk to less than half their former size; they had lost their hardness, becoming soft and pulpy to the touch. Reporters raced for telephones and typewriters, and the story made headlines around the world. A banner across the front page of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner read: “15-MINUTE CANCER CURE FOR MICE; HUMANS NEXT?”

The show was too much for some of the other scientists at the meetings, which was sponsored by the American Cancer Society. Mammary tumors are tough to get rid of by any means, and to have them dissolve on cue in a matter of minutes strained the credibility of some beyond the breaking point. Whispers began to spread: “The mice were switched.” Five disbelievers even got together as an impromptu committee, describing what they had seen with words like “quackery” and “fraud.” They were restrained only by officers of the American Cancer Society from making their views public.

The scenario was reenacted, less dramatically, in 1967. The two men, Drs. Lawrence Burton and Frank Friedman, of the Hodgkin’s Disease Research Laboratory at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York, were asked again to demonstrate what had come to be regarded by some as witchcraft—this time before a special dinner meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine. Once again, the tumors of the injected mice began to break up almost immediately, and once again enthusiasm was followed by skepticism. “That’s very interesting,” said one prominent cancer man in the audience, “but since I didn’t do it, I can’t really say that it works.”

By that reasoning, I can’t really say that it works either, but when Burton and Friedman offered last month to repeat the experiment, I felt it was worth a look. I found them in the small laboratory of the Immunology Research Foundation in Great Neck, Long Island, which was set up last fall to support their work. As I walked in, Burton, a short, pipe-smoking man with expressive dark eyes, was working in a white lab coat, spinning test tubes in high-speed centrifuges, shuttling vials in and out of refrigerators and freezers, and washing up afterward. Washing up? The cadres of trained technicians and lab assistants who normally do such chores were missing. I recalled other interviews with senior scientists, held not amid the whir of machinery but in comfortable offices. “We could use some help with some of these steps,” Burton complained with a trace of peevishness. “Then I could spend more time with my roses and my wife.”

“We’ll have to talk while we work,” yelled Friedman from the other side of the lab. Frank Friedman, who, like Burton, is 48 years old and married, was working just as fast at his own chores and was barely audible above the racket of centrifuges, timers, and magnetic stirrers. He was taking blood from the mice to be assayed.

The easiest way to do this without damaging the mouse, he explained, was to jab a tiny assemblage of blood vessels around the eye with a needle. This insult provokes the four to six drops of blood needed to analyze the mouse cancer status. “That’s the one part of this operation that turns me off,” said Lionel Teicher, a Great Neck businessman who helped found the IRF and who now spends his time cheering for Friedman and Burton and raising funds to keep the operation afloat.

When Friedman had finished, he pulled over another cageful of mice and proffered one with a tumor bulging just forward of the right hind leg. “Feel it—see how hard?” he said. Then he injected the mouse, and seven others with part of the animals’ own blood that had been refined according to an elaborate recipe, considerably improved since 1966, of centrifuging, heating, and cooking. “Check the time,” he ordered. It was one o’clock.

Friedman then summarized their work in somewhat obscure terms, fully expecting disbelief on my part and displaying an outspoken distrust of the “cancer establishment.” Then I wandered around the lab, looking at the brown mice known as C3H (t): every female of this strain develops mammary tumors between five and thirteen months of age, and dies about 56 days after the onset of the tumor. Friedman and Burton chose these genetically doomed creatures, which they have been raising for ten years, because their natural (as opposed to transplanted) tumors offer a more realistic biological challenge. Transplanted tumors, they feel, are much easier to get rid of and, in fact, are often difficult to maintain. (The high visibility of these mammary tumors is also desirable, they said. Eleven years ago, when they described curing leukemic mice in a paper published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, some skeptics denied that the mice had had leukemia in the first place. “Better get something with bumps,” the two were advised.)

At 1:45, Friedman called me back, thrusting the wriggling mouse toward me. “Now feel.” What can I tell you? Like most science reporters, I have developed an avoidance reaction to “cancer cures.” Yet I saw a tumorous mass subside from nearly 1,000 cubic millimeters to less than 200 cubic millimeters in 45 minutes, sagging from its original hardness to squishy soft.

