Revici's Natural Cancer Protocol

From Well Being Journal Vol. 7, No. 6 ~ November/December 1998

by Eva Urbaniak, N.D. 

How often it is in life that exceptional minds in the arts and sciences are rarely acknowledged for their profound contributions to humanity until they leave this plane of existence. Emanuel Revici, M.D., a Romanian-born physician, scientist, author, and humanitarian, who passed away this year on January 8, at the age of 101, was one of these exceptional people. His revolutionary and far-advanced ideas on the subject of the successful treatment of cancer and other diseases won him international recognition throughout his life, but he also suffered relentless persecution spanning thirty years from United States governmental, educational, and medical agencies. Revici lived such a colorful and inspiring life that we will be looking at a chronology as well as his innovative therapy.

He was born September 6, 1896, in Bucharest, Romania. His father was a physician and his mother the daughter of a diplomat. At the age of 24, he received his doctorate in medicine and surgery and became licensed. Thereafter, he became a professor/instructor at the Medical Clinic of the University of Bucharest. He began his research on lipids (fats and fatty acids) and cellular metabolism in the mid-1920s, resettled in France in 1936, and had five major papers on lipids, pain, and cancer deposited by the Pasteur Institute into the eminent National Academy of Sciences. During World War II, his work with the French Resistance was followed by relocation to Mexico, and from 1941-1945, he continued his research and opened a 100-room free clinic staffed by other doctors in exile, and local physicians.

In 1946, he was invited to the U.S. by George Dick, M.D., from Chicago University's medical school. In 1947, he moved to Manhattan, where he earned his medical license by challenge examination, founded the Institute of Applied Biology, and worked as a scientist and physician until his death this year.

In 1961, the D. Van Nostrand Company (Princeton, NJ), published Revici's 772-page textbook, Research in Pathophysiology as Basis for Guided Chemotherapy, with Special Application to Cancer. This book represented some thirty years of his research. Immediately, the American Cancer Society placed Revici's therapy on its infamous list of “unproven methods” and blacklisted him. In addition to his monumental text, he authored over thirty scientific articles on the treatment of cancer.

Gerhard Schrauzer, Ph. D., professor of biochemistry at the University of California at La Jolla, publicly credited Revici for “having discovered pharmacologically active selenium compounds.” He is quoted as saying, “I came to the conclusion that Dr. Revici is an innovative medical genius, outstanding chemist, and a highly creative thinker. I also realized that few of his medical colleagues would be able to follow his train of thought and thus would be all too willing to dismiss his work.”

In discussing his work, Revici himself said, “There are simply no two cancers which are alike, just as no two individuals are alike. We are fully entitled to consider my approach not only a highly beneficial treatment which can be offered now for this disease, but even a major step nearer to the solution of the problem of the therapy of cancer. When correctly applied, it can, in many cases, bring under control even far advanced malignancies.”

Revici's therapy is based on fundamentals of human biochemistry. He believed that health results from a balance between two dynamic forces in all living organisms: catabolism (breaking down) and anabolism (building up). If either of these forces predominates for a longer than normal period of time, disease can occur. The human immune system, he also believed, operates in four successive phases when dealing with foreign invaders or imbalances:

1. The enzyme phase—foreign substances are broken down by enzymes;

2. The lipidic phase—either fatty acids or sterols are produced;

3. The coagulant antibody phase—antibodies gather at the site of the foreign substance;

4. The globulinic antibody phase—the foreign substance is fully neutralized and rendered harmless.

Revici observed that cancer results when the body's defense system is arrested in the lipidic phase, so that fatty acids or sterols abound and promote the development of cancer. His idea regarding therapy was simple: to find out which process was predominating and to then guide therapy to reverse it.

Because of his early work with lipids, Revici developed many compounds and he was probably the first to discover nontoxic chemotherapeutic agents which could selectively cross the cell membranes of tumors. Sulfur and selenium, he stated, were the most effective in cancer prevention. He invented approximately 100 different medicines and patented many of them. In fact, he developed nontoxic forms of medicine from just about the entire periodic table, from substances including mercury, lead, beryllium, copper, zinc, nickel, selenium, sulfur, and many more. He formulated a compound of a bivalent negative selenium molecule and a molecule of fatty acid, enabling him to deliver by injection 1 gram or 1 million micrograms of selenium daily, in a totally nontoxic form (more than 200 micrograms is considered toxic when taking selenium orally). The lipid-bound selenium travels through the bloodstream intact and goes to tumor sites or sites with tendencies toward cancer that have an affinity for lipids (and in fact are comprised heavily of lipids), where it chemically binds to the lesions, thereby delivering the medicine exactly where it needs to go. His formulas even cross the blood/brain barrier, making them effective against brain tumors as well.

