Emanuel Revici, MD: Efforts to Publish the Clinical Findings of a

Pioneer in Lipid-Based Cancer Therapy

by Marcus A. Cohen

Dr. Emanuel Revici died during his 101st year on January 9, 1998, after a career that
bridged seven decades in the history of modern medicine. Since the 1980s, mainstream
research has independently confirmed a number of his therapeutic breakthroughs.

Dr. Revici was the first physician to develop selenium compounds low enough in toxicity
to give cancer patients doses far in excess of safety limits for ordinary forms of
selenium.1 He was among the first research clinicians to treat cancer with naturally
derived Omega 3 fatty acids.2 He also appears to have been a pioneer in utilizing lipids to
transport cytotoxic agents through the bloodstream to sites of abnormal tissue.3

Still awaiting mainstream corroboration are numerous reports of patients with advanced
cancer who obtained long-term remission under his treatment after failing to benefit from
any other therapy.

New York's Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC) revoked Revici's license to
practice in 1993. The formal charges against him amounted to a sharp divergence in
approach from conventional oncology practice. The state education department returned
the license in late 1997. (In New York, the health department – OPMC – revokes the
licenses of physicians, the education department processes applications to restore them.)
Governor George Pataki wrote a letter in support. New York Assemblyman Sheldon
Silver, Speaker of the Assembly, issued a legislative resolution posthumously lauding
Revici’s accomplishments and devotion to patients.

The behind-the-scenes campaign to reinstate Revici’s license has droll and infuriating
moments worth telling, but it is too long to relate here. This article, in three parts,
concentrates on Revici's efforts to publish his findings and on evaluations of his therapy.
The history of Revici's publications and evaluations, extending back to World War II,
exemplifies the problems that most originators of non-standard approaches to cancer
experience in seeking mainstream understanding and trials of their therapy.

Capsule Biography
Emanuel Revici, born September 6, 1896 in Romania, received his doctorate in medicine
and surgery from the University of Bucharest in 1920.4 Teaching himself advanced
chemistry in the mid-1920s, he became absorbed in exploring the relationship between
lipids and cellular metabolism. Eager to further his investigations, he sampled the
facilities available at the foremost European research centers, opting for Paris in 1936,
where he pursued his studies at hospital clinics and laboratories directed by academic
physicians.

Revici's Parisian years ended in March 1941. The head of the Paris police department, a
fast friend, warned him that he could no longer protect him from the German occupation
forces rounding up the city's Jews. (Revici was Jewish.) Shortly after the warning, Revici
fled to Nice and spent the next six months in southern France as a leader of the
Resistance.

Revici had discovered a lipid substance that staunched bleeding within minutes, enabling
wounded Underground fighters to avoid notice by the Gestapo, but the Gestapo soon
tumbled onto his clandestine activities. Comrades in the Resistance spirited him overland
into Portugal and from there by sea to Casablanca, Morocco, where he boarded a ship
carrying members of the Spanish Republican government – in exile after Generalissimo
Franco's fascist regime controlled Spain. On the prowl in the North Atlantic, U-boats in
the German "wolf pack" were raising their periscopes to sight the vessel, bent on
torpedoing it.

The ship inched down the west coast of Africa, sailing at night without lights, then
steamed across the southern Atlantic to the Bahamas, a voyage lasting two months.

The Underground had entrusted to Revici a microfilm with information for the Allies. At
the Portuguese border, guards had detained and searched him and would have executed
him on the spot had they discovered the film. Patting his body from heels to head, poking
their fingers into every possible hiding place in his clothing, they never thought to pry
apart the fingers of his upraised hands.

When the ship anchored in the Bahamas, Revici was the first passenger British
intelligence officers debriefed. He delivered the microfilm and also, unexpectedly, a roll
of film showing the German submarine installations at Casablanca, which he had snapped
on his own (another impromptu act of daring, punishable upon discovery by summary
execution). Revici then settled in Mexico City for the duration of the war.

In 1942, Dr. Revici converted a modern hotel in the Mexican capital into a medical
institute. With over 100 rooms, it specialized in cancer, treating patients free. The idea
and money came from a friend, Gaston Merry, formerly European representative of E.I.
Du Pont de Nemours & Co, the chemical and pharmaceutical giant, headquartered in
Wilmington, Delaware. Merry had tracked Revici's research in Paris, where their
professional relationship had warmed into a deep friendship. After the fall of France,
Merry requested reassignment by Du Pont to Central America, sharing a house with
Revici and his family in Mexico City.4

"Our Institute," recalled Revici in 1954, when the memory was vivid, "consisted of a
clinic for outpatients, a hospital with all modern equipment, a Clinical Laboratory, a
Research Department with eight laboratories, and a section for experimental research on
animals. The staff...numbered 15 physicians and chemists, in addition to a personnel of
60 which included nurses, helpers, and orderlies. The records were kept in Spanish."4

Completing the picture, Revici noted: "Besides obtaining the services of competent
Mexican physicians and scientists, we were fortunate in interesting several eminent
physicians, surgeons, and scientists who were also refugees in Mexico City...who, after
investigating my background and research, joined the Institute staff. The object of the
Institute was to concentrate on following my line of research."

While still in Romania, Revici had patented a process for refining crude oil into a
lubricant for airplane engines. "Revoil," as the product was known, yielded him royalties
that had financed his travels and research in Europe. The war had interrupted the flow of
these payments (Romania fought against the Allies), but they resumed just before the
war’s end. Revici repaid Merry, then the flow ceased permanently with the postwar
Communist take-over of Romania. (The Communists nationalized the oil industry,
expropriating the "Revoil" refineries.)

Dr. George Dick, dean of the University of Chicago medical school, brought Revici to the
US in 1946, promising him research facilities. Dick resigned suddenly the next year, and
Revici promptly accepted an invitation from physicians, businessmen, and civic leaders
to found an experimental cancer clinic in New York City.4 The clinic, named the Institute
of Applied Biology (IAB), opened later in 1947. He earned his medical license in NY by
examination in 1947 and maintained his dual career as a scientist and physician in New
York City until his death.

Scientific Findings & Medical Applications

Revici's medical findings derived from a number of different lines of investigation, each
simple enough by itself. Interwoven, they make a complex body of knowledge.5 The
starting point was an observation Revici made in the 1920s, while he was still in his 20s.

Cancer patients in pain showed a cycling in their levels of discomfort. In some patients,
the pain worsened in the morning; in others it intensified at night. Eating eased the pain
in some, but sharpened it so much in others, they dreaded eating. Hypothesizing that this
cycling might relate to an underlying cycling of the patients' physiology, Revici looked at
various aspects of blood and urine (using the relatively simple technology available to
him at the time). His investigations showed that healthy persons typically had daily
rhythmic fluctuations in such basic physical parameters as urinary pH and levels of free
potassium in the blood. In contrast, cancer patients had abnormal fluctuations, showing
either patterns of acidic imbalance or alkaline imbalance.

