The Body Can Defeat Terminal Cancer - Sometimes

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/the-body-can-stave-off-terminal-cancer-sometimes/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

A man named John Matzke was diagnosed with malignant skin cancer, which led to lung cancer, when he was only 30 years old. He was told he only had 18 months to live if they began treatment immediately. Instead of listening to his doctors, however, Matzke decided to try to strengthen his body to prepare for the necessary treatments. One month later, he returned to his doctor, where an x-ray of his chest was taken to check the size and placement of the tumor. There was just one problem - the tumor was gone! Matzke ended up living 18 more healthy years.
Scenarios such as this have been puzzling doctors and scientists for years. Some physicians try to write these "miracles" off as simply incorrect diagnoses or outright scams. However, there are still quite a few documented cases of so called "spontaneous remission" existing in the world. These few cases continue to drive doctors and scientists to attempt to find a cure for cancer (and other terminal diseases) within the human body.
Let's take Mr. Matzke's case for example. During the month he took hiking, eating right, and meditating, white rings formed around his skin tumors. Doctors call this the "halo effect", which signifies that the body's immune system is actually attacking the melanocytes, the cells in the body which are the source of skin cancer. Because of the "halo effect" which was observed, Matzke's doctors proposed that something had kicked his immune system into high gear, which in effect killed his cancer.
Doctors have now begun to try to explain how the body can defeat cancer on a cellular level. A type of white blood cell, T lymphocytes, fight against viruses and bacteria in the body. A subtype of those, called Natural Killer cells, patrol the body killing virus and cancer cells. Another type of cells, called Regulatory T cells, tell the Natural Killer cells which cells to attack and which not to. From all of these discoveries, doctors have now begun to attempt to develop drugs which could control the Natural Killer cells and effectively destroy cancer. This is easier said than donee, however, because each immune cell in the body gives off 50 to 100 signal molecules which tell other cells what to do. Therefore, if an imbalance occured due to the drugs, the whole immune system could be affected.
William Coley, an American bone surgeon in the late 1800s, was one of the first people to study spontaneous remission. Due to the death of a friend of his caused by sarcoma (a bone and muscle cancer), Coley began studying past occurences of sarcoma and soon found a surprising amount of patients who had recovered from their sarcoma after suffering a severe infection. This had led doctors to infect cancer patients with various diseases in order to attempt to stymie the cancer. More often than not, however, the patients simply died from the infection. This led Coley to find one of the few people who had recovered from both cancer and the induced infection. When he met this lady, he resolved to attempt to find a perfect mixture of infections and toxins which could cure a patient without killing them. When chemotheraphy began to gain popularity, treatment by infection basically ceased. However, research at Harvard and Dartmouth has recently suggested that certain infections, namely those due to Streptococcus, can cause tumor regression.
Another treatment for cancer which is being researched, and currently used, is the inhibition of blood vessel growth. Many tumors will regress naturally if they outgrow their blood supply. This fact has led scientists to develop antiangionesis drugs which inhibit the growth of new blood vessels. One type of this drug is currently used to treat colon cancer.
It has often been hypothesized that the mind, that is, positive thinking, meditation, and/or prayer can have a great effect upon the immune system. Reports of these actions actually curing terminally ill patients, however, are few and far between. Even the ones which can be confirmed cannot really be examined with any accuracy. For example, Alice Epstein was diagnosed with kidney cancer and told to have her kidney removed. She did, but the cancer spread to her lungs. Given 3 months to live, she turned to psychosynthesis, a "combination of psychotherapy and spiritual therapy." She never was treated for her lung cancer, and six weeks after beginning psychosynthesis, her tumors began to shrink, and they eventually disappeared. However, this method can be shown as somewhat questionable by the story of another patient who was given six months to live due to cancer. This man became extremely anxious and distraught, and actually began to count his days on a calendar as his "death date" approached. Miraculously, he lived to see 14 more years, and his cancer never progressed. If the mind truly had some effect on the immune system, this scenario should not have happened. This is why doctors tend to shy away from believing in the "power of the mind" and instead try to find concrete ways to fight cancer.
Although few huge breakthroughs have been made in the fight against cancer, small victories can constantly be seen. For example, the work of Dr. William Coley lives on in the treatment of some forms of bladder cancer with a vaccine containg certain forms of bacteria. Also, treatment of testicular cancer and childhood leukemia often lead to cures now. However, man is still quite far away from finding ways to use the inherent power in the human body to treat cancer.

Before reading this article, I had heard of "miracles" happening where a cancer patient was miraculously cured. But I did not know that doctors actually had some insight, albeit fuzzy, into what was actually happening during these miracles. This article has simply reinforced my belief that the human body is the most amazing and complex thing which exists on this planet. The only thing I am left wondering is, "Why doesn't the body naturally kick the immune system into high gear and fight the cancer?" Perhaps someday we will be able to do that for our bodies.