The recognition of disease-producing bacteria in the late nineteenth century allowed medical science to emerge from the dark ages into the era of "modern" science. When diseases like tuberculosis, syphilis, and leprosy (Hansen's disease) were shown to be caused by bacteria, some scientists suspected human cancer might have a similar etiology.
The idea that cancer is caused by bacteria is considered preposterous by most physicians. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence in the medical literature to suggest that a so-called "cancer microbe" plays a role in the etiology of cancer.
According to Virginia Wuerthele-Caspe Livingston, cancer is an infectious disease caused by pleomorphic, cell wall deficient bacteria. The various forms of the organism range in size from submicroscopic virus-like forms, up to the size of bacteria, yeast's, and fungi. Bacterial forms are variably acid-fast, a staining quality helpful in identifying the microbe in culture and in histologic preparations. These bacteria are ubiquitous and exist in the blood and tissues of all human beings. In the absence of a protective immune response, these cell wall deficient bacteria may become pathogenic and foster the development of cancer, auto immune disease, AIDS, and certain other diseases "of unknown etiology."
Bacteria were dismissed as the cause of cancer in the early part of the century. Cancer was proclaimed to be non-infectious and non-contagious, and microbes that had been observed in cancer were simply dismissed as elements of cellular degeneration, or as bacteria invaders of tissue weakened by cancer. Bacteria cultured from cancer were similarly regarded as unimportant "secondary invaders" or "contaminants" of laboratory origin.
In the fight of all this authoritative opinion, researchers who continued to study the cancer microbe were considered to be of unsound mind. (This is changing now).
In 1890 William Russell (1852-1940), a distinguished pathologist and Professor of Clinical Medicine at Edinburgh University of Scotland, was the first to report "cancer parasites" in cancer tissue that was specially stained with carbol fuchsin, a red dye. He noted these intra- and extracellular parasites in almost every cancer tumor he examined. Some microbes were so minute that Russell could barely observe them in his tissue preparations, while larger forms approximated, or even exceeded, the size of red blood cells. Russell found similar parasites in tuberculosis, syphilis, and skin ulcers.
Other scientists were quick to refute Russell's research. In a microscopic study of cancer and TB published in 1892, Klein concluded that Russell's parasites were not microbes but merely large granules produced by "die assimilation of fat." In 1899 Plimmer confirmed Russell's parasites in 1130 of 1278 cancer cases, and also produced cancer in animals with its isolates. But in 1902 LeCount disputed Plimmer's research, insisting that these parasites were, in reality, normal cellular structures that were "archoplasmic" in origin.
By the early part of the twentieth century most cancer experts rejected the bacterial theory of cancer. The most outspoken and influential physician to discredit the cancer microbe was the American pathologist James Ewing, author of the widely read textbook, Neoplastic Diseases. In 1919 Ewing wrote that "few competent observers consider it (the parasitic theory) as a possible explanation of cancer." In his view, cancer did not act like an infection. Therefore, microbes could not possibly cause cancer. Ewing concluded, "The general facts of the genesis of tumors are strongly against the possibility of a parasitic origin." Thus, the cancer parasite theory was firmly discredited and few doctors dared to contradict Ewing's dogma by continuing to study the microbe of cancer. Russell's parasites are wellknown to pathologists as "Russell Bodies." They are considered to be non-microbial, and assumed to be immunoglobulins produced within plasma cells. However, the result of an immunologic and electron microscopic study in 1982 by Su-Ming Hsu, et al, indicates that the precise origin and nature of these bodies still remain unknown.
By the 1920s only a handful of people were using the young science of bacteriology to study the cancer microbe. In 1921 James Young, an obstetrician from Scotland, repeatedly grew pleomorphic bacteria from breast, uterine and genital cancer. The organism had a "specific life cycle" with a "spore stage" comprised of exceedingly tiny and barely visible spores. In laboratory culture these spores transformed into larger coccoid forms, yeast-like forms and rods. Young claimed his peculiar parasite was related to common bacteria found everywhere in nature. His animal experiments showed that not all animals were susceptible to the pathogenic effects of these bacteria, and he stressed that cell susceptibility was the all-important factor in experimentally induced infection.
Like Russell's parasite, Young's cancer microbe met with a hostile reception. Archibald Leitch, a fellow obstetrician in charge of reproducing Young's experiments, was unable to confirm his findings. This led to a heated exchange of letters immortalized in The British Medical Journal. Leitch wrote: "I do not grumble at Dr. Young's poor opinion of me, but I am genuinely sorry that a man of his abilities should waste his time on his so called 'cancer parasites'--what my old teacher, professor George Buchanan, would have described as just a wee lump of dirt."
During the 1920s, the idea of a cancer parasite was kept alive in America by John Nuzum, a Chicago physician. Nuzum studied a pleomorphic coccus, similar to Young's spore forms, which he grew from breast cancer in mice. Later, he isolated similar microbes from human breast cancer. Some of Nuzum's cocci were so minute that they easily passed through filters designed to hold back bacteria, indicating that some forms of the cancer microbe were submicroscopic and virus-sized.