Further investigation found that patients in acidic imbalance could relieve their pain
temporarily by ingesting a small amount of sodium bicarbonate. But patients in alkaline
imbalance who ingested sodium bicarbonate suffered worse pain. Repeating the
experiment with dilute phosphoric acid gave roughly converse results. Realizing that
these small amounts of dilute acid or base wouldn't change bodily pH, Revici next placed
platinum electrodes in painful loci of patients with superficial tumors, as well as in non-
painful parts of the tumor mass and in normal tissue. All these experiments led Revici to
conclude that the pH of painful local lesions was not only different from the rest of the
body, but that ingestion of small amounts of base or acid could specifically and quickly
alter these painful lesions.
As a result of these studies, Revici proposed that a crucial distinction be made between
pathological pain and what he termed "physiological pain" (a distinction supported by
many subsequent years of research). To ease pain in his cancer patients, he then turned to
developing lipidic means to change pH, recognizing that interventions based on amino
acids, ions, or proteins would not last long enough for meaningful relief.

Before proceeding, he felt it necessary to redefine lipids (fatty acids and sterols), which
were generally regarded in the early 20th century as greasy, water-insoluble substances
extractable in ether, a definition that still appears in many biochemistry books.

Decades ahead of anyone else in the field, Revici described lipids at a molecular level,
correctly noting the importance of their polar and non-polar regions. As his career
progressed, Revici's definition guided his clinical use of lipids by supplying an accurate
structural guide for analysis of therapeutic compounds he wished to create.

During his European years, Revici also launched into a systematic study of the effects of
different elements on bodily function, a research path ending in his categorization of
elements as either inducing anabolic or catabolic states of metabolism. Later, he
discovered that within a vertical series of the Periodic Table, elements acted similarly –
their valency shell partly determined their bioactivity, and the concentration of an
element in different organizational levels of the body was both precisely regulated and a
key determinant of normal and pathological states.

By the time he had emigrated to the US, Revici's investigations into the molecular
structure of carcinogens and other bioactive molecules had revealed that many bioactive
molecules exhibited a charge structure in which adjacent carbon atoms would be
predicted to carry identical charges. The concepts Revici evolved from study of these
"twin formations" (as he termed them), or energetic centers, also played a crucial role in
his design of therapeutic agents. As with so much of his work, examination of molecular
structures makes one wonder why Revici's American peers resisted this discovery: Flip
the pages of the Merck Index, and example after example of bioactive molecules with
such an energetic configuration march by.

Repeatedly, Revici's studies on lipid function pointed the way to findings that predate
ideas widely accepted today. Decades before Bengt Samuelsson reported on leukotrienes,
earning a Nobel Prize, Revici essentially described them, indicating their crucial role in
inflammation.6,7 It was characteristic of him, though, to view these compounds as part of
a much larger picture. Instead of choosing to concentrate on this one topic for years, he
swiftly moved on to elucidate the role of bioactive lipids in the early stages of cellular
and systemic host defense processes. Intervention by lipids at this level of the body's
defenses, he reasoned, might affect outcome and even the extent of mobilization at other
levels.

As he developed his theories and applications, Revici incorporated another basic insight:
The damage caused by disease frequently isn't done by the pathogenic focus alone, but by
the body's defense mechanisms as well. He may not have been the first to codify this key
insight as a therapeutic principle, but once more, he seems to have preceded the
mainstream in incorporating the principle to treat patients.

Because Revici believed that these defense mechanisms might do more harm than the
pathogenic focus itself (once activated into disequilibrium), he devoted himself to
devising therapeutic agents that could restore normal bodily function. Based on his
European research, he utilized the properties of elements to alter different levels of
function and the ability of lipids to induce longer-lasting alterations to create a large
series of therapeutic compounds in which elements were conjugated into lipids. He
thereby anticipated, again by decades, interest in lipids as carriers of pharmaceutically
useful compounds.

In sum, the different paths of research Revici followed throughout his career enabled him
to pioneer, intentionally and with foresight, a great number of therapeutic compounds
designed to produce specific effects on the function of normal and diseased tissues.
Without exaggeration, then, one may say that he developed a theory of rational drug
design long before the concept entered the imagination of the larger scientific community.

Notes
1. Revici E. Research in Physiopathology as Basis of Guided Chemotherapy: With
Special Application to Cancer. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1961; also: Schrauzer GN.
Selenium and cancer: Historical developments and perspectives. In Spallholz JE, et al.
(eds). Selenium in Biology and Medicine. Westport: AVI Press, 1981:98-102.
2. Revici E, 1961, op cit.; Also: Simopoulos AP, Robinson J. The Omega Plan. New
York, NY: Harper Collins, 1998:61-74.
3. Revici E, 1961, op cit.; Also: Mizushima Y, et al. Use of lipid microspheres as a drug
carrier for anti-tumor drugs. J Pharm, Pharmacol. 1986;38:132-134.
4. Revici E, Affidavit, sworn and notarized 2/3/55. This document serves as the basis for
all biographical information included here.
5. Prof. Mark D. Noble originally prepared the section here on Revici's scientific findings
and medical applications for an appraisal of Revici published in The Journal of
Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 1998; 4 (2).
6. Samuelsson B, Leukotrienes. Science. 1987;237:1171-1176.
7. Revici E, The influence of irradiation upon unsaturated fatty acids. Paper read by
Robert Ravich, MD, before the Sixth International Congress of Radiology, London,
7/26/50.

Section 2
Emanuel Revici's difficult publishing history began in Paris on the eve of World War II
and continued through the end of the war in Mexico City, where US physicians visiting
the medical facility he had opened witnessed the results of his lipidic treatment for
cancer. Most of Revici's publishing history took place in New York City, after he moved
to the US in 1946, and where, a year later, he founded the Institute of Applied Biology
(IAB), which specialized in clinical cancer research. Revici's 50-year struggle to publish
exemplifies the problems most originators of non-standard approaches to cancer
experience in seeking mainstream understanding and acceptance of their therapies.

Publications, 1930s & 1940s

Emanuel Revici's medical research commanded attention during his years in France
(1936-41). Between 1937 and 1938, the sub-director of the Pasteur Institute deposited
five papers by the Romanian-born physician in the National Academy of Sciences, a
prestigious way of registering scientific innovations.8 These papers summarized
observations Revici had made about the influence of lipids in pathological pain and
cancer.

In 1943, a year after establishing his Institute in Mexico City, Revici sought to acquaint
visiting US physicians with his findings, hoping they would assist in publishing them in
peer-reviewed English-language journals. His associate and friend Gaston Merry, in a
personal letter dated September 5, 1945, aired his suspicion that the US doctors had
intended to publish Revici's findings as their own. Perhaps with that aim in mind, these
physicians took a glancing swipe at Revici. The Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), August 18, 1945, printed a letter signed by these physicians under
the heading, "A Mexican Treatment For Cancer—A Warning." The letter, not referring to
Revici by name, disparaged both his theories and results.

"What seems to be behind the paper," Merry wrote, "is the desire to work along the ideas
of Revici and to claim the paternity of some of his ideas. A hint is given by an article
published in Cancer Research on page 480 of the August number and called 'The Effects
of 3–4 Benzpyrene on the Auto Oxidation of Unsaturated Fatty Acids.' It is signed by
G.C. Meuller and H.P. Rusch, the latter being the doctor from Wisconsin who came at the
end of 1943 to spend about 5 weeks here and who came again at the end of 1944."

"His article," continued Merry, "is the reproduction of an experiment made in Paris, the
conclusions of which having been published at two or three occasions. When Dr. Rusch
was here in December 1943, I was present at the conversations as an interpreter, and
Revici candidly discussed his findings at length, mentioning specifically the linoleic and
linolenic acids which are also the ones used by Dr. Rusch who took plenty of notes
during the conversations…As you know, according to Revici's classification, 3–4
Benzpyrene is one of the first bodies to be considered as Lipobase. Dr. Rusch does not go
so far as to talk about Lipobases and Lipoacids but his method is a close reproduction of
the technique mentioned by our friend. I am afraid that all the notes taken 18 months ago
and later will serve as subjects for publications which so far could not be made from
here."