So, with his “guided lipid” therapy, he found two basic patterns of imbalance with cancer patients stuck in the lipidic phase mentioned earlier: anabolic, or sterol predominance (hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, and adrenal hormones); and catabolic, or fatty acid predominance. The goal was to normalize the state of dis-ease by giving the body what it needed to balance it. It is important to note that conventional chemotherapy often fails to kill all of the cancer cells, making those cells that persist more resistant to further therapy. Often we hear how doctors try one, then another, and another different chemo. Whereas Revici's therapy could be administered to kill or diminish tumors, its basic use is to fine-tune and correct the metabolic processes that allowed the cancer to take hold in the first place, a much more effective approach. The chief substances used successfully over his 73-year medical practice in the treatment of thousands of patients with cancer consisted of a core group of his compounds—fatty acids, sterols, extracts of animal tissues, and minerals incorporated in lipids.

As his work continued, always honoring and acknowledging each person's biochemical individuality, he named his therapy “biologically guided chemotherapy.” He used a urine pH test to determine if the patient's body chemistry was balanced. Urine tends to become acid during the day as metabolic processes accelerate, and alkaline as the anabolic phase predominates at night. A simple urine test can show if a person is cycling properly between these two phases, and therapy is adjusted accordingly. Going a little deeper into Revici's philosophy, his theory guiding diagnosis and treatment he named “biological dualism.” The two forces “predating” catabolism and anabolism are electrostatic (positive and negative charges tend to annihilate each other) and quantum (opposes annihilation by creating organization). Therefore, electrostatic forces relate to entropy, or the loss of order, and quantum forces relate to an increase of order, or what he called “negentropy.” So, catabolism relates to entropy, and anabolism relates to negentropy. In illness and degenerative conditions, there is always a predominance of either catabolic or anabolic states.

Revici was also one of the first practitioners, if not the first, to implement the body's own innate timing mechanism in delivering medicine. Anabolic and catabolic agents were to be taken in correspondence with the body's anabolic and catabolic phases. His understanding of the dynamic antagonism between the two ubiquitous forces (electrostatic and quantum) placed him far ahead of his contemporaries in the early part of this century. This distinguishes him as the first medical researcher to unite the field of physics, blending classical Newtonian and modern quantum physics with human biochemistry and medicine, upholding the now more evident “macrocosm within the microcosm.”

His life and his work, and his incredible longevity and productivity stand as a testimony to what he believed, researched, and practiced. There were many patients whom he saw who were unable to pay him. He still made house calls at the age of 100, and his patients called him at home. He preserved and prolonged intact the lives of many patients declared terminal and hopeless by conventional doctors. He was a scientific genius who came to America to escape persecution in Europe, only to be faced with thirty years of harassment and the 1933 revocation of his medical license, which was returned to him last November, less than two months before his death. His nontoxic chemotherapy has been successfully used for forty years. His work deserves much more attention and incorporation into mainstream medicine. Let us hope that cancer sufferers will seek out and find the doctors who are carrying on his phenomenal work.

For more information, please contact: Institute of Applied Biology, 26 East 36th St., New York, NY 10016; 212-685-0111; or Revici Life Science Center, 200 West 57th St., Suite 1205, New York, NY 10019; 212-246-5122.

Eva Urbaniak, N.D., is a naturopathic physician in private practice in Seattle. Her website is www.docevaonline.com.

References

Bryant, Barry. “Cancer and Consciousness.” Sigo Press (P.O. Box 8748, 25 New Chardon Street, Boston, MA 02114; 508-281-4722), 1990. Contains interview with Emanual Revici, M.D.

Cohen, Marcus A., and McGrady Jr., Patrick. “In Memoriam: Emanuel Revici, MD, Age 101, Medical Innovator.” Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients. February 1998.

Diamond, John; Cowden, Lee; Goldberg, Burton. An Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Cancer. Future Medicine Publishing, Inc., Tiburon, CA, 1997.

Ravich, Robert. “Revici Method of Cancer Control. Evaluation of 1047 Patients with Advanced Malignancies Treated from 1946 to 1955.” Unpublished manuscript, undated.

Walters, Richard. Revici Therapy Options: The Alternative Cancer Therapy Book. Avery Publishing, 1993.

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