“Now you’ve seen it,” said Friedman matter-of-factly. “If we seem a little blasé, it’s because we’ve seen it so many times by now. We don’t make many claims in this business, but we do make this one: when we shoot a tumor mouse with this blood fraction, the tumor goes away.” By the following day, the lump had dwindled by half again, as had those of the seven other mice, and two weeks later it could not be felt by the hand. (New York Magazine, July 29, 1974, pgs. 42, 44)

Eighteen years after the last July 29 edition of New York Magazine left the newsstand shelves; a young man heard the worst possible news from an uncle he loved like a second father.

“I have cancer and they say there is not much they can do for me. I have an appointment at Sloan Kettering next week. Can you come with me? ” asked his Uncle. His demeanor was straight forward and street-smart for his sixty-eight years. He possessed a soft charm under a hard New York City persona.

The bonds between the two men were strong. The uncle never having children, had looked upon his nephew as the son he never had and as the years moved on, they became the closest of friends.

In the early years of their relationship, the nephew would forever seek advice and assistance from the uncle. On that day the roles were reversed and the nephew knew it was he who would have to sort through all the information and explain what was to come. In their tight knitted family, the nephew was the obvious choice since he was the highest educated and most familiar with healthcare.

The two men sat in an oversized Cadillac overlooking a polluted East River, devising a plan of action against this devastating news.

The weeks that followed were filled with investigations into the world of cancer and conventional treatment options that did not look optimistic. After many extensive library searches for cancer treatments, an interesting article had surfaced. It was a newspaper article from the nephew’s hometown newspaper, the Staten Island Advance. The article was about a nonconventional, nontoxic treatment to control cancer. The journalist’s husband was terminally ill with cancer and was being treated by an American scientist in the Bahamas who had made national news headlines in the seventies and eighties. The article went on to tell how his local congressman had been involved in spearheading a congressional hearing on this cancer therapy that held great promise but was surrounded by a wall of controversy.

The nephew knew many people who were close to the congressman. He asked the right questions to the right people and within days a friend had given him a dust covered box of information containing congressional minutes on the controversial cancer therapy. After further investigations he realized the documents in his hands, even though they were in the public domain, told a riveting story that was swept under the rug of the American people.

The nephew had called his uncle a short time after his exhaustive fact gathering week and gave him insight into all that he had found.

Chapter One

January 15, 1986

26 Federal Plaza, New York City

Testimony of Elaine Boies

Congressional Public Hearing

THE CONGRESSMAN: Why don’t you ladies move over to the center a bit.

A local constituent, a friend of mine, and one who has told the story in the past and had gotten me interested in this, dear friend, Elaine Boies.

MS. BOIES: Thank you, I want to say that today I am not wearing my journalistic hat, so as a private citizen, I would very much like to say, as a private citizen, what I cannot say as a journalist and that is that I salute you, sir, for conducting this hearing.

I find it courageous and statesmanlike and I am delighted and thrilled.

[Applause]

THE CONGRESSMAN: I often walk into areas that I am not supposed to, Elaine.

MS. BOIES: My husband died last April in Freeport, on Grand Bahama Island, where he had been undergoing Dr. Lawrence Burton’s Immuno-Augmentative Therapy since the previous September.

No experience of my life has been as dreadful and cataclysmic as losing him in that fierce battle with the sadistic cancer that inflicted excruciating, almost continuous pain for the last year of his life.

Does it matter then that the seven months we spent fighting for our lives in the Bahamas are now counted among the best experiences of my life? It matters. It matters very much.

And that is why I am grateful for this opportunity, Congressman Molinari, to tell you and especially to tell all the cancer patients suffering out there now, and their families, that our four children and I treasure the experience that we had in Freeport, and to assure you that my husband did also.

First of all, of course Dr. Burton’s clinic gave us a therapy that dramatically improved my husband’s physical condition. We had blood studies to document that statement and it is the kind of story that you have heard much of here.

I also have pictures, pictures that have surprised his doctors, family and friends, when we got home. Pictures that showed him out doors, singing, playing the guitar, sailing a yacht, playing a slot machine at a casino.