Merry ended: "I guess the best thing would be to liquidate what we have here and have
Revici working in a laboratory in the States with the proper help to repeat all his
experiments in support of his theory and especially the suitable collaboration for writing
up the publications. It is a great handicap for him that his English is too poor for writing
the necessary articles. This is what we asked for when the Texas and Wisconsin gang
came here but they acted deaf."9

From the moment Revici co-established the IAB in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947, the
Institute reported on its investigational programs. Summaries of Revici's findings prior to
the opening of the IAB appeared in booklet form, printed and bound in blue paper covers,
with each booklet devoted to a single subject. Itemizations of new or ongoing studies
periodically circulated as mimeographed typescripts. For example, "Report on the
Research Conducted at the Institute of Applied Biology," issued 10/15/48 by the Cancer
Research and Hospital Foundation (the IAB's funding arm), listed over 20 different
experiments. "The fixation of oxygen, sulfur, and selenium in unsaturated fatty acids"
was the second experiment in this itemization. The 21st experiment was "The influence
of lipids in healing of tissue injured by radium emanation."10

Revici's research on radiation injury had blipped onto the US Navy's radar screen 18
months earlier. A letter from a Colonel Thomas G. Cassady, dated just four days before
the IAB report, confirmed the Navy's interest: (Military scientists were testing nuclear
weapons on isolated atolls in the Pacific Ocean in the late 1940s, seeking to protect
servicemen on the battlefront from lethal radioactive fallout.)

"I have had several conversations," Cassady wrote, "at the Naval Medical Research
Center at Bethesda, MD, regarding Dr. Revici…About a year-and-a-half ago …they had
conversations with the Doctor. They were interested in his research work and offered him
certain facilities…As well as I could, in my layman's language, I told them of his further
research in the matter in question. They will see him again as it is their policy to leave no
stone unturned in seeking relief or a possible cure for the type of injury in which the
Doctor has made some progress."11

Twice in the late 1940s, the Office of Naval Intelligence cleared Revici to work on this
top-secret project. Twice he declined, preferring to work on radiation primarily in relation
to the broad problem of cancer.

Publications and Presentations, 1950s

Between July 1950 and June 1951, three papers about Revici's findings on lipids and
radiation came to the attention of the clinical research community. Robert Ravich, a
colleague at the IAB (fresh out of the College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia
University), read a paper by Revici at the Sixth Annual Congress of Radiology in London
on July 26, 1950. Titled "The Influence of Irradiation Upon Unsaturated Fatty Acids,"
this paper dwelt on abnormally conjugated lipids, which clearly fit Samuelsson's
description of leukotrienes published in 1987.6 Revici didn't use the terms "leukotrienes"
or "prostaglandins" here, but in later publications, he indicated the role these substances
play in inflammation, and he attributed the high bioactivity of prostaglandins to a "twin
formation…which appears through the cyclization of arachidonic acid."

Dr. Ravich presented another paper by Revici (co-authored by Ravich) before the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in Cincinnati in December 1950.
The paper bore the title, "The Effect of n-Butanol in Sodium Salt Solutions Upon Shock
and the Survival of Mice Exposed to Severe Thermal Burns."12 Waldemar Kaempffert, a
senior science writer for The New York Times, devoted a column to Ravich's presentation
in the March 4, 1951 issue of the Times, stressing the potential value of Revici's findings
on radiation injury should American cities be hit by A-bombs.13

"Fall-out" from a paper delivered by Leonard Goldman, MD, at a meeting of the AMA in
Atlantic City, NJ, in June 1951 marked the first documented instance of mainstream
opposition to independent clinicians trying to follow Revici's line of research. Notice of
Goldman's study, titled the "Use of Lipids to Enhance the Effect of Roentgen Therapy in
the Treatment of Pain from Advanced Cancer,"14 made its way into a dossier that the
American Cancer Society (ACS) maintained on Revici. The dossier was labeled,
"Summary of information contained in the American Cancer Society, Inc.'s files
concerning the Institute of Applied Biology and Dr. Emanuel Revici, as well as other
persons concerned in the matter."15 Here's an entry about a memorandum from Dr. B.
Aubrey Schneider of the ACS, who had heard Goldman's paper, to Dr. Charles Cameron,
scientific director of the national ACS: "In his memorandum to Dr. Cameron, Dr.
Schneider adds that in a private conversation with Dr. George Cooper, Director of the
Virginia Division of the Society, he indicated that he was going to try out the Lipid
therapy on some cases now under his care at the University of Virginia Hospital. A copy
of Dr. Goldman's paper is in the files."

Goldman had reported on the palliative effects of Revici's therapy. He next proposed a
trial of its therapeutic effects, requesting approval from the Institutional Review Board
(IRB) at Queens General Hospital, where he served as a resident. Another entry from the
ACS dossier on Revici picked up the story: "Early in January, Dr. Cameron received a
phone call from Dr. Alfred Angrist, Pathologist at Queens General Hospital. Dr. Cameron
prepared a memorandum which is in the files. Dr. Angrist felt that Dr. Revici exerted
strong psychotherapeutic influences on patients and discussed his personal feelings, as
Chairman of the Hospital Committee on Research and Publications, with regard to
hospital approval of a paper on the Revici treatment by Dr. Goldman. Because of Dr.
Angrist's strong 'anti' feelings, an ad hoc committee had been appointed to consider the
particular paper, and Dr. Angrist felt that the committee's membership had been stacked.
At his request, Dr. Cameron suggested Drs. Gellhorn, Bodansky, and Schoenbach as
additional committee members."16

Minutes from meetings of the IAB's board of directors in 1952 relate that the "restacked"
IRB at Queens General denied Goldman approval. In 1986, Dr. Goldman addressed the
Regents of the State of NY, in a written plea supporting Revici's struggle with the OPMC
to remain in practice. He noted his early interest in Revici's treatment, and—for the first
time publicly – he disclosed that his studies on lipid therapy had cost him his residency
privileges.

While the ACS and associated elements in mainstream medicine were helping to clip Dr.
Goldman's wings behind the scenes, The New York Times printed a feature on the IAB in
its December 2, 1952 issue.17 The writer, William L. Laurence, was probably the most
distinguished science reporter at that time; the US had broken the news of the A-bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki under his byline. The first three paragraphs of Laurence's
report on the IAB ran as follows:
Animal experiments and tests on patients in advanced stages of cancer
were described last night by leaders in medicine as lending "strong
support" to a new concept of malignant disease that may lead to a radically
new approach to its ultimate control. The progress reports on the new
methods, developed at the Institute of Applied Biology, Brooklyn, were
presented at the fifth annual dinner of the Cancer Research and Hospital
Foundation at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. More than 400 leaders in
medicine and other professions, as well as leaders in industry and civic
affairs, were present.

One of the reports was prepared by Dr. John Masterson of Brooklyn,

former president of the Medical Society of the State of New York and a
member of the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association.
He is now attending the AMA meeting at Denver and the report was read
in his absence.

