The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer
with two prefaces on prevention
with two prefaces on prevention
Revised lecture at the meeting of the Nobel Laureates
on June 30, 1966 at Lindau, Lake Constance, Germany by Otto Warburg, Director,
Max Planck-Institute for Cell Physiology, Berlin-Dahlem
English Edition by Dean Burk, National Cancer
Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
The Second Revised Edition
Published by Konrad Triltsch, Würzburg, Germany, 1969
Preface to the Second
Revised German Edition of the Lindau Lecture.
(The way to prevention of cancer)
Since the Lindau lecture of June 1966
many physicians have examined - not unsuccessfully - the practical consequences
of the anaerobiosis of cancer cells. The more who participate in these
examinations, the sooner will we know what can be achieved. It is a unique
aspect of these examinations that they can be carried out on human patients, on
the largest scale, without risk; whereas experiments on animals have been
misleading many times. The cure of human cancer will be the resultant of
biochemistry of cancer and of biochemistry of man.
A list of selected active groups of respiratory enzymes will soon be published, to which we recently added cytohemin and d-amino-Levulinic acid, the precursor of oxygen-transferring hemins. In the meantime commercial vitamin preparations may be used that contain, besides other substances, many active groups of the respiratory enzymes. Most of these may be added to the food. Cytohemin and vitamin B 12 may be given subcutaneously. (A synonym of "active group" is “prosthetic" group of an enzyme.)
There exists no alternative today to the prevention of cancer as proposed at Lindau. It is the way that attacks the prime cause of cancer most directly and that is experimentally most developed. Indeed millions of experiments in man, through the effectiveness of some vitamins, have shown, that cell respiration is impaired if the active groups of the respiratory enzymes are removed from the food; and that cell respiration is repaired at once, if these groups are added again to the food. No way can be imagined that is scientifically better founded to prevent and cure a disease, the prime cause of which is an impaired respiration. Neither genetic codes of anaerobiosis nor cancer viruses are alternatives today, because no such codes and no such viruses in man have been discovered so far; but anaerobiosis has been discovered.8
What can be achieved by the active
groups, when tumors have already developed? The answer is doubtful, because
tumors live in the body almost anaerobically, that is under conditions that the
active groups cannot act.
On the other hand, because young
metastases live in the body almost aerobically, inhibition by the active groups
should be possible. Therefore we propose first to remove all compact tumors,
which are the anaerobic foci of the metastasis. Then the active group should be
added to the food, in the greatest possible amount, for many years, even for
ever. This is a promising task. If it succeeds, then cancer will be a harmless
disease.
Moreover, we discovered recentlya) in experiments with growing cancer cells in vitro that very low concentrations of some selected active groups inhibit fermentation and the growth of cancer cells completely, in the course of a few days. From these experiments it may be concluded that de-differentiated cells die if one tries to normalize their metabolism. It is a result that is unexpected and that encourages the task of inhibiting the growth of metastases with active enzyme groups.
As emphasized, it is the first
precondition of the proposed treatment that all growing body cells be saturated
with oxygen. It is a second precondition that exogenous carcinogens be kept
away, at least during the treatment. All carcinogens impair respiration
directly or indirectly by deranging capillary circulation, a statement that is
proved by the fact that no cancer cell exists, the respiration of which is not
impaired. Of course, respiration cannot be repaired if it is impaired at the
same time by carcinogens.
It has been asked after the Lindau lecture why the repair of respiration by the active groups of the enzymes was proposed as late as 1966, although the fermentation of the cancer cell was discovered as early as 1923. Why was so much time lost?
He who asked this questions ignored that
in 1923 the chemical mechanism of enzyme action was still a secret of living
nature alone.1 The first active group of an enzyme, "Iron, the
Oxygen-Transferring Part of the Respiratory Enzyme" was discovered in
19242. There followed in two decades the discoveries of the O2-transferring
metalloproteins, the flavoproteins and the pyridinproteins, a period that was
concluded by the "Heavy Metals as Prosthetic Groups of Enzymes"3 and
by the "Hydrogen Transferring Enzymes"4 in 1947 to 1949.
