R-5-78
invention itself and the nature of its biologically active output.
Impressions and private conversations bearing on these matters will be
mentioned when they add, reliably or otherwise, to the total picture.
BIOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS
There is a
pre-history of verbal recollection and gossip connected with the Priore
invention. Priore himself is said (3) to have become interested in
possible medical applications of electromagnetic waves upon observing that
fruit and vegetables could be preserved by exposure to ultra-high
frequency fields. A machine was built from US Army surplus and at
some stage sick persons were placed in the field generated (3). According
to a US scientist who has been interested in repeating some of the Priore
experiments, a politically well-connected lady who was cured in this way
of cancer after receiving a prognosis of early death is still enjoying
perfect health in Bordeaux.
The first
experiments on cancerous animals were done by Delmon and Biraben who
withheld their results from publication after receiving an unfavorable
report from a committee, and because of a fear that publication would
prejudice the candidature of one of them for admission to a fellowship (aggrégation)
(7). They used (8) rats implanted subcutaneously with a
well-characterized uterine carcinoma, the so-called T8 (Guérin), having
previously studied the effects of x-rays and of pulsed magnetic fields
upon these animals without finding anything particularly noteworthy: The
magnetic fields had no effect on tumor growth or on the occurrence of
lymph node metastases, while the remission produced by x-rays was only
transient. After exposure to the window of Priore's machine, on the other
hand, tumor growth could be stopped for as long as three months
afterwards. The animals recovered good general health, and lymph node
metastases were seldom seen.
The T8 tumor
in rats was also used by Rivière and colleagues (9) from Guérin's
laboratory in the cancer institute at Villejuif. They found
macroscopic regression of the tumors and of metastases after treatment and
observed no relapses up to three months thereafter. Their
publication anticipated that of Delmon and Biraben.
Rivière
and colleagues then worked with rats implanted with a lymphoblastic
lymphosarcoma which when untreated invariably proved fatal within 11 to 15
days, with generalized colonization of the nodes and a leukemic
syndrome. Treatment under the Priore machine led to total regression of
the graft and of the accompanying metastatic and leukemic phenomena (10).
Certain of these experiments were done with animals from Courrier's
laboratory under the constant supervision of his as assistant Madame
Colonge. The results were the same, and Courrier reported them in an
addendum to a further paper by Rivière et al (11) describing
comparable results with a mouse lymphosarcoma. Further studies with the
rat (12) yielded the discovery that treated rats clinically free of
the lymphosarcoma were able to resorb a second transplant of the isologous
tumor while succumbing to an homologous tumor of a histologically
different type.
2 |