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immune Tracking down specimens of the woman's original "bolstered" the immune system, but noted cancer, removed a year earlier, Cantwell isolated the immunologist Dr Steven Rosenberg held that the variable acid-fast cancer germ in the tumour itself and immune system was highly specific: one immune also in surrounding specimens taken from the woman _ stimulant such as BCG should not stimulate a response and thought by pathologists to be normal. This in effect from another immune stimulant, cancer.”! established that the germ existed in the victim's tissues The precise mechanism as seen by a 1993 University before it became cancerous. of Illinois study was that initially cancer cells seemed to In a series of peer-reviewed, penetrating articles, eat (or phagocytise) and kill the Mycobacterium bovis in Cantwell described his discovery of the cancer microbe BCG. But then, suddenly, the cancer cells also died. in three other cancers: Hodgkin's, Kaposi's cancer of | Although investigators in the study admitted that the the skin and a rarer skin cancer called mycosis relationship wasn't clear, a strong "tumoricidal agent" fungoides. inside the mycobacterium was pointed to.” Livingston It became obvious to Dr Alan Cantwell, after 20 years felt that what the investigators were probably of microbe hunting, that the old tenets of microbiology —_ unwittingly looking at was a common phenomenon in were not much use when it came to showing an nature known as "lysogeny". Lysogeny is what happens infectious cause of cancer. In man as when one colony of a similar well as in nature, bacteria were bacterium kills another by hurling constantly changing forms and viral phage weaponry towards it, evolving in their lifetime. The cancer without itself being harmed. microbe, unstable by nature, was no By the late 1970s, Virginia exception. Initially Livingston could no longer ignore the But 25 years after his removing the a ’ ' work of Dr Chisato Maruyama of metastatic breast nodules from the Livingston S apan, and she sent Dr John Majnarich kin of th d findi * f Bi dR Laboratories i them variably acid-fast, there | COMtention that a | s-.ttieto take a closer look. In 1935, remained no cure for ‘ germ which, bacterium could Maruyama. of the Nippon Medical hough tuberculosis-like, seemed School in Tokyo, began to develop a indestructible. And a germ without a produce a human vaccine against tuberculosis which cure, as shown by the mixed reception hormone was turned out to be good against cancer. o Koch's. discovery of The Maruyama vaccine was uberculosis even decades later, not believed, similar to BCG, but, instead of ostered its own resentment and despite laboratory using cow tuberculosis as its disbelief—whic Virginia ° base, it used human tuberculosis. Livingston never stopped facing. evidence to the Chisato Maruyama had long noted that patients with either he Mycobacterium tuberculosis or eprosy seldom had cancer.” By he 1970s, Maruyama's vaccine was proving quite successful in hat he claimed that half of the 8,000 cancer patients he had reated had benefited.™ The BCG vaccine contrary. Livingston noted in her 1972 book Cancer. A New Breakthrough: It seems to me that it is entirely rational to state that the reason the BCG vaccine is effective not only against tuberculosis but leprosy as well as cancer is because of the fact that the cancer germ is closely related to the BCG since it is in Livingston's legacy the same family, the Actinomycetales.” By the early 1970s, Virginia Livingston, badly beaten Lee th a. a diaad wanes hich ane eee een de tn Initially, Livingston's contention that a produce a human hormone was despite laboratory evidence to the contrary. Livingston's legacy By the early 1970s, Virginia Livingston, badly beaten by the medical establishment, was ready to launch a counterattack in the form of a fascinating study which showed that her cancer microbe secreted human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a growth hormone long associated with cancer. Initially, Livingston's contention that a bacterium could produce a human hormone was not believed, despite laboratory evidence to the contrary. But then reports from traditional bastions such as Allegheny General Hospital and Princeton and Rockefeller universities confirmed her findings. Livingston believed that this growth hormone secreted by her cancer germ built up uncontrollably to When Florence Seibert met Boquet, Calmette and Guérin in Paris to discuss the BCG vaccine, none of them had any idea that it would one day be used against cancer. But currently, in fact, this diluted vaccine from Mycobacterium bovis, or cow tuberculosis, is the most effective treatment for transitional cell carcinoma, a cancer of the urinary bladder. Moreover, BCG is the most successful therapy of its kind, called "immunotherapy".” Within immunotherapy, it soon became fashionable to suppose that BCG or cow tuberculosis somehow NEXUS ° 41 bacterium could not believed, FEBRUARY - MARCH 2010 www.nexusmagazine.com