Participants: N. David Emerson
Series Code: WM
Program Code: WM000434
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00:01 The following program presents principles designed
00:03 to promote good health and is not intended to take 00:05 the place of personalized professional care. 00:08 The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speaker. 00:12 Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions 00:14 about the information presented. 00:36 Hello. I am Dr. Emerson, 00:38 Medical Director at Eden Valley Lifestyle Center. 00:42 I am here to talk to you today about fever and immune system. 00:46 We want to learn about the powerful immune stimulant 00:49 effect produced by fever. Also we're going to look 00:53 at hyperthermy which is an artificial way 00:55 of producing or reproducing 00:57 these beneficial effects of fever. 01:00 We're gonna review some of the rationale 01:02 behind fever treatments. And then we'll conclude 01:05 with how it was been used in the past 01:07 and how it can be used, and is being used today. 01:11 At Eden Valley we work at strengthening 01:14 the immune system to help turn it on. 01:17 And also strengthen it in order to help people 01:20 in their fight against cancers. Well, first question 01:23 I'd like to ask though is can a depress immune system 01:26 cause cancers or allow to develop in the first place? 01:30 And if this is true then strengthening 01:33 or stimulating the immune system 01:36 should be helpful for cancer patients. 01:39 We're gonna be looking at the work 01:40 of Dr. Denise Prickett taken mainly from biography 01:45 by Nelson in 1998 as a source of some of the material 01:50 on his work regarding lymphomas. 01:54 Dr. Prickett was actually raised in England. 01:58 In his college years he gave his heart to Jesus 02:01 and felt call to go to Africa under the employment 02:05 of the government there to work as a surgeon. 02:09 Around 1957 he was presented with a small boy, 02:13 a five year old boy, who had the swellings 02:15 in his upper jaw, his lower jaw 02:19 and it was obviously cancerous, they did a biopsy, 02:23 it showed a small round cell sarcoma, 02:25 very malignant form of cancer. They found that it could affect 02:30 the eye, the jaw, the abdomen, and the kidney, the bone 02:33 or combinations of all of those. They found that it occurred 02:37 in children of ages two to twelve, 02:39 peak existence was around eight years of age. 02:43 And at that time there was nothing 02:45 they could do for it, it was lethal. 02:49 Well, he wanted to help, characterize this lymphoma, 02:55 so he took trips all over Africa. 02:58 And he plotted the distribution 02:59 of where this lymphoma was found. 03:01 And he found something interesting 03:03 that it was distributed in areas that had 20 inches 03:08 of rainfall or more. And temperatures that never 03:12 dropped below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. 03:16 Well, this was important because it matched the description 03:21 or the distribution of sleeping sickness 03:23 which is a parasitic disease spread by the tsetse flies. 03:27 It also spread, it fit the distribution 03:30 of the yellow fever which was a virus 03:33 spread by the mosquito. It also fit the distribution 03:38 of O'nyong'nyong fever or break bone fever 03:42 which is of another viral diseases spread by the mosquito. 03:46 And it fit the distribution of malaria, 03:48 which is a parasitic disease spread by the mosquito. 03:52 Well, with this distribution, the question arose, 03:55 could this lymphoma be caused by a virus 03:58 also spread by a mosquito? Since it was only found 04:02 in the areas that the mosquitoes 04:04 were spreading malaria and these viruses. 04:07 Well, to answer the question we want to go back 04:09 in history a bit, and find out 04:12 where our understanding of viruses came from. 04:16 And then ask the question, 04:17 can a virus indeed cause cancers? 04:20 Well, our understanding of viruses actually occurred 04:23 in the 1800s, with Louis Pasteur. 