Book Review

Four Women Against Cancer: Bacteria, Cancer & the Origin of Life
Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D.
Aries Rising Press (PO Box 29532, Los Angeles, CA 90029;
323-462-6458). $16.95 + $4 s/h

Review by Joan d'Arc

Four Women Against Cancer presents the early revolutionary microbe research of four great women scientists: physician Virginia Livingston, MD; microbiologist Eleanor Alexander-Jackson; cell cytologist Irene Diller; and biochemist Florence Seibert. Dr. Cantwell explores the "mysterious" microbial cause of various diseases and relates it to the origin of life. According to cancer researcher Vincent Gammill, "you won't find a better overview of the scientific justification for a bacterial etiology of cancer and the great lengths to which the medical establishment will go to suppress this research."

In his long career as a dermatologist, Dr. Cantwell specialized in Kaposi's Sarcoma, an AIDs-related skin cancer. He is the author of The Cancer Microbe (1990), AIDS and the Doctors of Death (1992), Queer Blood: Secret AIDS Genocide Plot (1993), and is a frequent contributor to Paranoia, including paranoiamagazine.com. Back in the 1950s, he writes, four women discovered the "cancer germ" that continues to be denied by the cancer industry. This infectious agent had characteristics of both bacteria and virus, and produced a hormone that allowed continual reproduction and renewal. Not only does Dr. Cantwell discuss the bacterial etiology of cancer, but he tells the story of how similar microbes are related to other infectious diseases, such as AIDS-related cancer, leprosy and scleroderma.

Dr. Cantwell's chapter on scleroderma is most interesting. Scleroderma is a horrible disease that slowly encases the victim in hardened skin. In this chapter, Dr. Cantwell befriends Dr. Virginia Livingston, who had discovered that the etiology of scleroderma was similar to leprosy, which is known to have a bacterial cause. Dr. Cantwell ends up taking a trip to a morgue to obtain a skin specimen of a man who had recently died of scleroderma (and he finds the mortician quite amenable to his taking the specimen)! In fact, the bacterial etiology of scleroderma was what led Virginia to look for a microbe as the cause of cancer. By the time her report on scleroderma was published, she had discovered the bacterial etiology of cancer. According to Dr. Livingston, Progenitor cryptocides is the germ that allows life to reproduce, but is also the taker of life: the cause of aberrant cell reproduction.

In their suppressed clinical research of the 1950s, both Virginia and Eleanor had used "autogenous" vaccines, tailor made from the patient's own specific bacteria, to immunize their patients against cancer and other diseases. Virginia had proposed not only that all infants be immunized at birth against P. cryptocides, but that cattle and chickens be immunized in order to eliminate cancer from the food chain. Virginia's animal vaccines had been highly successful in decreasing cancer in animals, and her chicken cancer vaccine was licensed in 1986. This woman was clearly before her time: She advocated the immunization of family pets, and she promoted vegetarianism!

As Dr. Cantwell tells us, in 1990 the California Health Department ordered Dr. Livingston to cease and desist the use of autogenous vaccines to treat cancer. There had been no patient complaints against her clinic. She wrote optimistically, "I am confident that all my findings will be universally corroborated and that my treatment methods, or close variations thereof, will eventually become the prevalent treatment of cancer." Could it be the cancer industry didn't want to find a cure?

In the end, the cancer establishment never took these women's ideas seriously and never invested a dime into research to see whether they were on the right trail. As Dr. Cantwell writes, Virginia was expected to prove with her own finances to both the National Cancer Institute and the FDA that her vaccines were safe and effective against cancer. Her vaccines were labeled quackery and she endured vicious slander by the press.

In fact, this valid scientific research into the bacterial cause of cancer continues to be derided by the cancer establishment to this day, even though a bacterial cause for many diseases - from tonsilitis to peptic ulcers to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - is in the news practically every day! Indeed, a significant body of evidence exists for bacterial translocation (passage across the intestinal barrier) and multiple organ failure!

When viewed under the microscope, Four Women Against Cancer cracks open the case for a suppressed cancer cure and a capitalistic cancer 'industry' with more to gain by keeping us sick.