Although Nuzum was unable to produce experimental cancer in mice, two of ten female dogs injected repeatedly with the cocci developed breast tumors. He also performed a daring human experiment on a hospitalized 70-year-old farmer. He injected an area of the man's groin with 62 inoculations of the coccus isolated from human breast cancer. After 18 weeks, a skin cancer formed in the area. This suggested that bacteria isolated from one kind of cancer might be capable of producing another "different" cancer, such as cancer of the skin.
In 1925 Northwest Medicine published two papers by Michael Scott, a Butte, Montana surgeon, who became obsessed with the parasite of cancer after learning about the microbe from T.J. Glover in 1921. Scott's microbe was similar to Young's. The parasite had a life cycle composed of three stages: a bacillus or rod-like stage, a round coccus-like stage, and a "spore sac" stage. Like Russell and Young, Scott observed these microbes in cancer tissue. He claimed the microbe produced a toxin which induced the cell proliferation and multiplication so characteristic of cancer tumors.
He also likened cancer to tuberculosis. Scott wrote: "Because tuberculosis was looked upon by physicians and laymen as being non-infectious and non-contagious, proper precautions were not taken to prevent its spread. The result was the awful increase of the disease to the stage where all civilized mankind became appalled at the rapidly growing armies of its victims... We are positive that as soon as the medical profession and laity become convinced of the infectious nature of carcinoma and its contagiousity, the adoption of preventive measures, which will follow, will effect a lowering of the rate of incidence of this disease, comparable with what obtains today with tuberculosis." Scott was also convinced that immunization against the cancer parasite was possible.
By 1929, a few microbiologists joined in the search for cancer bacteria. The Stearns and B.F. Sturdivant laboratory, workers in Pasadena, California, consistently isolated pleomorphic bacteria from tumors. Although the microbes were impossible to classify, two complex growth phases were described and illustrated. The first phase consisted of a "minute coccobacillus, a slightly pointed rod, and a coccus. " The second phase consisted of "long curved rods, branching forms, minute cocci and larger cocci." The coccus form of the cancer microbe could not be distinguished from ordinary staphylococcus cultures. But unlike common staphylococci which always retained their round form, the cancer cocci behaved strangely when grown in the laboratory. Depending on the culture media, the cocci could transform into much smaller cocci, and even into rod-shaped bacillary forms!
One year later (1930), Glover was the first consistently to isolate a filterable cancer microbe from the blood of cancer patients. He also observed that old lab cultures allowed from "spore bearing bacilli" into fungus-like microbes with large "spore sacs."
Wilhelm von Brehmer, a German physician from Berlin, was the first to describe and illustrate bacteria within the blood cells of cancer patients in 1934. George's Mazet of France found pleomorphic, acid-fast bacteria in Hodgkin's disease in 1941, and later reported similar bacteria in many different kinds of cancer, including leukemia.
The most daring concepts of cancer were developed by Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), a highly controversial Austrian physician who discovered "T-bacilli" in cancer in 1937. This discovery was an outgrowth of his original "bion experiments" conducted in Europe during the 1930s. According to Reich's bion research, all life contains "orgone energy." When orgone energy in the cells diminishes, either through aging or injury, the cells undergo a death process that he called "bionous degeneration." As a consequence of orgone energy loss and bionous degeneration, deadly T-bacilli begin to form within the cells.
Unlike most scientists, Reich microscopically studied cancer cells in the living, unstained state. At magnifications of 2000x, the T-bacilli were seen in cancer tumors; and cultures of the bacteria injected into mice caused inflammation and death from cancer.
As an emigrant to America in the 1940s, he further advanced his energy theories and defined cancer not as a tumor, but as a systemic disease. He declared that T-bacilli could be found in the blood and excreta of all human beings; and that the bacilli originated from the degeneration of body protein. He insisted that "every cancer patient and every cancer tissue contains masses of T-bacilli."
Reich found that cancer cells have less orgone energy than normal healthy cells. As energy-depleted cancer cells break down, they degenerate into T-bacilli, and putrefaction of body occurs. This overwhelming (and hidden) infection with T-bacilli, along with the massive breakdown of cancer tissue, is what causes most cancer deaths.
T-bacilli were always involved in precancerous conditions. But eventually the actual cancer cells became self-replicating, and T-bacilli were no longer essential for the cancer process to continue. T-bacilli cultured from the blood of healthy individuals grew slowly, but from the blood of cancer patients they grew quickly and easily. Mice injected with these bacilli died within 24 hours!
After months of experimentation, Reich concluded that "the distinction between the healthy individual and the cancer patient does not lie in the absence of T-bacilli, but in the orgonotic potency of the organism, i.e., in the capacity of the organism to eliminate its T-bacilli, and in the degree to which the tissues, and the blood cells, tend toward disintegration into T- bacilli. This disposition to cancer is therefore determined by the biologic resistance of the blood and tissue to putrefaction."