04:27 When he was developing the anthrax vaccine, 04:29 he could look under the microscope and he could see 04:32 the bacteria in the microscope. But later when he was developing 04:37 the rabies vaccine, he could not see 04:41 the infecting organism under the microscope and he said that 04:46 it must be caused by something infinitesimally small. 04:51 Well, we know today that it was actually caused 04:52 by the rabies virus, now which of course 04:57 you can see under a light microscope. 04:59 In 1892, Ivanowski identified a Tobacco Mosaic Virus, 05:06 which caused cancer. The way he discovered 05:11 that it was a virus, or caused by virus, 05:14 was he would take the tobacco leaf 05:16 that was infected with this virus, 05:19 crushed it up, add some water, and get the solution, 05:22 and then he would filter the solution 05:24 through porcelain filter. Now the porcelain filter 05:26 will take out all bacteria in all cells, 05:29 but will not take out viruses. These porcelain filters 05:34 can still be purchased today at camping stores 05:36 that used to filter water for campers very effective 05:40 in stopping bacterial and parasitic diseases. 05:45 So he would trans...transmit this fluid and pass it through 05:49 a porcelain filter. And then he would take 05:51 the....this fluid and inoculate another tobacco plant 05:56 and the tobacco plant will develop 05:58 this tobacco leaf diseases. 06:03 And again it was spread by something 06:05 that could not be seen under the microscope. 06:08 And in, excuse me in 1908, excuse me 1898 Serrano 06:14 discovered that a microscopically invisible 06:17 agent could also transmit cancer in animals. 06:22 He took some blood from a rabbit that had a fatal myxomas, 06:31 and he passed that through a porcelain filter. 06:35 Took out again all the cells, all the bacteria from the blood, 06:40 he just had fine, a solution and with that solution 06:43 that cell free solution inoculate another rabbit 06:47 and induced a cancer in that new rabbit. 06:52 And again this the way the fatal myxomas 06:55 were transmittedm from domestic rabbit to domestic rabbit. 06:59 In 1907 Merrick of Germany, 07:02 he described a lymphoid cancer in chickens, 07:05 it was highly infectious 07:06 and he presumed it was due to a virus. 07:10 In 1908 Elliman in bank of Copenhagen, 07:14 they took the blood of the leukemic chicken. 07:16 They filtered it again through one of these porcelain filters, 07:19 taking out all the cells, took the fluid inoculated 07:23 a healthy chicken and that healthy chicken 07:25 also developed leukemia. 07:28 A leukemia being spread by a virus. 07:32 In 1911 Peyton Rous, New York RockeFeller Institute, 07:35 transmitted a chicken sarcoma. This is a solid tumor 07:40 from healthy fowl two healthy fowls using 07:43 a again a cell free filtrate taking the blood 07:47 of a sick chicken when they had sarcoma 07:51 passing it through the filter taking it all the cells 07:54 and injecting that filter fluid into a healthy fowl 07:58 and inducing the sarcoma as well. 08:02 In 1932 Richard Shope, at the Rockefeller Institute 08:06 of Princeton transmitted a rabbit fibroma 08:09 with a cell free filtrate. And then in 1936, John Bittner, 08:15 he described a mouse breast cancer, 08:18 that could have actually transmitted to a nursing 08:22 female mice who later developed the breast cancer. 08:26 All these instances of cancers being transferred 08:28 from one animal to another implicated 08:31 an infectious virus transmission. 08:34 Where they ever able to see the virus? 08:38 It wasn't until 1945 when the electron microscope 08:41 was introduced that the first, the first viruses 08:44 could actually be clearly seen. 08:48 Following this in 1946, Claude, Porter and Pickels, 08:52 examined the Rous sarcoma which is a cancer, 08:57 they looked at the cells with electron microscope 08:59 and they reported dense particles 09:01 in the cytoplasm of the cells. And these are suspected 09:04 to be a virus causing the cancer. 09:09 Well, then in 1956, Anthony Epstein definitely 09:14 identified this tiny 70-millimicron Rous 09:17 sarcoma particles in the Rous sarcoma cells. 