Other reports were presented by Dr. John M. Galbraith, past president of

the Nassau County Medical Society; Dr. Emanuel Revici, scientific
director of the Institute; and Dr. Robert Ravich, assistant director.
Laurence's last paragraph, notes: "Prof. Jacques Maritain of the Institute of Advanced
Study at Princeton, NJ, one of the world's leading philosophers, is a director of the
Cancer Research and Hospital Foundation, a non-profit organization to raise funds for the
cancer research program of the Brooklyn Institution."17

By the mid-1950s, at least one of Revici's associates believed a distinct pattern had
become discernible in the reception of papers submitted to peer-reviewed journals by the
IAB. In a letter to one of the Institute's chief funders, dated 11/12/55, Robert Ravich
recounted the publication history of an article he had co-authored with Revici, titled,
"Antihemorrhagic Action of n-Butanol in Advanced Cancer" (Angiology, December 6,
1953).18 Bear in mind that butanol – the higher sterol Revici gave to control bleeding in
Resistance fighters in southern France – worked so well, it set the Nazis on its
developer's trail; in effect, it amounted to his "ticket" out of Europe. (See Part 1 for
details.)

In the US after the war, Revici had developed butanol for cancer patients too ill to stem
internal hemorrhages surgically. Injected intravenously, it sped through the blood system
to the site of a severed artery or vein, permanently constricting the muscle tissue circling
the vessel at the rupture point. The Revici-Ravich paper reported on two small series of
patients, one group injected with butanol and the other, control arm, not given Revici's
antihemorrhagic agent. (Revici discovered the mechanism of action after publication.)
Ravich's letter started with an assertion: "I told you that the Institute of Applied Biology
had encountered a mysterious form of censorship whenever it attempted to have an article
concerning cancer published in the regular channels. The following is a case history
which…bears out my statement."19
In short, Ravich's case history of the butanol paper goes like this: rejection in 1951 by
Cancer (after a recommendation to accept by the reviewer); rejection in 1951 by the
Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine and the Journal of the National Cancer
Institute; and rejections in 1953 in the original submission and resubmission to the New
York State Journal of Medicine. The editors cited various reasons. Consultants didn't
think the paper represented a controlled clinical experiment (Cancer). The subject was not
of sufficient interest to readers (Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine). Not
suitable for publication here: try a journal of a more general nature (Journal of the
American Cancer Institute). It was doubtful that n-Butanol had any relation to the
cessation of hemorrhage in the patients studied (New York State Journal of Medicine).

Dr. Ravich closed his letter with these paragraphs:

On August 12, 1953, the article was submitted to Angiology. It was
accepted without comment and was published on December 6, 1953.
Angiology is a journal with very limited circulation, and not one that is
likely to be read by doctors interested in cancer or by general practitioners
who might find the article of value. We have received requests for reprints
from all over the country and the world and some interesting comments
and observations.

The experience with this paper indicates beyond any question that the
problem of publishing our work on cancer is not a simple one. Why this
invisible form of censorship is permitted to exist in scientific and medical
publications and how it operates are questions that I am not able to answer.
But I do believe we are justified in saying, on the basis of such
experiences, that the normal channels of publication have been closed to
us and that we are therefore forced to take any other way that may be
open, to get our findings before the medical and scientific public.
Then Ravich added a postscript, dredging up a wider, deeper history of attempts by
Revici and the IAB to publish in the peer-reviewed literature:
Every paper we have submitted on subjects outside the field of cancer has
been accepted; every one concerned with cancer has been rejected. When
four articles were submitted by Dr. Revici by title alone, for presentation
at the International Cancer Congress in Paris in 1950, all of them were
rejected. Only seven papers in all were rejected, and almost a thousand
read. I learned from Dr. Oberling that they had been rejected because of
the intervention of Dr. Rhoades [sic] and others in this country on the
program committee.19
Dr. Charles Oberling, a French academic physician who relocated in the US after World
War II, was highly regarded by American oncologists. He would have known the
circumstances behind the rejection of Revici's papers. Dr. Cornelius Rhodes, the first
major postwar director of Memorial Hospital in New York City (later, Memorial Sloan-
Kettering Cancer Center), had headed the Chemical Warfare division of the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA. Rhodes had used his wartime post
to experiment with mustard gas – a chemical agent used in World War I – on human
cancer. The Congress to which Ravich referred was the International Union Against
Cancer, whose president and editor on different occasions was Prof. Joseph Maisin of
Belgium.

Through the 1950s and early 1960s, IAB papers slipped into medical journals,20 and The
New York Times covered a few of the IAB's research advances, in areas where the papers
or research didn't concern Revici's theories and therapeutic applications in cancer.21 From
time to time, research on lipids and cancer not originating at the IAB appeared in the
scientific literature, focused on abnormal lipid metabolism, a prime Revici area of study.22

Publications, 1960s
In 1961, D. Van Nostrand and Co. decided to distribute a text by Revici under its imprint.
Research in Physiopathology as Basis of Guided Chemotherapy, With Special
Application to Cancer had been in various draft stages for several years: IAB newsletters
voiced news of its progress in the late 1950s. Close to 800 pages in print, Revici's
monograph summed up his prolific findings from the mid-1920s through the 1950s.

When it undertook to bring out Revici's monograph, D. Van Nostrand had been
publishing scientific volumes from its main office in Princeton, NJ, since 1848. It had
earned a solid reputation for quality. A letter from the president, Edward M. Crane, on
June 8, 1961, spoke of the publishing firm's "keen interest" in an "important and valuable
book."23

Earlier that spring, in the March-April issue, Ca, a Journal for Clinicians had come out
with a feature on Revici's method of cancer control, characterizing it as "unproven." How
Van Nostrand expected to sell Revici's text after the ACS publicly questioned the
effectiveness of his therapy is something of a mystery. Crane, D. Van Nostrand's
president, in a telephone interview in the late 1980s (conducted by the writer), said he
thought there was room at that time for another approach to cancer.

Revici had filled his book with explanations of his theories, with reports of experiments
on their clinical application, as leads to follow and independently prove or disprove the
efficacy of his therapy. He viewed his method as a way to manage cancer that differed in
critical particulars from standard therapy: his treatments were comparatively non-
invasive, negligible in toxicity, and individually guided. He also felt that the results of his
treatment were equal or superior to the outcomes of treatments in common practice in a
significant percentage of cases, especially in cases resistant to other approaches.

In blacklisting Revici's method of cancer control, the ACS aimed to keep patients from
his therapy. To an incalculable extent, the Society succeeded. There's no telling how
many of Revici's medical insights might have proven of value, had clinicians been able to
get hold of his text, to familiarize themselves with his method, to test his treatments in
practice. Most importantly, had the ACS not discouraged sales of his book, there's no
estimating the number of patients who might have benefited from the free circulation of
his ideas.
Publication of Revici's monograph was the high point of his efforts to disseminate his
findings in the US—for that matter, in the world. This publication was also to prove the
near terminal event in his attempts to acquaint his peers with his clinical research: one
paper on the narcotic addiction treatment Revici developed in the early 1970s appeared
by invitation in a Canadian government journal on addictions in Quebec in 1973.