Moreover, during the first decades after
1923 glycolysis and anaerobiosis were constantly confused, so that nobody knew
what was specific for tumors. The three famous and decisive discoveries of DEAN
BURK and colleagues5 of the National Cancer Institute at Bethesda were of the
years 1941, 1956 and 1964: first, that the metabolism of the regenerating
liver, which grows more rapidly than most tumors, is not cancer metabolism, but
perfect aerobic embryonic metabolism; second, that cancer cells, descended in
vitro from one single normal cell, were in vivo the more malignant, the higher
the fermentation rate; third, that in vivo growing hepatomas, produced in vivo
by different carcinogens, were in vivo the more malignant, the higher the
fermentation rate. Furthermore, the very unexpected and fundamental fact, that
tissue culture is carcinogenic and that a too low oxygen pressure is the intrinsic
cause were discovered6-8 in the years 1927 to 1966. Anaerobiosis of cancer
cells was an established fact only since 1960 when methods were developed7 to
measure the oxygen pressure inside of tumors in the living body.
This abridged history shows that even
the greatest genius would not have been able to propose in 1923, what was
proposed at Lindau in 1966. As unknown as the prime cause of cancer was in 1923
was the possibility to prevent it.
Life without oxygen in a living world
that has been created by oxygen9 was so unexpected that it would have been too
much to ask that anaerobiosis of cancer cells should be accepted at once by all
scientists. But most of the resistance disappeared when at Lindau it was
explained that on the basis of anaerobiosis there is now a real chance to get
rid of this terrible disease, if man is willing to submit to experiments and
facts. It is true that more than 40 years were necessary to learn how to do it.
But 40 years is a short time in the history of science.10
Wiesenhof über Idar-Oberstein, August
1967
OTTO WARBURG
a) In press in Hoppe-Seylers Zeitschrift
für Physiologische Chemie 1967. 10 g riboflavin per ccm or 10 g
d-Aminolevulinic acid inhibit in vitro growth and fermentation completely but
inhibit respiration less. As expected, ascites cancer in vivo is not
cured.
Two years after the Lindau lecture LINUS
PAULING (Science Vol. 160, Page 265, 1968) proposed to control mental diseases
by adding to the food the active groups of respiratory enzymes. But here the
experimental basis was lacking. No mental disease is known so far, the prime
cause of which is an impairment of the respiration of brain cells.
Preface to the First
Edition
(Prevention of endogenous cancer)
(Prevention of endogenous cancer)
Most experts agree that nearly 80% of
cancers could be prevented, if all contact with the known exogenous carcinogens
could be avoided. But how can the remaining 20%, the endogenous or so-called
spontaneous cancers, be prevented?
Because no cancer cell exists, the
respiration of which is intact1, it cannot be disputed that cancer could be
prevented if the respiration of the body cells would be kept intact.
Today we know two methods to influence
cell respiration.1 The first is to decrease the oxygen pressure in growing
cells. If it is so much decreased that the oxygen transferring enzymes are no
longer saturated with oxygen, respiration can decrease irreversibly and normal
cells can be transformed into facultative anaerobes.
The second method to influence cell
respiration in vivo is to add the active groups of the respiratory enzymes to
the food of man. Lack of these groups impairs cell respiration and abundance of
these groups repairs impaired cell respiration - a statement that is proved by
the fact that these groups are necessary vitamins for man.2
To prevent cancer it is therefore
proposed first to keep the speed of the blood stream so high that the venous
blood still contains sufficient oxygen; second, to keep high the concentration
of hemoglobin in the blood; third to add always to the food, even of healthy
people, the active groups of the respiratory enzymes; and to increase the doses
of these groups, if a precancerous state3 has already developed. If at the same
time exogenous carcinogens are excluded rigorously, then most cancers may be
prevented today.
