Talk:William Coley

References and a bit of Rigour please

Hello- I am an employee of the Cancer Research Institute. As a non-profit organization founded on the premise of Dr. Coley's research, we believe CRI should have a Wikipedia page. We would like to stay neutral and are requesting that someone who has interest in the field of immunology write the article. We have biographical photos we may be able to provide for this page. Also, I suggest using "A commotion in the blood" by Stephen S. Hall as a source for more information on Dr. Coley's research and the immunology field. Thank you for your time - kfowler@cancerresearch.org.

This is historically interesting, but where are the references? I worry that it strikes the tone of Coleys toxins being a miracle cancer treatment which has been marginalised by the medical establishment. This would be quite wrong.

Many of the statements must be regarded as unsound eg:

"He found that surgery had been much more effective in the past, before the use of antiseptics when infection was a normal side effect of surgery." Complete nonsense, surely.

"For example, one surgeon in the 1770s purportedly cured six out of every seven patients." Purportedly? Please!

"Coley also learned of the case of a patient at his own hospital seven years earlier, who had throat and tonsil cancer. After surgery, there was not much hope for him. Then he came down with erysipelas, a bacterial infection caused by Streptococcus pyogenes. His cancer disappeared, and Coley found that he was still alive, seven years later." Anecdote.

"The first patient to receive Coley Vaccine was a sixteen-year-old boy with a massive abdominal tumor. Every few days, Coley injected his vaccine directly into the tumor mass and produced the symptoms of an infectious disease, but did not produce the disease itself. On each injection, there was a dramatic rise in body temperature and chills. The tumour gradually diminished in size. By May 1893, after four months of intensive treatment, the tumour was a fifth its original size. By August, the remains of the growth were barely perceptible." Anecdote. Did he actually do any controlled trials?

"According to Stephen Hoption Cann of the University of British Columbia, "He had successes you simply couldn't hope for today, curing even extensive metastatic disease." (New Scientist, 2 Nov., 2002)" Hoption Cann is not an oncologist. New Scientist, whilst being an excellent journal, is not a peer-reviewed immunology or oncology journal. This statement is pure journalese. The New Scientist article should not form the basis of this whole piece.

"Even so, every published study has reached the same conclusion: Coley Vaccine therapy is as good, or better, than modern therapies." References please. This is bollocks until someone can demonstrate otherwise. Jellytussle 23:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)