Livingston-Wheeler Detailed Scientific Review

Overview

Background

Virginia Livingston-Wheeler identified a bacterium that she named Progenitor cryptocides and classified as a member of the mycobacterium family, order actinomycetales. She believed that this microorganism was ubiquitous in humans and animals (especially chickens) and was the cause of cancer. Theorizing that it became pathogenic only when the immune response was inadequate, she developed a program designed to stimulate the patient’s immune system to block the production and immune shielding effect of its growth hormone, HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), and to stimulate the production of specific antibodies against this mycobacterium.

In 1969, Dr. Livingston and her late husband, A.M. Livingston, opened the Livingston Clinic (later the Livingston Foundation Medical Center) in San Diego, California^1-3. The clinic primarily treated patients with cancer and remained in operation until 2003 (2004?) according to Internet postings.

Patients came for a 10-day program and returned for follow-up visits⁴. The The program consisted of multiple approaches to cancer treatment that included psychosocial intervention, group support and training in relaxation and imagery, vaccines, antibiotics, anti-parasite medicine, megavitamins and other nutritional supplements, digestive enzymes and enemas and a vegetarian whole-foods diet that allowed dairy products only after the patient had recovered⁵.

In 1990, the California Health Department ordered that the Livingston Foundation Clinic stop treating patients with autogenous vaccines (vaccines cultured from patients own blood)^6,7. However, a 1997 article indicated that autogenous vaccines were still being used⁸. In 2001, the Web site for the Livingston Foundation Medical Center stated only that they used "broad spectrum vaccines" and "specific antibodies"⁹.

Proposed Mechanism of Action

The autogenous vaccine that was made from each patient’s individual strain of bacteria, was claimed to stimulate the patient’s immune system to selectively kill the P. cryptocides bacteria, and the other therapies reportedly improved the patient's general immune response.

A related article describes the history of theories and research concerning cancer and cell wall deficient bacteria and proposes that the P. cryptocides bacteria may part of this group of interest to a small group of other researchers. The author also describes the challenges to culturing these bacteria, which may explain the failure of most microbiologists to find them in routine blood cultures¹⁰.

Toxicity

Reactions to the vaccines were described as malaise, aching, slight fever and tenderness at the injection site.

Information on the science and research in Livingston-Wheeler therapy is provided in the Summary of Research.

Summary of Research

Amount and Type of Research

A search of the scientific literature on the Medline database as of June 30, 2004, did not identify any new articles about the Livingston program. (An Internet search identified a Patient Outcome Survey, but this has not been published in the peer-reviewed literature and provides limited information.)

A previous review of the literature and other sources between January 1, 1997, and March 31, 2001, had identified two articles that were applicable to cancer treatment. Another previous review that ended October 31, 1997, had identified 17 references, of which nine (53%) were applicable to cancer.

Combining the results of all reviews yields a total of 11 articles applicable to cancer treatment, and we retrieved 11 (100%) and classified the references into the following types of information:

Of the human related articles, we coded the studies (4) by the following study designs:

Summary of Human Research

Four articles in the literature were identified as human studies. One was a prospective cohort with external control patients from the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center. No statistically significant differences in survival either within or between treatment groups were found. Quality of life was reported to be lower for the Livingston patients at both pretest and during follow-up when "quality of life deteriorated at an equal rate in the two groups"¹¹.

One of two retrospective cohort reviews was authored by Virginia Livingston⁵. That review summarized the experience of 62 patients who came to the Livingston-Wheeler Clinic between June 1972 and June 1982 with a pathologically confirmed diagnosis of cancer. The article reported an 82% success rate with 37 patients surviving three or more years. A review of this study by the former University of Texas Center for Alternative Medicine (UTCAM) found that just 37 (60%) of these patients survived for three or more years and that a third of these patients had arrived at the clinic only two years prior to the analysis.

The second retrospective cohort review was conducted by the former UTCAM, and it assessed the survival of a 1992 cohort of patients with cancer five years after their arrival at the clinic. A second objective was to determine the feasibility of doing further research with the Livingston Foundation patient population. The overall five-year survival was just 19%, but over half of all patients had arrived at the clinic with distant disease. Three (12%) of 25 patients with distant stage breast cancer and three of nine patients with distant stage prostate cancer survived five years from admission. However, none of the 13 patients with distant stage colorectal cancer and none of the patients with distant stage lung cancer survived for five years. Site specific survival could not be reported for other groups because of small numbers of patients within the cohort. It was concluded the high quality of the records kept was conducive to further research with larger numbers of patients.

Two case reports were identified in one article⁸. One concerned a patient who had arrived at the clinic in 1985 with colon cancer metastatic to her liver and pancreas following surgery two years previously. Two years following the Livingston program of vaccines, diet and stress management classes, a CT scan showed no cancer in her liver, pancreas or spleen and 10 years after that she remained free of cancer. The other person was a 60-year-old doctor with colon cancer that had metastasized to his liver. Following surgery and the Livingston program, he remained alive 22 years later at age 82⁸.

Livingston Table for Summary of Human Studies

Study descriptions and sources for these data are available in the Annotated Bibliography.

Annotated Bibliography

¹¹Cassileth BR, Lusk EJ, Guerry D, Blake A, Walsh WP, Kascius L, et al. Survival and quality of life among patients receiving unproven as compared with conventional cancer. The New England Journal of Medicine 1991;324(17):1180-5.