These proposals are in no way utopian.
On the contrary, they may be realized by everybody, everywhere, at any hour.
Unlike the prevention of many other diseases the prevention of cancer requires
no government help, and no extra money.
Wiesenhof, August 1966
Otto Warburg
The Prime Cause and
Prevention of Cancer
(Revised Lindau Lecture)
By OTTO WARBURG
(Director, Max Planck Institute for Cell Physiology,
Berlin-Dahlem, Germany) English Edition by DEAN BURK*), National Cancer
Institute, Bethesda, Maryland*)
Note by DEAN BURK: Adapted from a lecture originally
delivered by O. Warburg at the 1966 annual meeting of Nobelists at Lindau,
Germany. O. Warburg won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1931 for his discovery
of the oxygen-transferring enzyme of cell respiration, and was voted a second
Nobel Prize in 1944 for his discovery of the active groups of the hydrogen
transferring enzymes. Many universities, like Harvard, Oxford, Heidelberg have
offered him honorary degrees. He is a Foreign member of the Royal Society of
London, a Knight of the Order of Merit founded by Frederick the Great, and was
awarded the Great Cross with Star and Shoulder ribbon of the Bundesrepublik.
His main interests are Chemistry and Physics of Life. In both fields no scientist
has been more successful.
There are prime and secondary causes of
diseases. For example, the prime cause of the plague is the plague bacillus,
but secondary causes of the plague are filth, rats, and the fleas that transfer
the plague bacillus from rats to man. By a prime cause of a disease I mean one
that is found in every case of the disease.
Cancer, above all other diseases, has
countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one
prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the
replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation
of sugar. All normal body cells meet their energy needs by respiration of
oxygen, whereas cancer cells meet their energy needs in great part by fermentation. All
normal body cells are thus obligate aerobes, whereas all cancer cells are
partial anaerobes. From the standpoint of the physics and chemistry of life
this difference between normal and cancer cells is so great that one can
scarcely picture a greater difference. Oxygen gas, the donor of energy in
plants and animals is dethroned in the cancer cells and replaced by an energy
yielding reaction of the lowest living forms, namely, a fermentation of
glucose.
The key to the cancer problem is
accordingly the energetics of life, which has been the field of work of the
Dahlem institute since its initiation by the Rockefeller Foundation about 1930.
In Dahlem the oxygen transferring and hydrogen transferring enzymes were
discovered and chemically isolated. In Dahlem the fermentation of cancer cells
was discovered decades ago; but only in recent years has it been demonstrated
that cancer cells can actually grow in the body almost with only the energy of
fermentation. Only today can one submit, with respect to cancer, all the
experiments demanded by PASTEUR and KOCH as proof of the prime causes of a
disease. If it is true that the replacement of oxygen-respiration by
fermentation is the prime cause of cancer, then all cancer cells without
exception must ferment, and no normal growing cell ought to exist that ferments
in the body.
An especially simple and convincing
experiment performed by the [US] Americans MALMGREN and FLANEGAN confirms the
view. If one injects tetanus spores, which can germinate only at very low oxygen
pressures, into the blood of healthy mice, the mice do not sicken with tetanus,
because the spores find no place in the normal body where the oxygen pressure
is sufficiently low. Likewise, pregnant mice do not sicken when injected with
the tetanus spores, because also in the growing embryo no region exists where
the oxygen pressure is sufficiently low to permit spore germination. However,
if one injects tetanus spores into the blood of tumor-bearing mice, the mice
sicken with tetanus, because the oxygen pressure in the tumors can be so low
that the spores can germinate. These experiments demonstrate in a unique way
the anaerobiosis of cancer cells and the non-anaerobiosis of normal cells, in
particular the non-anaerobiosis of growing embryos.
The Fermentation of
Morris Hepatomas
A second type of experimentation
demonstrates a quantitative connection between fermentation of tumors and
growth rate of tumors.