Even more heretical than the proposed role of T-bacilli in cancer, was Reich's appraisal of "amoeboid parasites," which he observed microscopically in cancer tissue. Reich believed these parasites actually developed from liquefying cancer tissue! He realized his assertion that "there is an endogenous infection, or even an organization of protozoa in the body, sounds absurd to every mechanistic pathologist. He will not even listen to such a thing."
Reich's discovery of orgone energy and his later development and use of "orgone energy accumulators" as healing instruments eventually caused the F.D.A. to take legal action against him. Reich was served with an injunction in 1954 and later charged with criminal contempt. Found guilty, he was sentenced to two years in prison. On November 3, 1957, he was found dead in his cell at the Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
For almost 40 years the leading proponent of the bacterial cause of cancer has been Virginia Wuerthele-Caspe Livingston (1906-1990). In a series of papers and books, she and her colleagues stated that "the etiologic agent appears to be a highly pleomorphic, intermittently acid-fast microorganism, with both a virus-like and a PPLO or L transitional phase, and belonging to the order Actinomycetales. This organism is a great simulator, whose various forms may resemble micrococci, diphtheroids, bacilli, fungi, viruses, and host cell inclusions. Yet if the developmental cycle of the organism is studied by following it through all its transitional stages, it can be identified as a single agent." She also demonstrated its appearance within the blood of cancer patients, by use of "dark-field" microscopy.
Livingston was the first to suggest that the cancer microbe could secrete a growth hormone similar to human choriogonadotropic hormone (HCG).
Normally secreted by the placenta, HCG protects the fetus from destruction by the mother's immune system. Livingston theorized that HCG secretion by the cancer microbe protected the microbe and the cancer cells from destruction by the immune system. Livingston's achievements in cancer microbiology can be found in her autobiographical books: Cancer: A New Breakthrough (1972); The Microbiology of Cancer (1977); and The Conquest of Cancer (1984). Many of her findings have been confirmed by other researchers, such as Eleanor Alexander-Jackson, Irene Diller, Florence Seibert, Alan Cantwell, Hernan Acevedo, and others.
Microbiologists have long resisted the idea of bacterial pleomorphism, and do not recognize the various growth forms and "life cycle" proposed for the cancer microbe. In general, bacteriologists do not accept the idea of a cancer microbe, nor the idea of a bacterium changing from a coccus to a rod, or to a fungus, or to virus-sized forms.
Livingston named her pleomorphic cancer microbe Progenitor cryptocides. Depending on its environment, the microbe may attain large size, even larger than a red blood cell. Other forms are submicroscopic and virus-sized. Electron microscopic studies and photographs of filtered (bacteria-free) cultures of the cancer microbe show virus-sized forms of the cancer microbe that can revert into bacterial-sized microbes.
The cancer microbe has adapted to life in man and animals by existing in a mycoplasma-like or cell wall deficient state. In histologic sections of cancer tissue stained for bacteria with an acid-fast stain, the microbe can be seen as a variably acid-fast (blue, red, or purple-stained) coccus or granule. At magnifications of one thousand (in oil), these forms can be observed intra- and extracellularly. Occasionally, large round forms of cancer bacteria resembling Russell's parasites (Russell bodies) can be identified. Careful study and observation of coccoid forms and their development indicate that these forms can enlarge in size up to the size of Russell bodies. As noted by Russell, some of these bodies may attain (and even exceed) the size of red blood cells. Bacterial isolates of cancer tumors of the skin may resemble ordinary staphylococci or corynebacteria. The filterable, virus-like forms can only be seen by use of the electron microscope.
The cancer microbe in all its many guises can be recognized only with a knowledge of the many diverse forms described from cell wall deficient bacteria (CWDB). The size of DWDB can range from submicroscopic forms up to the size of "giant L-forms," which exceed the size of red blood cells. Microbiologists such as Lida Mattman and Gerald Domingue have emphasized the possible role of these long-neglected microbes as pathogenic agents of human diseases.
Despite a century of cancer microbe research, the idea of a cancer parasite remains unacceptable to the medical establishment. However, the history of medicine is studded with examples of medical heresies which eventually become well-accepted truths. In general, great advances in medical thought have occurred slowly, especially in the area of infectious disease.
The abandonment of the parasitic theory of cancer a century ago has resulted in the inability of medical science to consider seriously cancer associated bacteria as possible etiologic agents in cancer. To continue to ignore cancer microbe research seems unscientific and irrational, particularly when the cause and cure of cancer still remain a mystery.
Over the past century physicians such as William Russell, Wilhelm Reich, James Young, John Nuzum, Virginia Livingston, and numerous other researchers, have reported on the existence of a specific bacterium associated with cancer. The microbe is an ubiquitous, pleomorphic, cell wall deficient organism with a complex life cycle. In its various guises, the microbe may resemble staphylococci, diphtheroids, bacilli, fungi, host cell inclusions, viruses, and Russell bodies. In culture and in histologic preparations, the organism may be intermittently acid-fast. A review of this literature suggests that the cancer microbe could play a role in the development of malignancy. Because the etiology of cancer remains unknown, this research deserves further examination and reappraisal.