Something I came across that seemed worth a look.
In the article linked below, which appeared a few years ago in the "Journal of Natural Science, Biology and Medicine," the author discusses an approach to actually
curing cancer, not just controlling it, which was actively pursued in the late 19th century, but was then abandoned in the 20th century in favor of the standard treatments used today.
This approach, utilized by physician William Coley in the 1890s, and apparently with promising early success according to the author, was a unique form of immunostimulation. Coley's premise was that the introduction into a cancer patient's body of a disease with "high febrile content" (that is, one that would induce a high fever in the patient) would have the effect of kicking the patient's immune system, already engaging the cancer, into a "higher gear," and thus strengthening it up to a higher level, a level now strong enough to attack and actually destroy the cancer itself. Thus, the patient experiences a spontaneous cancer remission after having a high-fever disease.
The "toxins" in the term "Coley's toxins" referred to the infectious agents of certain high-fever, but not deadly, diseases which Coley would introduce into his cancer patients, later claiming that this action stimulated their immune systems to the point of actually killing their cancers.
From the article:
"A review of past reports demonstrates that [cancer] regression is usually associated with acute infections, fever, and immunostimulation""Coley considered several points crucial to a patient's survival. First and foremost was to simulate a naturally occurring acute infection, and thus, inducing a fever was essential."(If this technique was valid, why it may not have caught on):
"To most members of the medical community, non-surgical approaches to the treatment of cancer were simply of little interest. While most readers ignored Coley's articles, a number of independently minded doctors began to make use of the new cancer treatment. Before the turn of the 20th century, at least 42 physicians from Europe and North America had reported cases of cancer that had been successfully treated with Coley's Toxins."(Rather interesting):
As early as 1899, British cancer researcher D’Arcy Power observed, “Where malaria is common, cancer is rare.”(So malaria maybe acts as a "Coley toxin?")
"Between 1929 and 1991, at least 15 investigations including 8 case–control studies examined the link between infectious disease and cancer and all but one have found that a history of infectious disease reduces the risk of cancer."(Especially interesting):
"A review of previous reports suggests that the occurrence of fever in childhood or adulthood may protect against the later onset of malignant disease and that spontaneous remissions are often preceded by feverish infections".The author goes on to discuss what he considers may therefore be a supreme irony in the modern treatment of cancer patients. And that is that when a patient with cancer develops an infection, in particular a feverish one, there is a rush on the part of his doctors to cure it, whereas letting it run its course may actually be helping to stimulate the patient's immune system to fight the cancer.
The author also goes on to suggest that Coley's approach was abandoned prematurely, and is worthy of renewed consideration and research for how effective it may really be as a modern treatment technique.
The article then presents a technical medical model of how Coley's approach might have merit.
I know, I know, a very controversial approach to cancer treatment. And the history of cancer research is littered with techniques that seemed promising at first but turned out to be worthless. Maybe this is one of them.
But the notion of "Coley's toxins" is an interesting one, I suppose it's useful to know that it existed once, and, who knows, maybe it will indeed be resurrected one day and turn out to be a genuinely valid treatment technique.
So maybe worth a look.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3312698/