If one injects rats with cancer-inducing
substances of different activities, one can create, as HAROLD MORRIS of the
National Cancer Institute in Bethesda has found, liver cancers (hepatomas) of
very different degrees of malignancy. Thus, one strain of tumor may double its
mass in three days, another strain may require 30 days. Recently DEAN BURK and
MARK WOODS 3), also of the National Cancer Institute, measured the in vitro
rates of anaerobic fermentation in different lines of these hepatomas, and
obtained a curve (Fig. 1) that shows a quantitative relationship between
fermentation and growth rate, and therefore between fermentation and
malignancy, in these various tumor strains. The fermentation increases with the
malignancy, and indeed the fermentation increases even faster than the
malignancy.
Special interest attaches to the
fermentation of the most slowly growing hepatomas, because several
investigators in the United States believed that they had found *) that such
tumors had no fermentation; that is that anaerobiosis cannot be the prime cause
of cancer.
*) For example see C. H. BÖHRINGER SON, Ingelheim am
Rhein, the factory Work-Journal "Das Medizinische Prisma" , Vol. 13,
1963. Here a lecture of VAN POTTER (Madison, Wisconsin) is reprinted where
owing to the slow-growing Morris-tumors anaerobiosis as prime cause of cancer
is rejected and the lack of "intracellular feeding back" is claimed
to be the real cause of cancer.
DEAN BURK and MARK WOODS saw immediately
from their curves that in the region of the zero point the rate of fermentation
was so small that it could no longer be measured by the usual gross methodology
employed by the aforementioned workers, whereas in the same region the smallest
growth rate was always easily measurable. BURK and WOODS saw, in other words,
that in the region of the zero pint of their curves the growth test was more
sensitive than the usual fermentation test. With refined and adequate methods
for measuring fermentation of sugar (glucose) they found, what any physical
chemist after a glance at the curve would realize, that even the most
slow-growing Morris hepatomas fermented sugar.
The results of DEAN BURK and MARK WOODS
were confirmed and extended by other workers with independent methods. PIETRO
GULLINO, also in Bethesda, developed a perfusion method whereby a Morris
hepatoma growing in the living animal could be perfused for long periods of
time, even weeks, by means of a single artery and single vein, and the blood
entering and leaving any given tumor could be analyzed. GULLINO found with this
method that the slow-growing Morris hepatomas always produced fermentation
lactic acid during their growth. This was in contrast to liver, where, as known
since the days of CLAUDE BERNARD, lactic acid is not produced but consumed by
liver; the difference between liver and Morris tumors in vivo is thus infinite
(+ vs. -). GULLINO further found that tumors grow in vivo with diminished
oxygen consumption. In summary, GULLINO’s findings indicate that the
slow-growing Morris hepatomas are partial anaerobes. SILVIO FIALA, a biochemist
at the University of Southern California, found that not only did the
slow-growing hepatomas produce lactic acid, but also that the number of their
oxygen-respiring grana was reduced.
The slow-growing Morris hepatomas are
therefore far removed from having refuted the anaerobiosis of tumors. On the
contrary, they are the best proof of this distinctive characteristic. For forty
years cancer investigators have searched for a cancer that did not ferment.
When finally a non-fermenting tumor appeared to have been found in the
slow-growing Morris tumors, it was shown to be a methodological error.
Transformation of Embryonic Metabolism
into Cancer Metabolism
A third type of experiment, from the
institute in Dahlem with coworkers GAWEHN, GEISSLER and LORENZ, is likewise
highly pertinent. Having established that anaerobiosis is that property of
cancer cells that distinguishes them from all normal body cells, we attacked
the question, namely, how normal body cells may become transformed into
anaerobes 6)7)8).