I don’t have photographs today, but I have indelible pictures printed on my memory of Jack driving a car, going Christmas shopping with me, having dinner out several times in Freeport restaurants.

This sounds hardly remarkable because those of us who are healthy take them so much for granted, but the fact is that by last August, none of these things were possible. I am speaking of August.

THE CONGRESSMAN: of ’84?

MS. BOIES: Yes. Thank you. And he, like so many other patients, did arrive in Freeport in September of “84, heavily drugged, sedated and in a wheelchair.

Our children believed that they would never see their father again when they saw us off at Newark Airport, and we were losing him fast.

You have read about my feelings on it, and how we react to it now. I also have quotes from Jack, throughout the diary that I kept.

Quotes such as: I know I am getting better. I couldn’t feel like this if I weren’t getting better. I think old Lawrence Burton is really going to do it for me, and so on.

It was Jack who insisted that I get to work and write about the clinic, for the Advance. It was Jack who then urged me to get the stories out on the New House Wire, so that other patients, not just Staten Islanders, but all patients throughout the country, would know that something wonderful and remarkable was happening in Freeport.

It was he who nagged me when I was tired to stay at it, and it was he who even fixed the broken typewriter so that I did not have that excuse not to write.

My husband’s physical condition improved and our four children were thrilled to see it, each time that they visited us, was enough for us to know that Burton’s approach to killing tumors by augmenting the immune system is a valid one clinically, and it is one that should be pursued further in the support, in research, with a supportive atmosphere for that.

But Dr. Burton’s clinic also provided an ambiance. It encouraged the most intimate, emotional, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual exchanges between us and among us and our four children, with the result that we are newly bonded now.

The strength and the wisdom that we could never have obtained through conventional medical treatment. Essentially, at the Immunology Research Centre, we were not dying of cancer, as we had been at home. We were living with it, with many other people. And we savored life with intensity and a passion that we had not known before, and in which would have been impossible in an orthodox hospital setting.

This was the gift. The gift of life that Dr. Burton gave us.

Our children and I will be forever grateful.

[Applause.]

THE CONGRESSMAN: Elaine, if you yourself fell prey to this disease or your children, would you consider doing the same thing?

MS. BOIES: On the plane –

THE CONGRESSMAN: Doing the same thing, meaning of course, going to the Burton clinic?

MS. BOISES: We all have agreed that we would take the next plane to Freeport, after a diagnosis, if it is to happen to one of us.

THE CONGRESSMAN: Well, I thank you. I found this lady’s story to be one of the most compelling, frankly one of the most beautiful stories that I had ever heard. It caused me to sit down and do something that I don’t do very often, to send a complimentary note to a journalist.

I had to do that, and there was a very serious message there because when you think about it, this is not a successful statistic, by the yardsticks that they are using today. He did not survive five years, so you could not say that was a success.

But, indeed, as you pointed out, so eloquently today and in your series in the Advance, you were all sure that he was given an additional lease on life when he was at least free of pain for a substantial period of time.

MS. BOIES: Not free of pain. That was always there, but he kicked the pain killers. That is what you are remembering.

THE CONGRESSMAN: All right. I remember that.

MS. BOIES: And he just dealt with it with Tylenol for a while, gradually of course, he had to have more.

THE CONGRESSMAN: He went down in a wheelchair, did he not?

MS. BOIES: Yes.

THE CONGRESSMAN: He was able to get out of the wheelchair and –

MS. BOIES: Yes. Driving the car, the first time, after a week, and I called home and said to the children, guess what we have just done? What? We just went out for a pizza. They were hysterical. They couldn’t believe it. It was that big.

MS. BOIES: Thank you, so much.

THE CONGRESSMAN: We will be talking.

January 15, 1986

Testimony of Elaine Boies

Congressional Public Hearing

A Hearing On the Immuno-Augmentative Therapy of Dr. Lawrence Burton

Before: Congressman Guy V. Molinari

26 Federal Plaza

New York, New York

Present:

Mike Torrusio

Edward Burke