The Cure

This welcome book tells the extraordinary story of a purported cancer cure, that reveals much about Soviet medicine and science during the Cold War. The "cure" had its origins in the research of Grigorii Roskin (1892-1964), a protozoologist, who in 1923 became interested in tumor transplantation—as a means of tackling certain questions within cytology and the histology of cancer, and later in search of a cure for the disease. At the time, the major treatments available for cancer were surgery and radiotherapy. Roskin, however, took a different path: interested in the possibilities of biotherapy, he began to study the idea that the trypanosome that causes Chagas' disease—Trypanosoma cruzi—might be used to tackle cancer. By the 1930s, experimental research indicated that the toxin produced by T. cruzi inhibited the growth of transplanted mouse cancers. Clinical trials on patients proved promising, but the creation of a stable, standardized, clinically usable preparation was beyond his skill

Annals · Cancer · Clinical trial · Disease · Pathology · Classics · History · History of Medicine and Tropical Health · Internal Medicine · Medical History and Research · Medicine