Notes
1. Personal communication from C. Pouret, archivist, [French] Academy of Sciences, to
Revici, 5/21/85, giving the deposit numbers and years: 11273 (4/12/37), 11322 (8/30/37),
11391 (2/28/38), 11417 (4/25/38), 11440 (7/4/38).
2. Letter from Gaston Merry to Col. Gustave Freeman, MD, 9/5/45.
3. Cancer Research and Hospital Foundation. Report on the research conducted at the
Institute of Applied Biology. 10/15/48.
4. Letter from Col. Thomas G. Cassady to Andre Girard, 10/11/48.
5. Ravich RA, Revici E. The effect of n-butanol in sodium salt solutions upon shock and
the survival of mice exposed to severe thermal burns. A paper presented before the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Cincinnati, Ohio, 12/50.
6. Kaempffert W. Burns are treated with n-butanol. "Science In Review". The New York
Times. 3/4/51.
7. Goldman L. Use of lipids to enhance the effects pf Roentgen therapy in the treatment
of pain from advanced cancer. A paper delivered at the meeting of the American Medical
Association at Atlantic City, NJ, in June 1951.
8. The ACS file on Revici and the IAB comes from documents bequeathed by Fanny
Holtzmann, Esq., to the American Jewish Archives, Hebrew University, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Holtzmann, a celebrity lawyer with powerful political connections, was a staunch
supporter of Revici's work at the IAB from the 1950s until her death.
9. Identification of two of the three doctors added to the committee Angrist chaired at
Queens General is not certain. Bodansky is almost certainly Oscar Bodansky; Gellhorn is
probably Alfred Gellhorn. Later, Bodansky and Gellhorn were affiliated with more
prestigious institutions.
10. Laurence W. Cancer attacked by a new method. The New York Times. 12/2/52.
11. Revici E and Ravich A. Anti-hemorrhagic action of n-butanol in advanced cancer.
Angiology. 1953;4:510–515.
12. Letter from Robert Ravich, MD, to Mrs. Ethel Pratt, 11/12/55.
13. The following list represents a selection of papers published in the peer review
literature by Revici and his colleagues at the IAB. The full list, seven pages long, was
compiled by the late Prof. Harold Ladas, a patient of Revici. With his wife, Dr. Alice
Ladas, Harold Ladas organized and helped fund Revici's patients in their successful
campaign to prevent the NY Health Dept. (OPMC) from revoking Revici's medical
license in the mid-1980s. An asterisk at the beginning of a citation signals that Revici was
a co-author.

• *Blechmann M, et al. The effect of unsaponifiable fraction of lipids (sterols) on

morphology and growth metabolism of mycobacterium tuberculosis var. hominis
 and var. bovis (BCG). The American Review of Respiratory Diseases.
1964;89(3): 448–49.
• *Blechmann M, et al. Ring and lysis zones in cultures of tubercle bacilli in
medium enriched with unsaponifiable lipid fractions The American Review of
Respiratory Diseases. 1963;87(5).
• LeShan L. Psychological states as factors in the development of malignant
disease: a critical review. J Nat. Cancer Inst. 1959; 22 : 1–18.
• LeShan L. Basic psychological orientation apparently associated with malignant
disease. Psychiatric Quarterly. 1961.
• LeShan L. The world of the patient in severe pain of long duration. J. Chronic
Diseases. 1964; 17: 119–26.
• Ravich RA. Relationship of colloids to the surface tension of urine. Science.
1953;117: 561.
• Ravich RA. Pain—controlled and uncontrolled. Science. 1953;118 (3057): 144–
45.
• Revici E, et al. Surface tension of urine in old age. Geriatrics. 1954;9(8) : 386–89.
• Welt B. Head and neck pain: role of biological imbalance in its pathogenesis and
therapy. AMA Archives of Otolaryngology. 1955; 61:280–312.
• Welt B. Vertigo: a further contribution to therapy based upon its
physiopathological aspect. Archives of Otolaryngology. 1956; 63: 25–29.
• A letter from Henry L. Williams, MD, to Bernard Welt, MD, 1/29/54, referred to
an article Prof. Ladas did not include in IAB bibliography. Williams was at the
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, Welt at the IAB. The full text of this short
letter follows: "I read with considerable interest your article on a new theoretical
approach in vertigo which came out in the September Archives [Archives of
Otolaryngology, an AMA journal]. I have tried your method of therapy on some
cases of vertigo and several with headaches. They have given very good response.
"I have been asked by the Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology to
organize a symposium on the treatment of headache to be given in New York City
for a two day period between September nineteenth and twenty- fourth. This is to
be in the teaching section, a two hour session being held on each of the two days.
The members of the panel will discuss their treatment for ten minutes apiece
during the first hour. The second hour will be devoted to the answering of
questions from any auditor present. Your therapy is extremely new and unusual
and I would be very happy indeed if you would agree to be a member of this
panel."

14. Schmeck HM, Jr. Chemists study adrenal action. The New York Times. 9/19/59.
15. Letter from Fanny Holtzmann, esq., to S.A. Logan, First National City Bank, 4/13/55.
The pertinent paragraph reads: "In the current issue of CANCER, official organ of the
American Cancer Society (March, April 1955) there is an article by Dr. Marion Barclay,
et al., entitled "Lip-Proteins in Normal Women and in Women with Advanced Carcinoma
of the Breast." The title carries the unusual footnote "The authors wish to thank Dr.
Cornelius P. Rhodes for suggesting this problem and for his continuing support and
interest." The article concludes that cancer patients have abnormal Lip-Protein
metabolism "which is associated with a severe defect in lipid metabolism. This is
precisely the premise from which Dr. Revici set out on his biochemical explorations more
than thirty years ago."
16. Letter from Edward M. Crane to Mrs. Sherman Pratt. 6/8/61.

Section 3

There are few greater hazards to a scientist's career than perceiving a truth before
the means exist to test it. Repeated assertions of one's insight will first invite
insistent demands for proof, then skepticism, followed by silence, ridicule, and
often the loss of research funds.
— Nicholas Wade
"A Lonely Warrior Against Cancer: Scientist at Work– Judah
Folkman."
The New York Times, 12/9/97
—

Dr. Emanuel Revici pioneered nontoxic lipid treatments for cancer in the mid-1920s – 80
years ago. Barely in his 30s at the time, Revici was in private practice in Romania, still
associated with the University of Bucharest where he had received his medical education.
Knowledge about these water-insoluble substances was comparatively crude at the time.
Combining Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics, he redefined lipids, accurately
describing their molecular activity, organization, and properties.

Revici moved to Paris in 1936, seeking technologically advanced research facilities. As

World War II loomed, French academic physicians encouraged him to continue his
studies, occasionally requesting him to apply his laboratory findings to terminal cancer
patients under their care. These therapeutic experiments, said one doctor, always resulted
in relief of pain and often in tumor regression (see below, 1936-41: Paris).

Relocating in the US after the war, Revici repeatedly tried to inform doctors about his
research on lipids in physiopathology through peer-reviewed journals and scientific
conferences, but elements in the medical establishment frustrated his efforts. His concepts
were foreign to their knowledge bank, so they derided or slighted his investigations. (See
parts 1 and 2 of this appreciation of Revici's lifework.)

Modern molecular biologists began publishing their insights into lipids in the 1980s, and
virtually no clues in the English-language scientific literature pointed toward Revici as
their predecessor. Bengt Samuelsson's research on leukotrienes, which earned him a
Nobel Prize in 1982, exemplifies independent confirmation of Revici's groundbreaking
experiments. Samuelsson published his observations almost a generation after Revici had
described these fatty acids in a paper read by a colleague at an international radiology
conference in London in 1950.
By the 1980s, Revici had been a US resident (and naturalized citizen) for close to four
decades, treating cancer patients at his New York City Institute of Applied Biology (IAB)
since 1947 with compounds derived from his clinical research. These agents, negligible
in toxicity, included selenium in lipid bases and Omega 3 fatty acids extracted from fish
oil, especially salmon.

