October 21^st, 2004

Dear Former Patients and Friends of the Livingston Foundation Medical Center:

My new clinic is keeping me very busy! Roughly one hundred of the active LFMC patients have become my patients (including some who have decided to continue working with Dr. LaBeau’s clinic as well).

We have been undergoing essentially continuous renovations of our old but stately building since we opened San Diego Immunotherapy, and it is beginning to pay off. