Emanuel Revici, MD: efforts to publish the clinical findings of a pioneer in lipid-based cancer therapy—Part 1

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, August-Sept, 2004 by Marcus A. Cohen

Dr. Emanuel Revici died during his 102nd year on January 9, 1998, after a career that bridged seven decades in the history of modern medicine. Since the 1980s, mainstream research has independently confirmed a number of his therapeutic breakthroughs.

He was the first physician to develop selenium compounds low enough in toxicity to give cancer patients doses far in excess of safety limits for ordinary forms of selenium. (1) He was among the first research clinicians to treat cancer with naturally-derived Omega 3 fatty acids. (2) He also appears to have pioneered in utilizing lipids to transport cytotoxic agents through the bloodstream to sites of abnormal tissue. (3)

Still awaiting mainstream corroboration are numerous reports of patients with advanced cancer who obtained long-term remission under his treatment after failing to benefit from any other therapy.

New York's Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC) revoked Revici's license to practice in 1993. The charges against him reduced to a sharp divergence in approach from conventional oncology practice. The state education department returned the license in late 1997. (In New York the health department--OPMC--revokes the licenses of physicians, the education department processes applications to restore them.) Governor George Pataki wrote a letter in support. NY Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the Assembly, issued a legislative resolution lauding Revici's accomplishments and devotion to patients.

The behind-the-scenes campaign to regain his license has droll and infuriating moments worth telling, but it is too long to relate here. This article, in several parts, concentrates on Revici's efforts to publish his findings, and on evaluations of his therapy. Extending back to World War II, the history of Revici's publications and evaluations exemplifies the problems most originators of non-standard approaches to cancer experience in seeking mainstream understanding and trials of their therapy.

Capsule Biography

Emanuel Revici, born September 6, 1896 in Romania, received his doctorate in medicine and surgery from the University of Bucharest in 1920. (4) Teaching himself advanced chemistry in the mid-1920s, he became absorbed in exploring the relationship between lipids and cellular metabolism. Eager to further his investigations, he sampled the facilities available at the foremost European research centers, opting for Paris in 1936, where he pursued his studies at hospital clinics and laboratories directed by academic physicians.

Revici's Parisian years ended in March, 1941. The head of the Paris police department, a fast friend, warned him that he could no longer protect him from the German occupation forces rounding up the city's Jews. (Revici was Jewish.) Shortly after the warning, he fled to Nice and spent the next six months in southern France as a leader of the Resistance.

Revici had discovered a lipid substance that stanched bleeding within minutes, enabling wounded Underground fighters to avoid notice by the Gestapo, but the Gestapo soon tumbled onto his clandestine activities. Comrades in the Resistance spirited him overland into Portugal, and from there by sea to Casablanca, Morocco, where he boarded a ship carrying members of the Spanish Republican government--in exile after Generalissimo Franco's fascist regime controlled Spain. On the prowl in the North Atlantic, U-boats in the German "wolf pack" were raising their periscopes to sight the vessel, bent on torpedoing it.

The ship inched down the west coast of Africa, sailing at night without lights, then steamed across the southern Atlantic to the Bahamas, a voyage lasting two perilous months.

The Underground had entrusted to Revici a microfilm with information for the Allies. At the Portuguese border, guards had detained and searched him, and would have executed him on the spot had they discovered the film. Patting his body from heels to head, poking their fingers into every possible hiding place in his clothing, they never thought to pry apart the fingers of his upraised hands.

When the ship anchored in the Bahamas, Revici was the first passenger British intelligence officers debriefed. He delivered the microfilm, and also, unexpectedly, a roll of film showing the German submarine installations at Casablanca, snapped on his own (another impromptu act of daring, punishable upon discovery by summary execution). Revici then settled in Mexico City for the duration of the war.

In 1942, he converted a modern hotel in the Mexican capital into a medical institute. With over 100 rooms, it specialized in cancer, treating patients free. The idea and money came from a friend, Gaston Merry, formerly European representative of E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co, the chemical and pharmaceutical giant, headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. Merry had tracked Revici's research in Paris, where their professional relationship had warmed into a deep friendship. After the fall of France, Merry requested reassignment by Du Pont to Central America, sharing a house with Revici and his family in Mexico City. (4)