09:22 And this was a definite proof that Rous sarcoma virus 09:26 was indeed causing the sarcoma or the cancer in animals. 09:30 So we now had visible proof that viruses 09:34 could cause cancers in animals. In 1957 Stewart Netty, 09:42 at the National Institute of Health, 09:43 they propagated a prodded tumor virus 09:46 in a tissue culture which induced a variety 09:49 of tumors in mice, rats, and hamsters. 09:53 So by 1962, it was definitely established 09:57 that you could indeed cause cancers 09:59 and transmit cancers from animal to animal 10:02 with cell free filtrates that is viruses. 10:08 Now with the distribution of this lymphoma, 10:11 this human cancer in Africa, 10:15 the thought was could this human lymphoma 10:18 be transmitted by a virus also? Nobody as yet had demonstrated 10:24 that a human virus could be transmitted 10:26 from person to person. And so every one was anxious 10:30 to be the first to demonstrate the transmission 10:32 of a human cancer from one person to another. 10:36 Well, there are some more evidence that came up 10:39 in Zanzibar and Kinshasa which also tended to indicate 10:44 a viral transmission of this lymphoma. 10:49 They found that in Zanzibar and Kinshasa, 10:52 nobody there developed the lymphoma. 10:55 And yet they had rainfall that was over 20 inches a year, 11:00 and temperatures that never fell below 60 degrees 11:03 Fahrenheit which were both the conditions 11:05 for developing the lymphoma. 11:06 So if it was just the weather issue you would have expected 11:10 the lymphoma to be present in these two countries. 11:14 But what they found was that these were the only two 11:16 countries in Africa that had eradicated malaria, 11:19 by spraying of the water and are killing the mosquitoes. 11:24 And so, they're now showing that there seem to be a direct 11:28 relationship between the incidence and prevalence 11:30 and intensity of malaria and the incidence of lymphomas. 11:37 Again this was pointing to appear to be an infectious 11:41 agent causing lymphomas being spread by mosquitoes. 11:45 In 1964, Dr. Prickett was able to grow tumor cells 11:53 from these Burkett's lymphomas. And in these cells, 11:58 he was able to see viral particles 12:01 that looked like herpes virus. 12:03 They looked like the herpes virus morphology. 12:07 He called it the Epstein-Barr virus 12:10 which we are familiar with today. 12:13 They then found that our children 12:16 with Burkett's lymphoma had antibodies 12:19 to Epstein-Barr virus, showing that they all 12:22 being exposed to the virus. This was concluding evidence 12:26 that the virus did indeed caused the cancer. 12:30 Then in 1964, they ran into a problem. 12:35 They found that 85 percent of all healthy Americans 12:39 also had antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus 12:42 but they had no lymphoma. How could this be? 12:46 What was it, in other words that triggered 12:49 this Epstein-Barr virus to instead of just causing 12:55 asymptomatic disease in healthy Americans to going 12:59 into lymphomas in these Africans. 13:04 Well, in 1967, they learned something helpful, 13:11 Tony Epstein's young technician Elaine Hutkin 13:16 became ill with fever. She got a soar throat 13:19 and large lymph nodes in the neck. 13:21 She later got a rash, she is seen by a doctor, 13:25 they got antibodies before and after 13:30 in her blood at the lab. And the doctor diagnosed 13:35 her with mononucleosis. Tony Epstein found 13:40 that her antibodies had been negative prior 13:42 to this infection and had become positive. 13:46 And they had just now seen what an acute infection 13:50 of Epstein-Barr virus caused in an adult, 13:54 and it was mononucleosis. And doctors then confirmed 13:58 that this indeed was the etiologic agent 14:02 from mononucleosis, they tested hundreds 14:05 of college students and found that before 14:09 being infected with mononucleosis, 14:12 their Epstein-Barr virus tests were negative. 14:16 And then after this case of mononucleosis 14:20 their antibodies become positive. 