A year ago today, I announced the publication of the book “Save Dogs From Distemper: The ‘Impossible’ Cure of Dr. Alson Sears.” There is one tidbit in the book about the potential for Newcastle Disease Vaccine that goes beyond its use against canine distemper. It might be a tool to fight cancer. As I understand it from my research, NDV may be helpful against cancer, but the studies were not conducted rigorously enough. Perhaps this is something someone should take a closer look at.
Here’s the excerpt from my book:
Treating cancers with NDV
Dr. Sears leans back in his chair, holds up one hand.
“Let’s go back a minute…,” he said. “A young physician in Hungary who is an intern gets a chicken farmer in who has stomach cancer.”
Dr. Sears slaps his stomach.
“…He says to the guy you need surgery now if we’re going to save your life. The guy says, ‘I have 10,000 chickens that need to be processed and sent to market. I’m not about to be taken into surgery.’ He says, ‘You’re really ill and you’re going to die.’ The guy says, ‘Can’t do it.’ So he goes out to his chickens, and low and behold the chickens get Newcastle’s Disease Virus and he loses half his flock. And he’s in there working with the birds and they’re blowing stuff, sneezing and he’s sucking it up.”
He makes a fake sneeze, sucks it back up, gestures with
hands.
“He gets a little bit of conjunctivitis. Gets his chickens to
market. He empties his place out and goes back to the doctor
says, ‘OK, I’m ready for surgery. The doctor examines him. The
cancer’s gone.” (Csatary 1971)
Dr. Sears leans his head back. His eyes go wide with wonder.
“It’s gone,” he said. “The doctor says ‘not possible.’ Can’t
happen.
The doctor, Laszlo Csatary, develops a variation on the Newcastle Disease Virus – MTH-68. This variation went on to be used in research to treat other disease and cancers, such as in
brain and breast cancer.
“It’s being done in Europe. It’s being done in Israel. I don’t know of any cases being treated in the United States.
“The corollary to this is I treated one case,” he said. “Stomach cancer, successfully. The dog died last year, nine years after we diagnosed it. We diagnosed it with an ultrasound and a biopsy. So, we knew what we were dealing with.”
The dog had thickened stomach lining and was vomiting
blood.
“So I said to the guy, look I just read this article. Are you
willing to try? One of my breeders. He said, ‘if you think it will
work. Let’s do it.’ So, the trick was to give a shot of the NDV
virus vaccine every day for seven days. The dog stopped
vomiting. We did an ultrasound; the stomach went back to
normal. The dog lived nine more years.”
“One case,” he said, holding up a finger. “Does that
make a reason to start the world afire? … No…. But if I had
stomach cancer, I would sure as hell pull my NDV virus vaccine
bottle out, and I would give myself a shot tomorrow.”
He went on to discuss other cases he’d read papers on.
“A child with brain cancer,” he said. “And I can’t
remember which one he had. Had half his brain removed, and it
had spread into the other half. The kid was still functional. They
said he’s going to die, let’s give it a try. They injected him with
NDV. Stopped it and the kid lived.” (Csatary 1999)
“… And so when [Ted] Kennedy got sick, I thought, you
know he needs a shot of NDV,” he said, shaking a finger. “It
would probably save his life. But are they going to listen to a vet
from Lancaster, who’s retired, who has these crazy ideas about
using a chicken virus to do what?” (U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy
D-MA had died a couple months earlier of a malignant glioma
brain tumor.)
He makes air quotes at “crazy idea” and forms a puzzled
look on his face.
The possibilities of NDV as a cancer fighter have also been reported in several papers for decades. According to the National Cancer Institute, NDV may be more likely to attack and destroy tumor cells rather than healthy cells. “NDV-based anticancer therapy has been reported to be of benefit in more than a dozen clinical studies, but the results of these studies must be considered inconclusive because the study designs were weak and the study reports were generally incomplete.”
In Israel, researchers still see the potential in using NDV
against cancer after some issues can be resolved. (Tayeb et al
2015) A study in Mexico tested NDV against human and
canine lymphoma cells and found it may be a promising
treatment. (Sanchez et al. 2016) Other researchers have had
success reprogramming viruses such as the common cold to
attack cancers. (Alonso et al. 2012) This appears to be a
possible method of fighting cancer that could be more
thoroughly explored.
Here’s a PDF excerpt of the pages in the book