Coley's Toxins as an immunotherapy treatment for sarcoma

My wife has just completed 1 week of Coleys Toxins. It was basically uneventful and quite predictable according to the MBVax treatment protocol. Each treatment successfully achieved fever, while minimizing unpleasant side effects of chills / shakes by pre-warming the patient.

If you haven't already, I truly encourage you to take a serious look based on the following:-
(1) the historical weight of evidence for Coleys Toxins (especially for sarcomas!)
(2) the extremely promising data collected by MBVax
(3) the fact that sarcoma patients can receive treatment TODAY (albeit with some extra effort)

NPR's people's pharmacy recently interviewed MBVax's CEO. This is a must-listen:
http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2010/08/14/780-cancer-and-the-immune-system/

There are also other interviews of scientists at:
http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2010/08/07/751-coleys-toxin-cancer-and-immunology/
The interview of Dr. Matzinger is particularly helpful as a primer to immunotherapy

Seriously, for those of us who have no other options and heading towards the so-called "inevitable", you NEED to take a long, hard look at Coleys. I speak this from my heart, while trying to be as objective as possible.

The point about Coleys that SCREAMS for attention is the US-physician-documented durable regressions for advanced cases in which conventional medicine offers no hope. The historical records by various physicians across the USA from 1890 - early 1900s clearly document tens, if not hundreds of such cases. It would seem that MBVax has been able to reproduce this based on Don MacAdam's interview (where he talked about 8/19 breast cancers going into complete regression). This has to mean that MBVax along with all the reputable physicians from over 100 years ago, including Dr. William Coley are either liars, lunatics or they else they have a tremendous asset for cancer patients that begs to be exploited.

Consider the grim prognosis conventional treatment offers to a metastatic sarcoma patient. A well versed reader will not need me to tell you the survival odds are close to zero. Then, look at the 8 out of 19 complete regression breast cancer cases with MBVax. Add to that the historical observation that Coleys Toxins works even better for sarcomas!

In fact, Coley's was used by conventional doctors around the US and in other continents for decades. William Coley was head of the bone sarcoma unit at Sloan Kettering's predecessor hospital! We're not talking about some obscure alternative quack treatment. On top of that, all evidence points to Coley's Toxins as being very safe -- with no long term toxicity and manageable side effects. In contrast to chemo, the majority of patients tend to get stronger and experience less pain with time. 

In my book, it is an outright crime that Coley's Toxins isn't being tried for sarcoma cases -- at least for cases where there is little to no chance of a cure with standard treatment . If you are a sarcoma oncologist, I challenge you to objectively examine the evidence for Coley's for yourself, and not rely on the standard flawed argument that "if it works, it should be in wide use by now". 

The argument that "if Coleys works, sarcoma oncologists would be using it by now" is clearly flawed. Coley's success cases, along with those of his peers, occurred before the time of strict FDA regulations. Ever since the FDA failed to grandfather in Coley's (as it did Aspirin), it has simply been extremely difficult to validate Coley's in trials.  Firstly, money has always been an issue (who's going to shell out $1 billion to validate it in trials if it can't be patented?). Secondly, many of the later trials attempted were flawed in that the important best-practices were not carefully followed (such as avoiding pain medications, injecting into the tumor, performing frequent injections and escalating dosage to attain fevers).

Examine the evidence for yourself and you may be surprised - perhaps as suprised as William Coley. Talk to MBVax. Make like Dr. William Coley and go track down and talk to patients who completed durable complete regressions. Talk to Dr. Lloyd Old. Talk to Dr. Vikas Sukhatme . Read the Helen Coley Nauts monographs. Take into account the batch variability problems. Take into account the impenetrable financial barrier that automatically excludes something as cheap/easy as Coleys from making it through the FDA trial process.

Why not at least try Coleys especially in cases where chemo is proven to merely extend life with no hope of cure, at the cost of extremely bad side effects (for example, see this report that High Dose Ifosfamide does not increase survival for advanced soft tissue sarcoma patients).

According to MBVax, a patient in the US can initiate Coley's Toxins treatment and get Coley Fluid under compassionate use. However, practically, this is nearly impossible to do without support from an MD or oncologist, especially in the case of advanced cancer. Also, there are but a handful of physicians today who have experience with Coley's Toxins who know how to mitigate side effectcs and deal with potential complications without compromising the best-practices. So, for now, at the cost of $5500USD/week, I'm having my wife treated in Tijuana, Mexico.