14:23 Later it was learned that Epstein-Barr virus, 14:26 if it's acquired in childhood goes unnoticed 14:29 in healthy American children. If on the other hand 14:33 Epstein-Barr virus is acquired as an adult 14:36 or even a teenager it produces mononucleosis. 14:40 And this childhood inoculations were accounted for 85 percent 14:44 of the positive Epstein-Barr virus 14:45 prevalence in America. In Africa they also found 14:51 that just about everyone had antibodies 14:53 to Epstein-Barr virus, so again the question was, 14:57 what triggered the virus to progress 15:00 to Burkett's lymphoma instead of just being either 15:04 asymptomatic infection or one that caused mononucleosis. 15:10 Well, they got another insight 15:14 in an observation in Africa again. 15:17 They found that immigrants from Rwanda or Burundi 15:21 which was tumor free, and which had no malaria. 15:25 When they came to Uganda which had lot's of malaria, 15:29 they developed the lymphoma. And they did it at an older age. 15:34 Remember most of the children in Africa 15:36 were getting the lymphomas from ages two to twelve. 15:40 But among the immigrants to malaria infested Uganda 15:45 50 percent of them were over the age of 15, 26 percent 15:49 were over the age of 30. What this indicated 15:53 was that somehow malaria, getting infected with malaria 15:57 was what initiated or allowed the virus 16:00 to progress to a lymphoma. The mechanism allowing 16:05 the lymphoma, to appear, appear to be immunosuppressant. 16:10 In other words the body's immune system 16:13 was so tied up with keeping the malaria suppressed 16:17 it had nothing left to fight the cancer 16:20 that the virus was trying to produce. 16:22 It had nothing to fight the cancer 16:24 with and the virus then progressed to cancer. 16:27 Our question is, is malaria prevalent enough in Africa 16:33 to cause immunosuppressant on a large scale? 16:36 In other words, can it be the cause of these 16:43 lymphomas in Africa? And actually yes, the, we went, 16:48 our family went on a mission trip to Ghana 16:50 which is in the malaria belt. And my son, while we were there, 16:55 developed malaria and we took him 16:56 to little Adventist hospital there. 16:59 They tested his blood, they looked at under 17:00 the microscope and said yes, he has a low level of malaria. 17:04 They said, if he was a local here, 17:07 we would ignore it because every one here 17:10 has a low level of malaria, but they become immune to it, 17:14 and their immune system is fighting it constantly. 17:16 But as a foreigner this is lethal 17:20 to him unless it's treated. So we treated it 17:23 and he got better and of course he survived. 17:27 However, it did illustrated the point 17:29 that in these malaria infested places, 17:32 malaria is rampant and it is continuing 17:35 to cause immunosuppressant 17:36 as it is a burden on the immune system. 17:42 And with this immunosuppressive state, 17:44 viruses like Epstein-Barr virus can progress to cause lymphomas. 17:52 Are there other forms of immunosuppressant 17:54 that can cause and lead to cancer? 17:56 Yes actually there are, 17:57 HIV is the classic viral infection 17:59 which causes severe immunosuppressant 18:01 by destroying certain T-lymphocytes. 18:04 Can this lead to cancer? Yes, actually quoting 18:08 from an internal medicine text book up to date. 18:12 It says, HIV infected individuals 18:15 have an increased propensity to develop malignancy. 18:18 The spectrum of neoplasm in these patients is changing 18:21 especially in developed portions of the world 18:23 or the vast reduce of highly active antiretroviral therapy 18:27 has limited the immunosuppressant associated 18:29 with the HIV for prolonged periods in most patients. 18:34 It continues, it says the occurrence 18:36 of an unusually high number of cases 18:38 and an aggressive clinical course of Kaposi's sarcoma 18:42 which is another cancer was noted early 18:45 in the AIDS epidemic and Kaposi's sarcoma 18:49 was included in the AIDS defining illnesses 18:52 in early case definitions of the, 18:54 from the centers of diseases control and prevention. 