If one puts embryonic mouse cells into a
suitable culture medium saturated with physiological oxygen pressures, they
will grow outside the mouse body, in vitro, and indeed as pure aerobes, with a
pure oxygen respiration, without a trace of fermentation. However, if during
the growth one provides and oxygen pressure so reduced that the oxygen
respiration is partially inhibited, the purely aerobic metabolism of the mouse
embryonic cells is quantitatively altered within 48 hours, in the course of two
cell divisions, into the metabolism characteristic of fermenting cancer cells.
Fig. 2 illustrates the very simple experimental procedure involved.
If one then brings such cells, in which
during their growth under reduced oxygen pressure a cancer cell metabolism has
been produced, back under the original high oxygen pressure, and allows the
cell to grow further, the cancer metabolism remains. The transformation of
embryonic cell metabolism into cancer cell metabolism can thus be irreversible,
and important result, since the origin of cancer cells from normal body cells is
an irreversible process. It is equally important that these body cells whose
metabolism has thus been transformed into cancer metabolism now continue to
grow in vitro as facultative anaerobes. The duration of our experiments is
still too limited to have yielded results of tests of inoculation of such cells
back into mice, but according to all previous indications such cells will later
grow as anaerobes upon transplantation into animals.
In any case, these experiments belong to
the most important experiments in the field of cancer investigation since the
discovery of the fermentation of tumors. For cancer metabolism, heretofore,
measured so many thousand of times, has now been induced artificially in body
cells by the simplest conceivable experimental procedure, and with this
artificially induced cancer metabolism the body cells divide and grow as
anaerobes in vitro*).
*) The experiments were at once repeated, when they
were published, of course without acknowledgment. See for example Th.
Goodfriend, D. M. Sokol and N. O. Kaplan, J. molecular Biol. 15, 18, 1966.
In recent months we have further
developed our experimental arrangements so that we can measure manometrically
the oxygen respiration and fermentation of the growing mouse embryonic cells
during the metabolic transformation. Fig. 3 shows the experimental arrangement.
We find by such experiments that 35 percent inhibition of oxygen respiration
already suffices to bring about such a transformation during cell growth[2]). Oxygen pressures
that inhibit respiration 35 percent can occur at the end of blood capillaries
in living animals, so that the possibility arises that cancer may result when
too low oxygen pressures occur during cell growth in animal bodies.
The induction of cancers by solid
materials injected into animals is a further experimental indication of this
possibility. If one implants discs of solid substances under the skin of rats,
the discs will soon be surrounded by capsules of living tissue that will be
nourished with blood vessels from the hypodermis. Sarcomas very frequently
develop in these capsules. It is immaterial whether the solid discs are
chemically plastics, gold, or ivory, etc. What produces the cancer is not the
chemical nature of the solid discs, but the special kind of blood nourishment
supplied to the tissue encapsulating the discs. This blood provision varies
with the site and in adequacy within a given animal, and induces cancer from
the low oxygen pressure in the encapsulating disc.
*) The vessels are not shaken, because shaking
inhibits growth. Therefore, the oxygen pressure in the liquid phase at the
bottom of the vessels is much lower than in the gasphase. For example, when the
oxygen pressure in the gas phase was 2000 mm H2O it was at the bottom of the
vessels 130 mm H2O. (O. Warburg, A. Geissler and S. Lorenz, Zeitschr. für
Naturforschung 20b, 1070, 1965.)
Thermodynamics
If a lowered oxygen pressure during cell
growth may cause cancer, or, more generally, if any inhibition of respiration
during growth may cause cancer, then a next problem is to show why reduced
respiration induces cancer. Since we already know that with a lowering of
respiration fermentation results, we can re-express our question: Why does
cancer result if oxygen-respiration is replaced by fermentation?
The early history of life on our planet
indicates that life existed on earth before the earth’s atmosphere contained
free oxygen gas. The living cells must therefore have been fermenting cells
then, and, as fossils show, they were undifferentiated single cells. Only when
free oxygen appeared in the atmosphere - some billion years ago - did the
higher development of life set in, to produce the plant and animal kingdoms
from the fermenting, undifferentiated single cells. What the philosophers of
life have called "Evolution créatrice" has been and is therefore the
work of oxygen.
