Coley's Toxins - Cancer Compass An Alternate Route

Coley’s Toxins, aka Coley’s Fluid/ Mixed Bacterial Vaccines

Dr William Coley (January 12, 1862 – April 16, 1936) was an American bone surgeon, cancer researcher, and an early pioneer in the field of cancer immuno-therapy. He served out most of his professional career at Memorial (aka Sloan-Kettering) Hospital, which was one of the first hospitals dedicated to cancer research.

Dr Coley went to Yale and then graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1888. He began his medical career at New York Hospital as an intern on the surgical service. His theory that stimulating the immune system could promote healing from cancer began in 1890 after he treated Bessie Dashiell, a 17-year-old girl who had a swelling in her hand which was diagnosed as a malignant bone tumor.

Despite having the standard care practice of amputation of her forearm, Bessie died of widespread metastases within ten weeks. This rapid spread of a lethal cancer had a profound effect on Coley, and left him determined to find an effective treatment. During a review of patient records at New York Hospital, Coley learned about another patient who had been treated seven years prior with an inoperable malignant tumor in his neck that seemed to disappear after he had developed a case of acute streptococcus infection while in the hospital. The records further stated that the patient was discharged without any evidence of a residual tumor. Coley personally went searching for this patient by combing through the tenements of Lower Manhattan until he was able to locate him. Remarkably, the man still had no evidence of disease.

Coley then began reviewing other bone cancer cases and concluded that patients who developed bacterial infections after surgery seemed to have better outcomes than those who did not. He theorized that the development of an infection had somehow helped to stimulate the immune system, causing it to fight off the cancerous tumors as well as the infection. Coley was able to find approximately 47 cases in the medical literature documenting the beneficial effect of infections on tumors.

In 1891, he developed a treatment that was based on provoking an infection-fighting fever by the introduction of bacteria directly into the tumor or into the bloodstream of the patient. These injections were done in increasingly higher doses until a fairly constant state of fever was reached. Treatment was then continued for several months while the patient was monitored for side effects. Over his career he treated over 1,000 patients with his toxins and he and the other doctors who used them reported excellent results, especially in cancer of the bone and soft-tissue sarcomas.

Coincidentally, in 1896 the x-ray machine was developed, and radium therapy would soon follow. This time frame also coincides with Dr Coley announcement that he had treated 190 patients with far advanced sarcoma and over half of them had significant tumor reduction and a marked improvement in well being and health. Dr Coley then took a position at Memorial Hospital in 1898, where he became chief of the Bone Service in 1915 and he remained there until his death in 1936.

Dr James Ewing– was another major player in the budding field of cancer research. He started working as the chief pathologist at Memorial Hospital around the same time that Coley did (around 1898). He was a co-founder of many organizations including the American Association for Cancer Research in 1907, and the early version of the American Cancer Society in 1913. He later founded the Journal for Cancer Research and wrote the book Neoplastic Disease: A Textbook on Tumors. Two years later he wrote a report which detailed several cases of a new bone cancer that he called “diffuse endothelioma of bone,” which ultimately became known as Ewing sarcoma. Dr Ewing believed that the cancer treatments of the future belonged to the newly discovered x-ray and radium therapies.

During this time Dr Ewing had developed a personal friendship with James Douglas, who was the CEO of the Phelps Dodge Corp, which was a copper mining firm. Dr Ewing spoke with Douglas about the possibility of mining radium because of its potential in cancer treatment. Coincidentally, Douglas’ daughter had been diagnosed with breast cancer and Dr Ewing offered to treat her with radium therapy. The three traveled to England where the young woman was one of the first patients to be treated with radium therapy. Unfortunately the treatment failed and she died shortly thereafter. Around this same time, Coley reported that he had successfully treated a breast cancer patient with his toxins, and because of this and other ongoing conflicts, Ewing developed a strong dislike for Coley and his toxin therapy.