18:57 Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is another type of cancer 19:00 and invades cervical cancers were subsequently added 19:04 to the AIDS defining conditions, 19:08 and this was in 1985 and 1993 respectively. 19:12 What they are showing is that if you have 19:15 the viral infection and it suppresses 19:18 your immune system by suppressing your T-cells, 19:21 you are prone to develop cancers in that suppressed immune state. 19:28 If this is the case, if a depressed immune system 19:31 can allow cancers to develop from a virus, 19:34 and then we would think that strengthening 19:37 and stimulating immune system to fight the cancer 19:40 would be effective and useful for cancer patients. 19:44 We'll find out that fever is actually such a stimulation 19:48 and in fact fevers do turn on and stimulate 19:52 the immune system and thus aid 19:53 in combating infections and cancers. 19:57 In fact, as we know, when you're infected, 20:00 you do get a fever many times. 20:03 And many times when you have a cancer, 20:05 sometimes the only symptom you have are fevers, 20:09 night sweats, chills. This is a sign that your body 20:13 is trying to turn on your immune system 20:16 through the mechanism of fever to help fight these infections. 20:19 We had a patient come at our clinic at one point 20:23 and his only complain was fevers, 20:26 chills, night sweats. 20:29 We did some tests cultured him up, 20:32 make sure he didn't had any infection, he didn't. 20:35 Then we screened him for autoimmune diseases, 20:39 mental logical diseases, he didn't have these. 20:43 And then I said well, we gonna need 20:44 to screen you for cancer, and the CAT Scan 20:47 of the abdomen showed a Renal Cell Carcinoma 20:49 above one of the, in one of the kidneys, 20:54 he had that treated and did well. 20:57 But the only symptom that he had at that time 21:00 were the fevers, the chills and the night sweats. 21:05 Do fevers indeed turn on the immune system 21:09 and stimulate it, so that it is effective 21:11 in fighting infections in cancers? 21:14 Matthew Kluger who did much of the early research 21:17 in the benefits of fever, and actually included 21:22 in the book called Fever. 21:25 In the book he makes the statement, 21:27 he says, you know, today fever is precede 21:29 to something that needs to be suppressed, 21:31 yet historically, it was proceed as beneficial. 21:36 We find that Hypocrisies as far back as 400 BC 21:41 said that nature never needs any instruction. 21:46 He wrote that during and also viral infection 21:48 that if you got a fever, this was a favorable sign 21:51 that the infection was going to clear. 21:55 Rufus of Ephesus from 100 AD wrote, 21:58 I think you cannot find another drug which heals anymore, 22:03 anymore penetrating manner than fever. 22:05 For this reason it's a good remedy, 22:07 for individuals sees with convulsions 22:09 and if they were a physician skilled enough to produce 22:11 a fever would be useless to seek any other remedy. 22:16 Later in the 1600s, noted English physician 22:21 Thomas Sydenham, he wrote theory, 22:24 he said fever is nature's engine which it brings into the field 22:28 to remove her enemy. That was very stood observation. 22:33 Lieber Meister around 1887, he also thought fevers 22:37 of modern magnitude or high magnitude 22:39 for short periods of time were beneficial. 22:41 He cautioned against fevers of long period because 22:45 these can be debilitating. It does take energy 22:47 and effort to produce a fever just like climbing a mountain 22:50 and it can wear a person out. Only in high fevers 22:55 for a long periods of time did he advocate antipyretics 22:58 or medications which would lower the fevers 23:02 Well, today there is a widespread trend to reduce 23:07 all fevers with antipyretics. 23:09 And Kluger makes a comment in his book, 23:12 he says, "That one might surmise from this widespread attempt 23:16 to reduce fevers that convincing evidence 23:18 have been presented which demonstrated 23:20 that fevers were harmful. But in fact, 23:23 this is not the case, if any thing the weight 23:26 of evidence tends to support the opposite conclusion." 23:30 So what exactly is the evidence that febrile temperatures 23:35 are beneficial for infections. 