The reverse process, the
dedifferentiation of life, takes place today in greatest amount before our eyes
in cancer development, which is another expression for dedifferentiation. To be
sure, cancer development takes place even in the presence of free oxygen gas in
the atmosphere, but this oxygen may not penetrate in sufficient quantity into
the growing body cells, or the respiratory apo-enzymes of the growing body
cells may not be saturated with the active groups. In any case, during the
cancer development the oxygen-respiration always falls, fermentation appears,
and the highly differentiated cells are transformed to fermenting anaerobes,
which have lost all their body functions and retain only the now useless
property of growth. Thus, when respiration disappears, life does not disappear,
but the meaning of life disappears, and what remains are growing machines that
destroy the body in which they grow.
But why oxygen differentiates and why
lack of oxygen dedifferentiates? Nobody would dispute that the development of
plants and animals and man from unicellular anaerobes is the most improbable
process of all processes in the world. Thus there is no doubt, that EINSTEIN
descended from a unicellular fermenting organism - to illustrate the miracle,
molecular O2 achieved. But according to the thermodynamics of Boltzmann,
improbable processes require work to take place.
It requires work to produce temperature
differences in a uniformly temperatured gas; whereas the equalization of such
temperature differences is a spontaneous process that does not require work. It
is the oxygen-respiration that provides in life this work, and
dedifferentiation begins at once when respiration is inhibited in any way. In
the language of thermodynamics, differentiation represents a forced steady
state, whereas dedifferentiation - that is, cancer - is the true equilibrium
state. Or, illustrated by a picture: the differentiated body cell is like a
ball on an inclined plane, which, would roll down except for the work of
oxygen-respiration always preventing this. If oxygen respiration is inhibited,
the ball rolls down the plane to the level of dedifferentiation.
But why respiratory energy and not
fermentation energy can differentiate, whereas in general, for example in
growth, respiratory energy and fermentation energy are equivalent? Obviously,
there would be no cancer if there were not this discrimination of fermentation
energy, that is, if fermentation like respiration could differentiate. Then,
when respiration is replaced by fermentation, fermentation would take over
differentiation, and a high state of differentiation would be maintained even
in the fermenting body cells.
Chemistry
Physics cannot explain why the two kinds
of energy are not equivalent in differentiation; but chemistry may explain it.
Biochemists know that both respiration energy and fermentation energy do their
work as phosphate energy, but the ways of phosphorylation are different. If one
applies this knowledge to carcinogenesis, it seems that only oxidative
phosphorylation but not fermentative phosphorylation can differentiate, a
result, that may in future explain the mechanism of differentiation.
Yet Biochemistry can explain already
today why fermentation arises, when respiration decreases. Figure 4 shows that
the pathways of respiration and fermentation are common as far as pyruvic acid.
Then the pathways diverge. The endproducts of fermentation is reached by one
single reaction, the reduction of pyruvic acid by dihydro-nicotinamide to
lactic acid. On the other hand, the endproducts of the oxidation of pyruvic
acid, H2O and CO2, are only reached after many additional reactions. Therefore,
when cells are harmed, it is probable that first respiration is harmed.
In this way the frequency of cancer is
explained by reasons of probability.
To sum up:
1. Impairment of
respiration is [more] frequent than impairment of fermentation because
respiration is more complicated than fermentation.
2. The impaired
respiration can be easily replaced by fermentation, because both processes have
a common catalyst, the nicotinamide.
3. The consequence of the
replacement of respiration by fermentation is mostly glycolysis, with death of
the cells by lack of energy. Only if the energy of fermentation is equivalent
to the lost energy of respiration, is the consequence anaerobiosis. Glycolysis
means death by fermentation, anaerobiosis means life by fermentation.
4. Cancer arises, because
respiration, but not fermentation, can maintain and create the high
differentiation of body cells.