Eventually, the Phelps Dodge Corporation became a major producer of radium and the corporation gifted a large amount of radium to Memorial hospital. In return for the gift, Douglas demanded that Ewing be made the Medical Director at Memorial. Following Ewing’s promotion, he immediately put a stop to Coley’s work with toxin therapy.

As x-ray therapy continued to develop, Dr Coley felt that he should attempt to “modernize” his practice and tried to incorporate the new technologies into his practice. He made arrangements to purchase two x-ray machines, but after several years of use, Coley came to the conclusion that the effect of the primitive x-ray in the untrained hands of experimenters was localized, temporary and certainly not curative. The scientific majority disagreed with his lackluster assessment, most notably was his contemporary critic Dr James Ewing, who cited the dangerous and unpredictable effects that his induced fevers might have upon individuals who were already weakened with cancer… Quite a remarkable statement to make, as if amputation and radiation weren’t extremely dangerous, unpredictable, and deadly as well. In 1923, Coley nearly died of a bleeding stomach ulcer that he believed was brought on by the stress of witnessing so many of his patients dying from radium treatments while knowing he had the potential to help them but was not permitted to do so.

Dr Coley still remains a highly respected and honored researcher with over 400 scientific papers written about his toxin therapy that were used at various hospitals in the United States, Canada, the UK and Belgium for several decades during the early decades of the 1900’s. Different formulas of Coley toxins were made by several drug companies in the United States up through the early 1950s, at which time the use of radiology, and then chemotherapy became the accepted standard therapies for treating cancer.

Dr. Coley’s daughter, Helen Coley Nauts, published several papers that documented her father’s results. She analyzed the outcomes of 896 microscopically confirmed cases of cancer. Of these, 428 cases (roughly half), were found to be well from 5 to as long as 92 years after receiving treatment. She calculated that the overall 5-year survival rate was 51% in operable cases, and 46% for the inoperable ones. This statistic still compares much more favorably to any treatment offered by modern medicine. Dr Moss details the individual survival rates for several cancers in the video posted below. In 1953, Coley’s daughter founded the Cancer Research Institute in New York where researchers continue to study the development of immune-stimulating vaccines and their benefit as a cancer therapy. Modern immunotherapy treatments are now proving that Coley’s original research was correct and that some cancers are sensitive to enhanced immune system stimulation. Because research is now very active in this field, it is thought by many that William B. Coley deserves the title of “Grandfather of Immunotherapy.”

Modern perspectives on Coley’s toxins

Ralph Moss writes in his Moss Reports, ” I deal in detail with these issues in my book The Cancer Industry, I think the barrier to their use is primarily economic. The production of Coley’s toxins is remarkably inexpensive. Making a six months’ supply comes to about one dollar! But the cost of working a new drug through the regulatory barriers average about $230 million. Coley’s toxins are not patented, and there is simply no way to make back your investment, much less turn a profit, on this treatment. Historically, the toxins were once produced by Parke-Davis and other companies. But they were forced out by chemotherapy. And although a number of pharmaceutical companies have occasionally expressed an interest in researching the toxins, this interest usually abates as they quickly understand the economics of the treatment.”

Where can you find this therapy? The original formula for Coley toxins is no longer available in the United States but you can find Coley toxins, or similar fever-inducing treatments in Mexico and Germany. Dosage schedules and costs will vary with individual patients.

MBVax stabilized the manufacturing process of Coley’s toxins and report the following results. “The patients who have used MBVax Coley Fluid are almost exclusively end-stage, suffering from the many effects of previous treatments and with few remaining treatment options. Of cancer patients receiving at least four weeks Coley Fluid therapy, physicians report these results (including patients continuing to receive therapy):”

94% of patients have benefited from therapy including improvement in pain, appetite, depression, mobility, and/or regression of cancer.
70% of patients have achieved confirmed regression of cancer.
Twelve patients have achieved complete remission (no detectable cancer).