23:38 Well, late in the 1800s Louis Pasteur 23:41 was studying Anthrax, and he was trying to develop 23:44 a vaccine for it. He could easily induce 23:48 Anthrax in sheep and cows, but he couldn't induce 23:53 Anthrax in chickens. This concerned him 23:57 and he wondered why? He told the colleague 23:59 of his that he couldn't induce fevers in chickens. 24:02 The colleague challenged him, and said, I can do it. 24:05 And but after months of trying, 24:08 his colleague finally had to admit, he said, you know, 24:10 I can't induce Anthrax in chickens. 24:12 You know, he'd take the blood of an Anthrax victim 24:16 and inject in the chickens, they just ignore it. 24:18 Then Louis Pasteur said well, in this interim 24:21 I've found a way to induce Anthrax in chickens. 24:25 And his colleague was stunned, he said, how did you it? 24:28 He says, well, what we notice was that the cows 24:31 and the sheep that develop Anthrax 24:35 have temperatures running around at 38 degrees Celsius. 24:39 But the chickens have temperatures running 24:41 40 to 42 degrees Celsius. And I thought possibly 24:46 this higher temperature is protective for the chickens. 24:49 So he did an experiment, took a chicken, 24:53 a normal chicken in is normal body temperature 24:55 40 to 42 degree Celsius, injecting with Anthrax, 24:58 chicken ignored the Anthrax. He took another chicken wired 25:02 his feet to a screen, put the screen 25:05 in some cool water lowered his temperature down 25:07 to 38 degree Celsius, injected him with Anthrax 25:11 it was dead in 24 hours. And then took another chicken, 25:17 do the same treatment, put his feet on wire grating, 25:21 put the wire grating in a cool water. 25:23 Lower it's temperature to 38 degrees Celsius, 25:25 injected him with Anthrax and in a couple of hours 25:28 he started to become listless, tired, he looked like 25:33 he's gonna pass out, this were the signs of Anthrax. 25:36 At that point, they took out of the water bath, 25:39 warmed him up, dried him off and his temperature rose, 25:44 and he survived the Anthrax infection. 25:47 This is the striking example of the beneficial effects 25:51 of the higher temperatures found in the chickens. 25:55 Then there was a human example of the benefits of fever. 25:59 This was first described by Hippocrates in 450- 357 BC. 26:06 He described a mysterious diseases called 26:09 Progressive Paralysis at that time, 26:11 it would leave the victims paralyzed. 26:14 But he observed that in rare cases, 26:17 a cure or long lasting remission could occur 26:19 if the victim acquired an infectious disease 26:22 accompanied by a high fever. He thought that somehow 26:25 this high fever maybe helping to resolve the illness. 26:30 But it wasn't until 1858 that Esmark and Jensen showed 26:34 that this progressive paralysis was caused by syphilis. 26:38 They could actually see the little spirochetes 26:39 in the blood samples of people with this progressive paralysis. 26:44 In 1887 Wagner Jerrick, he was psychiatrist 26:48 researching neurosyphilis, and he noted that in China 26:51 and India both syphilis and malaria were rampant. 26:56 But strangely enough in China and India they are very rarely 27:00 found paralysis from the syphilis. 27:03 And he hypothesized that possibly the fevers 27:07 from the malaria were helping protect him from the paralysis. 27:16 So what he did, was he actually took patients, 27:20 injected them with malaria in 1927 27:24 and he found that three of them, their paralysis resolved. 27:27 He was so successful, he treated thousands of patients 27:30 with malaria and found that they were getting 27:34 a 30 percent cure rate. He then won the Noble Prize 27:38 in medicine for his work with treating syphilis 27:42 by malarial treatments and this was established 27:47 as a very effective cure at that time. 27:51 We're going to continue on our work with, 27:55 looking into fevers in immune system in our next visit. 27:59 Hope to see you there, may God bless as you, as He, 28:04 and pray that you remain healthy in the mean time. |
Revised 2014-12-17