Coley’s Toxins

January 14, 2025 by Doctor Vernon Coleman

Back in 2600 BC, the doctors looking after an Egyptian pharaoh called Imhotep deliberately encouraged a localised infection in order to cause a tumour to regress. In the 13th century, St Peregrine had a tumour which disappeared after it became infected. A couple of centuries ago, it was standard treatment to infect tumours in order to destroy them. Anton Chekhov, the Russian author, noticed that the infection erysipelas encouraged the remission of a cancer. Using infection to kill a cancer was given a more solid scientific basis by William Coley, an oncologist working at the Hospital for Special Surgery in the USA. After some mixed results in 1893, Coley began work with streptococcus pyogenes and serratia marcescens and published his results as a series of case studies.

The theory behind Coley’s Toxins is based upon the fact that the body’s defence cells, macrophages, do not recognise cancer as an enemy. Cancer cells and tissues are seen as normal body tissue. By simulating an infection at the site of a cancer tumour, the body will create a fever and encourage higher activity of the immune system. From 1893 until 1963, the Coley’s Toxins were widely used against a variety of different types of cancer. One of the big drug companies, Parke-Davis, marketed the product with some success. However, in 1962, after the Kefauver Harris Amendment was passed in the USA, Coley’s Toxins were given ‘new drug’ status by the Food and Drug Administration and it became illegal to prescribe the treatment other than within a clinical trial. In Europe, Coley’s Toxins were made by a small German drug company until 1990 when official production was stopped by the German authorities. (In Germany, there was a loophole in the law. Doctors are allowed to produce unapproved treatments as long as they don’t sell them or give them away. And so the law allowed doctors to prepare Coley’s toxins and to use them if and when they thought the treatment appropriate.) In other parts of the world the principle of using an infection to encourage a cure is still accepted. An American friend of ours, who currently lives in Thailand, developed cancer of the bladder. He was treated, most successfully, by having tuberculosis injected into his bladder at the site of the cancer. In the West he would be said to have been cured. Today, there is still no official evidence that Coley’s Toxins cure cancer and, sadly, there are, as far as I know, no big clinical trials being conducted or planned. As usual, the problem seems to be that drug companies (who conduct or control almost all medical research and who control many of the cancer charities and the cancer industry) see little or no profit in Coley’s Toxins, although it isn’t difficult to argue that the Toxins are more effective and certainly a lot less dangerous than some of the incredibly expensive chemotherapy products on the market.

Note
The above is taken from Vernon Coleman’s Commonplace Book. You can purchase a copy of the book from the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com

Copyright Vernon Coleman January 2025