Unlike his scientific investigations, Revici's medical applications quickly attracted the
attention of establishment institutions, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the
American Cancer Society (ACS) foremost among them. The Journal of the American
Medical Association (JAMA) published a joint letter in August 1945, warning about the
treatment for cancer at a clinic that Revici had established in Mexico City in 1942.1
(Driven from Europe by World War II, Revici had first taken refuge in Mexico.) The
signers were US physicians who had visited the clinic between the fall of 1943 and the
summer of 1945. This Part 3 of my appreciation of Revici presents excerpts from letters
those physicians wrote to each other; their private correspondence was largely at variance
with the public letter they signed.

JAMA published a report by the AMA Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry in 1949,
which associated Revici's method of cancer management with quackery and denigrated
the research at the IAB.2 In 1949, the IAB was located in Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn
Cancer Committee of the ACS reprinted and distributed the AMA report. Revici and the
IAB sued the Brooklyn Cancer Committee for libel. The facts relating to the 1949 JAMA
report slandering Revici and the IAB and the consequent IAB suit are provided in the
account here. Note that, since the 1940s, the ACS has been the prime source for stories
spread among the medical profession about Revici. The media, for the most part, has
echoed the Society in reporting about him to the public—as they have done in general
with unorthodox approaches to care branded heretical, in effect, by the ACS.

The most elaborate ACS version of Revici's career appeared in the March/April 1989
issue of CA – A Cancer Journal For Clinicians, an ACS publication. It spoke matter-of-
factly of evaluations of his cancer therapy by US physicians in the mid-1940s. As this
part of the Revici appreciation will show, all the tests of Revici's therapy which the ACS
represented in this piece as actually occurring in the 1940s turned out to be hearsay,
misunderstandings of situations, or opinions expressed in correspondence.

1936-41: Paris
In 1936, Dr. Emanuel Revici uprooted himself from Bucharest to settle in Paris, where
the scientific environment for his research seemed more hospitable. Late in life, reflecting
on his Parisian period, he confided to friends that he never would have left France were it
not for World War II.3 Between 1937 and 1938, the sub-director of the Pasteur Institute
deposited five research summaries by Revici in the National Academy of Sciences.4 This
appears to have been a prestigious way in France of recognizing scientific discoveries.5
Revici's summaries concerned novel observations on lipids and cancer.4

Revici maintained that the Minister of Defense and a Councilor of State proposed
awarding him Legions of Honor in the late 1930s. (As defined by Revici, a Councilor of
State was the rough equivalent to an advisor to the US president.) The Minister wanted to
honor him for two patents he handed the government for rapid mass incineration of
official papers in the event of war. The Councilor wanted to honor the entire body of his
research after Revici had put the Councilor's cancer-ridden wife in remission. Concerned
that these awards might politically taint his scientific work, Revici nixed both proposals.6

World War II aborted his French career. The first part of this series on Revici recounted
his eleventh-hour escape from the German forces occupying the French capitol. (The
Nazis were rounding up Jews in Paris for deportation to death camps. Revici, who was
Jewish, had retained his Romanian citizenship, and Romania was fighting on Germany's
side. Such "distinctions" would have counted for naught had the Nazis landed him in
their nets.) Fleeing with his wife and daughter to Nice in Vichy, France, Revici bore with
him letters of recommendation written on the eve of flight in March 1941.

Dr. Roger Leroux wrote: "Dr Revici has been working in my laboratory for two years. He
is carrying on a program of very interesting research of a physiopathological nature on
the metabolism of lipids. He has brought to this question several new ideas of the greatest
interest. It is vital that his research be continued without interruption, for the results
obtained by Dr. Revici open a multiplicity of new paths to research of all kinds,
particularly in the field of cancer." Leroux was Professor of Pathologic Anatomy at the
Faculty of Medicine, University of Paris.7

Dr. Chifoliau extolled Revici: "On several occasions, in cases of patients afflicted with
grave surgical conditions, I requested the aid of Dr. Revici, who willingly applied to our
patients the results of his laboratory research. The result obtained in most hopeless cases
were always the amelioration of pain and quite often, the progressive disappearance of
large tumors. Dr. Revici's research must be continued and fostered, and may change the
therapy of tumors completely." Chifoliau was an Honored Member of the Hospitals of
Paris and a Member of the Academy of Surgery of France.8

1942-46: Mexico City

Twenty years after the Second World War, a member of the high command of the
Resistance in southern France recalled Dr. Revici's clandestine service in the
Underground: "Revici volunteered in our resistance in which we badly needed secret
help. . .Revici risked his life doing such jobs. . .He could have been arrested any
time...His wife would have been deported...I never forgot his quiet courage and the lives
he saved."9

Fellow leaders of the Underground sped Revici and his family out of Europe in the Fall
of 1941.10 Mexico agreed to entry visas, and by early 1942, the Revicis had resettled in
Mexico City. Encouraged by Gaston Merry, a friend, Revici converted a modern 100-
room hotel into a medical institute devoted to his lipid research. Formerly the European
representative for E.I. Du Pont de Nemours, Merry was a chemical engineer who had
grown interested in Revici's study of lipids while both were in Paris. (Du Pont had long
positioned itself in the business world as a multinational combine specializing in
chemical research and manufacture.)
Revici's Mexico City institute had 15 qualified physicians and chemists on staff, with 60
support personnel. Most of the doctors and chemists were Mexican, but several eminent
European physicians, surgeons, and scientists also in refuge, signed on. The facilities
included a hospital equipped with the latest technology, a clinical lab, a research
department with eight labs, a section for experiments on animals, and an outpatient clinic
that charged patients not a peso for treatment and medication. Concentrating on Revici's
explorations of lipid metabolism and disease, the researchers studied sulfur incorporated
into lipids for antibiotic use, fatty acids as factors in arteriosclerosis, and shock. The work
on cancer focused on treatment of terminal cases with lipid extracts.10

Toward the end of 1943, a banker in Wilmington, Delaware, the global headquarters of
Du Pont, got word from Merry and others involved with Du Pont about Revici's Mexican
clinic. The banker's father had been a founder of the McArdle Memorial Laboratory for
Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and he passed the word about
Revici to the physician-director of the McArdle center. The director traveled to Mexico
City and spent more than a month at Revici's clinic, summing up his impressions to the
banker at the beginning of December: "My visit with Dr. Revici," he said, "was very
worthwhile, and I am enthusiastic about some of his ideas. Most of his work is of a
fundamental scientific nature. I believe that further work in that direction is indicated.
This is especially true of his work concerning the fundamental concept of his theory."11

By the summer of 1944, two physicians from Texas had learned about Revici; one of
them recently appointed the first director of M.D. Anderson Hospital, the other associated
with the new cancer center in Houston. In early September, the associate visited the
Mexican clinic and reported his observations to the director. Revici, he noted, had refused
offers of money to finance his clinical research; he didn't want to work under anyone's
direction. Revici also struck him as well educated in medicine and biochemistry.12 In a
supplementary report, the associate described eight cases of cancer, each different, each
with objective signs of improvement. He concluded: "I am now fairly convinced that Dr.
Revici is completely sincere in what he is doing, and the more I see of his work, the more
I believe that he may possibly have something of value, even if it is nothing more than
the relief of pain without the use of narcotics. Dr. Revici expressed a very great
willingness to tell us of everything he uses and the way in which he treats his cases."13