To conclude the discussion on the prime
cause of cancer, the virus-theory of cancer may be mentioned. It is the most
cherished topic of the philosophers of cancer. If it were true, it would be
possible to prevent and cure cancer by the methods of virology; and all
carcinogens could be eaten or smoked freely without any danger, if only contact
with the cancer virus would be avoided.
It is true that some virus-caused
cancerb) occur in animals, but no one sure human virus-cancer has been observed
so far, whereas innumerable substances cause cancer without viruses in animals
and man. Thus viruses do not meet the demands of Pasteur, that is must be
possible to trace the prime cause in every case of the disease. Therefore
science classifies viruses as remote causes of cancer, leading to anaerobiosis,
the prime cause that meets the demands of Pasteur.
b) The chicken Rous sarcoma, which is labeled today as
a virus tumor, ferments glucose and lives as a partial anaerobe like all
tumors. O. WARBURG, Bioch. Zeitschrift 160, 307, 1925; F. WIND, Klinische
Wochenschrift, Nr. 30, 1926.
Many may remember how anaerobiosis as
prime cause of cancer was recently disputed emphatically, when one single
cancer - the slow Morris hepatomas - was believed (wrongly) to lack in
fermentation. In contrast the virus theory is adhered to although all cancers
of man are lacking in virus-origin. This means the surrender of the principles of
Pasteur and the relapse into bygone times of medicine.
Applications
Of what use is it to know the prime
cause of cancer? Here is an example. In Scandinavian countries there occurs a
cancer of throat and esophagus whose precursor is the so-called Plummer-Vinson
syndrome. This syndrome can be healed when one adds to the diet the active
groups of respiratory enzymes, for example: iron salts, riboflavin,
nicotinamide, and pantothenic acid. When one can heal the precursor of a
cancer, one can prevent this cancer. According to ERNEST WYNDER 3) of the
Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York, the time has come
when one can exterminate this kind of cancer with the help of the active groups
of the respiratory enzymes.
It is of interest in this connection
that with the help of one of these active groups of the respiratory enzymes,
namely nicotinamide, tuberculosis can be healed quite as well as with
streptomycin, but without the side effects of the latter c). Since the
sulfonamides and antibiotics, this discovery made in 1945 is the most important
event in the field of chemotherapy generally, and encourages, in association
with the experiences in Scandinavia, efforts to prevent cancer by dietary
addition of large amounts of the active groups of the respiratory enzymes.
Since there can scarcely be overdosage, such experiments can do no harm.
c) V. CHORINE: C. R. sci. Paris, 220, 150 (1945). – H.
FUST and A. STUDER, Schweizerische Z. für allgemeine Pathologie, Band 14; Fasc
5 (1951).
I would like to go further and propose
always making dietary additions of large amounts of the active groups of the
respiratory enzymes after successful operations when there is danger from
metastatic growths. One could indeed never succeed in redifferentiating the dedifferentiated
cancer cells, since during the short duration of human life the probability of
such a back-differentiation is zero. But one might increase the respiration of
growing metastases, and thereby inhibit their fermentation, and - on the basis
of the curve of DEAN BURK and MARK WOODS obtained with the Morris hepatomas -
thereby inhibit the growth of metastases to such an extent that they might
become as harmless as the so-called "sleeping" cancer cells in the
prostates of elderly men.
A Second Example of Application
The physicist MANFRED VON ARDENNE has
recently attacked the problem of the therapy of cancer. ARDENNE discovered that
cancer cells owing to their fermentation, are more acid – inside and on their
surface – than normal cells and hence are more sensitive to high temperatures.
On this basis, he and his medical colleagues have treated cancer patients,
after surgical removal of the primary tumors, by raising the body temperature
of the patients to about 109º Fahrenheit for an hour, in the hope that the
metastases will then be killed or their growth so slowed up as to become
harmless. It is not yet decided whether this idea can be described as a
practical success. But the provisional work of ARDENNE is already of great
significance in a field where hopes of conventional chemotherapy have been
dimmed but might be brightened by combination with extreme or moderate
hyperthermy.