Purpose: To compare the length of survival and quality of life in cancer patients receiving unconventional as well as conventional treatments with those receiving only conventional treatment.
Type of Study: Prospective cohort with external controls
Methods: (Various) Cases were patients from the Livingston-Wheeler Medical Clinic (=78); controls were chosen from the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center (n=78). All patients had documented extensive malignant disease with a predicted median survival time of less than a year. Subjects were followed every two months until death.
Results: There was no difference between the two groups in length of survival. Quality of life scores were better among conventionally treated patients from enrollment until death, but the quality deteriorated at an equal rate for both groups.

⁵Livingston-Wheeler, V., et al. 100 random case histories. Chapter 2 of The Conquest of Cancer. San Diego, CA: Waterside Productions, Inc., 1984:15-38.

Purpose: Survival
Type of Study: Retrospective review
Methods: (Various) Medical charts of 100 patients with pathologically confirmed diagnoses treated at the clinic between June of 1972 and June of 1982 were randomly chosen. The following cases were excluded: not cancer, stopped program after leaving clinic "unless so dramatically improved at the time they went off the program that their cases nevertheless warrant examination", first came to the clinic after June 30, 1982. The number of eligible charts remaining for patients with a variety of cancers was 62. Dates of some previous surgeries, arrival at the clinic, diagnostic tests and last contact were reported for these patients. Since dates of initial diagnoses were not reported, the date of arrival at the clinic has been used in this review by UTCAM to estimate survival times.
Results: As of October 20, 1983, there were 58 alive and four dead; the four deaths all occurring within a year of arriving at the clinic. A success rate of 82% was reported but it is not clear from a review of the 62 cases as to which ones were considered as successes. It should be noted that at the time of follow up, 23 (35%) of the patients had only arrived within the past two years making it difficult to reach any conclusions about their long term status. Of the remaining 39 patients, 25 survived five or more years and 12 were last known alive at three to four years. Those who survived five years or more included patients with breast (eight), melanoma (four), ovary (one), kidney (one), lymphoma (four), colon (three), basal cell (one), uterus (two) and lung (one) cancers. Many of these patients had recurrent disease or distant metastases when they arrived.

  Table of Livingston-Wheeler’s 100 random case histories (62 with cancer):

⁸Leviton R. Vaccines Against Cancer. 19. 1997;19.

Purpose: Survival
Type of Study: Case reports
Methods: (Colon cancer) Two patients were reported who arrived at the Livingston Foundation Clinic with distant stage colon cancer following surgery, but no chemotherapy or radiation. One patient had metastases to her pancreas and liver; the other patient had metastases in six of his abdominal lymph nodes. Following the Livingston program and with no further conventional treatment, both patients remained alive and with no evidence of disease 12 and 22 years later. One of these patients was a surgeon who later became the Livingston Foundation medical director for nine years retiring in 1994 at age 79.

¹²Richardson MA, Russell NC, Sanders T, Barrett R, Salveson C. Assessment of outcomes at alternative medicine cancer clinics: a feasible study. 7. 2001;7(1):19-32.

Purpose: Survival
Type of Study: Retrospective (historical) cohort with no controls
Methodology: A team from the former UTCAM visited the Livingston Foundation Medical Center, reviewed a sample of medical records and obtained a computer file of all new patients registered at the clinic during 1992. The data provided in the computer file had been coded from the medical records by an certified tumor registrar from the State of California Tumor Registry. As the extent (stage) of cancer recorded from the medical records was related to the stage at initial diagnosis, the registrar agreed to review all cases for a second time to assess the extent of the cancer at the time that the patient had arrived at the clinic. The University of Texas then checked the Social Security database for the deaths of any patients and the clinic then contacted all patients still known to be living, introduced the study, and obtained permission for a member of The University of Texas team to contact them. The vital status was verified for 183 (94.8%) of the 193 Livingston patients.
Results: Twenty-eight (14.5%) of the patients were alive, 155 (80.3%) had died and 10 (5.2%) were unknown. Because nine of the 10 patients lost to follow-up were from other countries, survival analysis was limited to U. S. patients yielding a known vital status for 99.4%. Of the 167 U. S. patients, the cumulative proportion with five-year survival from the time of arrival at the Livingston Clinic (not diagnosis) was 18.9%. The only cancer site with enough cases to allow stage-specific survival analysis was distant breast disease (n=25), and 12% of them had survived at least five years from arrival at the clinic. The survival of other groups with smaller numbers is described in the article.

Full citations are provided in the Reference List.

Reference List

1. Livingston VW, Livingston AM. Demonstration of progenitor cryptocides in the blood of patients with collagen and neoplastic diseases. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences 1972 May;34(5):433-53.
   
2. Wheeler VL, Wheeler OW. The microbiology of cancer. Compendium. Livingston Wheeler Medical Clinic, 1977.
   
3. Moss R. Cancer therapy: The Independent Consumer's Guide to Non-toxic Treatment & Prevention. New York: Equinox Press, 1992.
   
4. Livingston Foundation Medical Center. Company literature, 1997.
   
5. Livingston-Wheeler V, Addeo EG. 100 random case histories. The Conquest of Cancer. San Diego, CA: Waterside Productions, Inc., 1984:15-38.
   
6. Moss R. Virginia Livingston, 84 [Web Page]. 1990. (Accessed 2001 Aug 1).
   
7. Lerner M. Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.
   
8. Leviton R. Vaccines Against Cancer. Alternative Medicine Digest.19. 1997;19.
   
9. Anonymous. Livingston Foundation Medical Center. 2001. [Web page is no longer available.]
   
10. Macomber PB. Cancer and cell wall deficient bacteria. 32. 1990;32:1-9.
    
11. Cassileth BR, Lusk EJ, Guerry D, Blake A, Walsh WP, Kascius L, et al. Survival and quality of life among patients receiving unproven as compared with conventional cancer therapy. The New England Journal of Medicine 1991;324(17):1180-5.