Clinic to Fight Order Banning Cancer Vaccine

An attorney representing the Livingston-Wheeler Medical Clinic in San Diego said Thursday that he will ask the state Department of Health Services to withdraw an order prohibiting the clinic from treating cancer patients with a vaccine made from their own urine.

“It is illegal, and they didn’t have the authority to issue it because it has not been proven that the autogenous vaccine is ineffective,” attorney James S. Turner said in a telephone interview from Washington. “There should have been a public hearing for us to support our position, before the order was issued.”

On Wednesday, state Health Director Kenneth W. Kizer announced that the clinic had been ordered to “cease and desist from prescribing and using autogenous vaccines in treating patients.”

The clinic will abide by the order until it decides which legal route to take, Turner said. He said that Dr. Virginia Livingston, who operates the clinic, had no indication that health authorities would issue the ruling because she was never contacted by them. Otherwise, he said, she would have presented scientists, doctors, and patients to argue that the treatment works. According to the American Cancer Society, treatment is based on a belief that cancer is caused by a weakened immune system that produces a bacteria called Progenitor cryptocides. The treatment is supposed to stimulate the patient’s immune system to produce antibodies to fight the bacteria. A vaccine produced from urine, blood or tumor tissue is injected or taken orally.

However, science and medical experts have never heard of the Progenitor cryptocides bacteria.

The idea that bacteria may cause cancer arose more than 75 years ago. However, research has not shown that any bacteria cause cancer, and autogenous vaccines--those made from the patient’s own body--never have been shown to be effective even for diseases caused by bacteria, Kizer said in a press release.

Under California law, only cancer treatment that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the California Department of Health Services as being scientifically proven safe and effective can be prescribed or used in the treatment of cancer.

Kizer urged Californians to stop autogenous vaccines treatment at the clinic until the vaccine has been tested and proven to be safe and effective.

A medical officer at the state Health Department, Dr. Rugmini Shah, said that there have been no recent complaints against the clinic, which has been under investigation for years.

“No one seems to know why it has taken so long for the (state) to issue a ruling,” Shah said. “We give them time to work on the problem and we monitor them.”

Turner said that Dr. Livingston has been using the treatment for 20 years.

Shah said that the clinic violated state law because Livingston manufactures the vaccine herself, and it has tested neither by the Food and Drug Administration nor the state Health Department.