Over the next year, more physicians from Wisconsin and Texas and a radiologist from
California made site inspections. Letters to curious cancer researchers traveled back and
forth between the West and East Coasts.14 The observers and correspondents basically
agreed: Revici's scientific concepts seemed plausible; his medical applications appeared
to benefit an unusual percentage of difficult cancer cases; and he was absolutely open
about his theories, method of care, treatment outcomes, and the operation of the clinic
(including patient charts and evaluative procedures and tests).15

Meanwhile, inquiries from doctors, patients, and relatives around the US flooded the
Mexican clinic. Many of these people had contacted the physicians from Wisconsin and
Texas who had witnessed dramatic improvement in Revici's patients. To each inquirer,
Revici addressed a careful disclaimer: his approach was in an investigational phase, not a
"cure."10

When the August 18, 1945 issue of JAMA arrived in Mexico City, he and Merry were
surprised to find a letter in the correspondence section headed "A Mexican Treatment For
Cancer—A Warning."1 The letter didn't name Revici, but the facility it described
unmistakably matched his institute. Speaking of "the physician in charge," the letter
emphasized that there was no "positive evidence" that the "peculiar methods" devised by
him and his associates interrupted the usual course of a malignancy. To underscore this
point further, the letter declared that the theoretical basis for the treatment was "not in
accord in any way with established biochemical or pathological considerations."

A decade later, the shock imprinted in memory, Revici conveyed his reaction: "I read the
letter with bewilderment as it was in total contradiction with the facts and the
correspondence which the doctors who signed the statement sent to me after their last
visit to Mexico."10 His 1955 explanation of the astonishing turn-around was partly right:
"When I had occasion to visit Texas later," he said, "I was given to understand…that
several of the doctors were embarrassed by the trek of cancer patients to Mexico City, for
which they alone could be blamed."10

But his explanation didn't cover Chauncey Leake, PhD, whose signature led the others
under the JAMA letter. Dean of the School of Medicine, University of Texas, Galveston,
Leake was the only signer who was not a physician. (His doctorate was in chemistry.)
According to Revici, he stayed no more than a half-hour on his sole visit to the Mexican
clinic.10 Yet several months before publication of the JAMA letter, Leake had written to
the observer from M.D. Anderson: "I think that Dr. Revici…has no basic knowledge of
modern biochemistry or of any other modern scientific development that is significant
with respect to the cancer problem. Further, I am convinced that he has no satisfactory
concept of the principles of science which are so important in judgment on so complex a
matter as cancer."16 Note that Leake's assessment was the polar opposite of the eminent
French physicians' view of Revici's clinical research in 1941.

Leake's correspondence is preserved in the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.

Other letters in this collection left no doubt that he initiated and drafted the 1945 JAMA
warning and that he browbeat at least one physician who was unwilling to sign into
affixing his signature.17 The letters in this cache also revealed that he served Eli Lily as a
consultant on development of Mexican pharmaceutical markets.18 Nothing in this
correspondence hints at the basis for his put-down of Revici's understanding of science in
connection with cancer. His evident rationale for issuing a joint public statement was "to
save the expense, the trouble, and the disappointment that are sure to come to patients
who go to Dr. Revici."16 Neither the Leake papers nor any other documentary evidence
surviving from Revici's Mexican period lend credence to formal trials of his therapy in
Mexico City or at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which the ACS accepted as
factual in its 1989 piece on Revici.

1946-49: Chicago, Brooklyn

The 1989 ACS piece also stated as a matter of fact that Revici demonstrated his method
at the University of Chicago in 1946, trying it on 52 cancer patients with "no favorable
effects" attributable to his treatment. The Society's source was an AMA file.2 Who
supplied this story to the AMA awaits an airing of AMA informants on Revici.

Indisputably, Revici was in Chicago in 1946—thanks to Gustave Freeman, an assistant

professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago. Freeman had stumbled onto Revici in
1944 while serving as a major in the US Army in Mexico, where his duties involved
official liaison with the Mexican government and research on controlling typhus. A
lieutenant undergoing treatment at the Mexico City clinic had aroused his curiosity. Six
times over two months, without prior notice, Freeman dropped into the clinic, speaking
with Revici for many hours. (His fluency in Spanish gave him an edge over other US
physicians appraising Revici's research.)19

On February 12, 1945, Freeman reported to Dr. George Dick, chief of the Department of
Medicine, University of Chicago, that Revici seemed "properly scientific in his outlook."
None of the American physicians investigating his clinic had discovered any unethical
activities, including a San Antonio surgeon, Dudley Jackson, who had exposed cancer
quacks for the US Public Health Service and was sending patients to the Mexican clinic.
Remarking that Revici's approach was "so much more promising than anything that has
appeared in the field of cancer," Freeman urged Dr. Dick to offer adequate lab facilities
and patients for a fair trial.19

Dr. Dick extended an invitation. Revici shuttered his Mexican institute, arranging for
patients under treatment to continue, and drove by car with his family to Chicago.10 Visas
ordered by a special wartime assistant to President Franklin Roosevelt, Sumner Welles,
eased his entry into the US. (The visas, requested by commanders of the Resistance,
recognized both Revici's service with the French Underground and his promising cancer
research.)10 En route, Revici stopped overnight in San Antonio to pay respects to Dr.
Dudley Jackson. Jackson had been asked by Chauncey Leake to sign the 1945 JAMA
letter.20 Instrumental in founding the National Cancer Institute in 1937,21 he had the
political muscle to refuse. Confirming Revici's suspicion that Leake had authored the
JAMA warning, Jackson added an intriguing bit of information. Leake, he said, had been
inspired by Cornelius Rhoads, head of the chemical warfare division of the Office of
Strategic Services during World War II. (Postwar director of Memorial Hospital in NYC,
Rhoads had used his military position to test deadly chemical agents as chemotherapy for
cancer.)22

Shortly after Revici's arrival in Chicago, Dr. Dick's term as dean expired. The new dean,
unsympathetic to Revici, forbade him to treat patients at the university hospital.23 Shelved
in Chicago, Revici interviewed several doctors in the eastern US interested in cancer,
choosing Abraham Ravich, a urologist with a large practice in Brooklyn, NY. Ravich
quickly convinced prominent local physicians, businessmen, educators, judges, and
attorneys to back Revici's research. In March 1947, this group chartered two non-profit
organizations; the Institute of Applied Biology (IAB), and the Cancer Research and
Hospital Foundation. Dr. Ravich was named director of the IAB; Revici was named the
scientific director (a position he held until 1990). Dr. Gustave Freeman resigned from
Chicago University and moved to Brooklyn to work alongside Revici. Ravich's son
Robert, fresh out of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, also
threw in his lot with Revici and the IAB.24

In April 1947, Freeman sent a detailed letter to an associate editor of JAMA, providing
information on Revici and the nature of the IAB clinical research. Most likely, Freeman
was responding to an AMA request for background on Revici, because his letter touched
on the story about Revici testing his method in Chicago. Freeman told the editor that
conditions and facilities didn't permit Revici to treat any patients at the University of
Chicago hospital.23

Through the Freedom of Information Act, this writer obtained an FBI dossier on Revici in
the late 1980s. Consisting of investigative and surveillance reports dating between the
late 1950s and mid-1960s, it indicated that the FBI had cleared Revici, but most pages
were unreadable, blacked out with "Top Secret" stamped at the top. A deep wartime
friendship between Revici and Constantin Omansky, Soviet Ambassador to Mexico, may
have sparked the Bureau's concern, putting agents on his postwar trail to snoop for
residual ties with the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe. On several pages, one can make
out that an agent checked Revici's medical activities in Chicago, finding no trace of him
in the university hospital records.

