Long evaluation of cancer treatment

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33445, 29 January 1974, Page 12

Long evaluation of cancer treatment

(.Veio Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, January 27. I p to five years evaluation of results might be needed before medical experts know whether cancer treatment methods being used at the Auckland Hospital arc a breakthrough, merely match or lag behind work being done overseas — or do not bear out the hopes of their developer.

This is what lay behind the Auckland Hospital Board’s apparent reluctance to comment publicly on the treatment and a reluctance which was obvious in a statement on the continuation of treatment.

Rumours that the treat-1 ments at Auckland Hospital are to cease were dismissed by the Auckland Hospital Board’s Medical superintend dent-in-chief, Dr F. Moody. The rumour stemmed from a call to a radio talk-in programme. A caller asserted that a European board doctor who had been part of the team administering the treatment was quitting and that the] treatment would cease. The treatment is being j carried out by Swiss-born Dr Vlastimil Brych. who confirmed that he intends to go to an international meeting of immunologists in West Germany later this year but has no plan to leave permanently.

Opinion divided Medical opinion on his treatment is divided. Supporters say many patients with "hopeless” cancer are alive and seemingly well after his unorthodox, probably unique, combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy at Auckland Hospital. Critics say that documented proof was frequently; not available. (Chemotherapy, is treatment with drugs.) Immunotherapy, at present; at the clinical trial state in ; several countries, is hoped to emerge as an effective fourth weapon against cancer _ supplementing or replacing surgery, radiation and drugs. In immunotherapy, lymphocytes (white blood cells) produced by the thymus gland, which normally attack and kill cancer cells, in the same way that they tend to destroy foreign tissue in organ transplants, are stimu-i lated by special injections.' Thus the body’s defences are strengthened. Cancer cells killed by I radiation also are injected — with the object of stimulating the body to produce more white blood cells. In the Auckland Hospital treatment, the combination

of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, the greatest seeming success came in treatment of cancer of the [breast, the lung and in such i sites as spleen, tonsils and thymus gland. The first step in the treatment, chemotherapy, consists of dosing with the drug cyclophosphamide (orj prednisone).

The purpose The purpose of this medi-l Ication is to kill cancerous cells and, more important, to lower the body’s resistance to introduction of foreign organisms. The same prac-i tice is followed in organ' transplants. i Tn immunotherapy after strictly controlled administration of the drug and lowering of the body’s defences, ’he patient is given a transfusion from a donor with proved immunity to the type of cancer from which the patient suffers. The immunotherapy used] at Auckland Hospital was devised by Dr Brych and its details are known only to I him. Dr Brych is reported to i spend long hours in a laboratory isolating the appropriate antibodies to attack | the rapidly dividing cancer'ous cells.

Past experience with chemotherapy alone is that it has limited success with such types of cancer as Hodgkins Disease but has never produced a real cure. Because drugs can damage the body's organs, it often is impossible in chemotherapy to adminster doses potent enough to kill the last cancer cell. A cover story in “Time”’ magazine in March last year reported that millions of dollars were being spent in the United States on re-l search into immunology.

TV interview Dr Brych's only public announcement was in a television interview in April, 1972. Dr Brych then said that the combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy was very complicated. "Treatment is a matter of the right drug at the right time,” he said. “Timing is important because each drug is acting specifically on certain groups of malignant cells while the cells were at different stages of development. “So criJcal is timing that a difference of only a few days in administration of the

drug can be the difference between life and death. . . ” Dr Brych said that there was controversy over chemotherapy because chemotherapists who lacked knowledge of the behaviour of malignant cells had brought discredit to the procedure.

More detail i Late last year, the Auckland Hospital Board decided to provide more detailed I recording and examination 1 procedures so that documen-. Itation of the condition of; ‘cancer patients before and iafter treatment would allow] ia better assessment of ef-i ifects. I The statement from Dr Moody said that “immuno- | therapy is not being pracjtised in Auckland Hospi|tai ... it was discontinued] :in July, 1973” has puzzled al Inumber of Dr Brych’sj patients. They believe that they are; undergoing such treatment! or have appointments for it. ]