A third application. According to an
estimate by K. H. Bauer of the Cancer Institute in Heidelberg, at least one
million of the now living twenty five million male inhabitants of West Germany
will die of cancer of the respiratory tract; still more will die from other
cancer. When one considers that cancer is a permanent menace, one realizes that
cancer has become one of the most dangerous menaces in the history of medicine.
Many experts agree that one could
prevent about 80% of all cancers in man, if one could keep away the known
carcinogens from the normal body cells. This prevention of cancer might involve
no expenses, and especially would require little further research to bring
about cancer prevention in up to 80 percent *).
*) Since this estimate was published, some thought 80%
even too low. Yet prevention remained taboo and early diagnosis was the only
consolation that was offered.
Why then does it happen that in spite of
all this so little is done towards the prevention of cancer? The answer has
always been that one does not know what cancer or the prime cause of cancer
[might] be, and that one cannot prevent something that is not known.
But nobody today can say that one does
not know what cancer and its prime cause [may] be. On the contrary, there is no
disease whose prime cause is better known, so that today ignorance is no longer
an excuse that one cannot do more about prevention. That prevention of cancer
will come there is no doubt, for man wishes to survive. But how long prevention
will be avoided depends on how long the prophets of agnosticism will succeed in
inhibiting the application of scientific knowledge in the cancer field. In the
meantime, millions of men must die of cancer unnecessarily.
Wilhelm H comments on the relationship of cancer researcher Dr. Johanna
Budwig with Warburg, Szent-Györgyi & other illustrious scientists
The lecture of Warburg is very interesting.
It is obviously very good since he was the discoverer of the importance of
oxygen in cell respiration. Yet it was also a sad witness of his closed mind
towards Dr. Budwig's discovery. He gave the lecture some 15 years after Dr.
Budwig had found the missing link which he had unsuccessfully searched for. Dr.
Budwig was by this time in full swing of healing cancer patients with her
Oil-Protein Diet. Here is what Dr. Budwig said:
"I assumed that Professor Warburg would recognize the significance of my discovery regarding the essential fatty acids and their role in the electro-kinetic power of the cell. In 1952 I repeatedly sent him my works and wrote to him. He refused to meet with me to discuss it."
Official history unscrupulously omits Dr. Budwig's contribution, and telling the truth tarnishes some shining names. Warburg was not the only Nobel winner to ignore Dr. Budwig's vital discovery. Other giants of scientific history missed the significance of "fat."
"I assumed that Professor Warburg would recognize the significance of my discovery regarding the essential fatty acids and their role in the electro-kinetic power of the cell. In 1952 I repeatedly sent him my works and wrote to him. He refused to meet with me to discuss it."
Official history unscrupulously omits Dr. Budwig's contribution, and telling the truth tarnishes some shining names. Warburg was not the only Nobel winner to ignore Dr. Budwig's vital discovery. Other giants of scientific history missed the significance of "fat."
Dr. Budwig is quoted in an interview in
the following manner: "Szent-Györgyi dealt with my published works, but he
never acknowledged me," she said bitterly. "For example, he ignored
me in his book Electronic Biology and Cancer, even though he was fully aware of
my discovery."
Notes by Healing Cancer Naturally
More on Budwig’s relationships to other
scientists in On the development and
course of Dr Budwig’s scientific thinking, work and career. For a thorough introduction
to the subject of Johanna Budwig’s natural healing protocol for cancer and
other degenerative disease, see Dr. Budwig’s Healing
Diet & Protocol.
While the animal research (vivisection
results) quoted by Dr. Warburg may indeed be transferrable to humans in that in
the cited cases humans react similarly as did the animals, in the great
majority of cases the opposite is true, see Animal Experimentation
Unscientific: Physicians Convincingly Argue That Animal Testing Seriously
Impedes Progress in Human Medicine While Vivisection Industry Profits.
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