Four years after the 1945 warning about Revici's treatment in JAMA, bad publicity
lingered as a major "stumbling block" to fundraising. But the "highly ethical conduct of
the research and the favorable results obtained" in terminal cancer cases at the IAB were
gradually dispersing the murky cloud over Revici created by that public statement.25
Then, on January 8, 1949, JAMA ran a report by the AMA Council on Pharmacy and
Chemistry, headed "Cancer and the Need for Facts."2 The report named various
individuals and groups as charlatans and purveyors of quackery, Revici and the IAB
among them. The sole basis for including Revici appeared to be the 1945 JAMA warning.

A number of organizations widely propagated the AMA report, the American Cancer
Society and the Consumers' Union in the lead. The report blasted IAB hopes of getting
grants from the NCI. The president of the local ACS chapter, the Brooklyn Cancer
Committee (BCC), reprinted the section on Revici and distributed the excerpt.
Subsequently, the Visiting Nurse Association refused to service IAB ambulatory cases,
and the county medical society barred the IAB from using the society's auditorium to
defend its research before the medical profession. Of course, lay members of the IAB
experienced extreme difficulty in collecting funds to support lab and clinical programs.25

To protect their reputations, the lay sponsors of the IAB demanded legal action, first
against the local arm of the ACS, next against the AMA. A suit for libel was soon filed
against the BCC and its president. A libel suit against the AMA, the laymen decided,
would be too costly and difficult, so they abandoned the idea. The suit against the BCC
never proceeded to trial. Dr. John Masterson, president of the Medical Society of the
State of New York, intervened, called the parties to a conference over which he presided,
and issued a statement agreed to by all parties. The BCC declared it never authorized or
knew in advance about the reprint and its distribution, disavowed the letter by its
president accompanying the reprint, and disavowed any slanderous inferences in the
reprint and letter. The BCC president acknowledged that he had acted on his own,
regretted his action, and also disavowed the contents of the reprint, his letter, and libelous
inferences in both. All parties agreed that the section on Revici and the IAB in the AMA
report was unjustified. Revici and the IAB withdrew their suit.26

In the near aftermath, JAMA published a letter from Dr. Abraham Ravich, IAB director,
in its July 9, 1949 issue. The letter began: "An article entitled 'Cancer and the Need for
Facts' that appeared in The Journal (January 8, p. 93) contained a number of unwarranted
statements derogatory to the research of Dr. Emanuel Revici and the Institute of Applied
Biology. These statements were based on a correspondence item published in The Journal
on Aug. 18, 1945 (p. 1186). We have in our possession and submit conclusive
documentary evidence from a majority of these signers that completely contradicts their
published unfavorable correspondence. Accordingly, the statements that appeared in The
Journal were without justification if based on these alleged facts."27

To this writer's knowledge, neither the AMA nor the ACS has ever coupled the 1945 letter
warning against Revici's Mexican clinic or the 1949 report by the AMA Council on
Pharmacy and Chemistry with this IAB letter in their presentations questioning the
efficacy of Revici's therapeutic method. Nor have the AMA and ACS ever referred to the
out-of-court settlement of the suit against the BCC that vindicated Revici and the IAB.

There was another development in the aftermath of the suit against the BCC, which
neither the AMA nor the ACS has ever disclosed: impressed by the treatment approach
and results at the IAB, Dr. John Masterson became a member of the IAB's board of
directors.28

Notes
1. Leake CD, et al. A Mexican treatment for cancer: a warning, correspondence, JAMA.
1945;128:1186.
2. AMA Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry: Report of the Council, Cancer and the
need for facts. JAMA. 1949;139:93-98.
3. Personal communication with Dr. Emanuel Revici, c. 1984.
4. C. Pouret, archivist, National Academy of Sciences (France), letter to Dr. Revici,
5/1/85.
5. Center of Alternative Medicine Research, University of Texas Health Sciences Center,
Houston. Available at: www.sph.uth.tms.edu/utcam. (8/19/06: Link to Center of
Alternative Medicine Research no longer active. www.uth.tmc.edu works.)
6. Personal communication with Dr. Revici, c. 1984.
7. Roger Leroux, MD. Letter, March 1941; quoted from Project CURE, "Emanuel Revici:
Evolution of Genius," Impact, (special supplement). Spring 1985.
8. Dr. Chifoliau. Letter, March 1941; quoted from Project CURE, "Emanuel Revici:
Evolution of Genius," Impact, (special supplement). Spring 1985.
9. André Girard. Letter to Laurence Eldredge, Esq. 4/12/65.
10. Emanuel Revici. Affidavit; sworn and notarized, 2/3/55. Extending 41 pp., this
document detailed Revici's life and career from 1896 to 1955.
11. Harold P. Rusch, MD. Letter to Thomas E. Brittingham. 12/1/43.
12. C.A. Calhoun, MD. Letter to E.W. Bertner, MD. 9/11/44.
13. C.A. Calhoun, MD. Letter to E.W. Bertner, MD.10/27/44.
14. For instance: Ross Golden, MD, The Presbyterian Hospital, New York City, Letter to
Lowell Goin, MD, Los Angeles. c. 10/44.
15. For instance: Jas. Greenwood, Jr., MD. Letter to E.W. Bertner, MD. 11/10/44; and,
C.A. Calhoun, MD. Letter to E.W. Bertner, MD. 10/27/44.
16. Chauncey D. Leake, PhD. Letter to C.A. Calhoun, MD. 5/29/45.
17. Chauncey Leake, PhD. Letter to Lowell Goin, MD. 5/29/45.
18. Chauncey Leake, PhD. Letters to Dr. Chen, Lily. 11/26/45, 12/17/45, 1/7/46.
19. Gustave Freeman, MD. Letter to George Dick, MD. 2/12/45.
20. Chauncey Leake, PhD. Letter to Dudley Jackson, MD. 6/22/45.
21. Dudley Jackson, MD. Letter to Chauncey Leake, PhD, 6/18/45. See also: James T.
Patterson. The Dread Disease. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
22. Ralph Moss. The Cancer Industry. Brooklyn, NY: Equinox Press, 1996.
23. Marcus A. Cohen. Unpublished review of Revici's career, quoting firsthand sources,
1988.
24. Abraham Ravich, MD. Letter to André Girard. 4/5/47.
25. Robert Ravich, MD. Letter. c. May/June 1949; quoted in 23, above.
26. Statement of out-of-court settlement, jointly signed by the Brooklyn Cancer
Committee, its president, and Dr. Revici and the IAB. 6/13/49.
27. Ravich A, MD. Institute of Applied Biology. Correspondence. JAMA. 1949;140:908.
28. Laurence W. Cancer attacked by a new method. The New York Times. 12/5/52.