Presentation by Gar Hildenbrand on Cancer Immunotherapy September 17, 2009

Gar Hildenbrand is an epidemiologist and methodologist with broad knowledge and experience in the evaluation of alternative methods of cancer management; he is also a federal policy expert. As a whistle-blowing advisor to the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), he exposed stealth "quackbusters" on the OTA staff and salvaged the study "Unconventional Cancer Treatments." Gar is currently director of the Gerson Research Organization.

The historical medical literature reveals that observers have long been aware of the remarkable immune response elicited by exposure to Streptococcus pyogenes. While the microbe central to William Coley's famous vaccine produced an infection with miserable symptoms including chills, shakes, and high-spiking fevers, the immune pathways activated by S. pyogenes repeatedly led to remissions of syphilis, resolution of skin diseases and, astonishingly, to the clearing of malignant tumors.

The healing agent in all of these conditions was not the microbe, but the special type of immune response it elicited. A trade war and lobbying campaign led by the American Cancer Society led, in the mid-1950's, to the abandonment by Parke-Davis of its license to produce Coley Fluid. When the FDA gained jurisdiction over biologicals in 1972, it enacted a 33-year moratorium on interstate commerce for any product containing S. pyogenes, thereby practically putting the human immune system in exile from its rightful place at the center of cancer research. The time is right to undo this terrible mistake and employ modern technology in the real-time study of induced tumor remissions while they are happening.

Gar will lace this discussion with other examples of issues vital to immune competence, including nutrition, protein and calorie restriction, exposure to exogenous microbes, maintenance of commensal microbes (where one organism benefits but the other is unaffected), toxin exposures, and more.

$10 (first meeting free).

Official Website: http://www.smartlifeforum.org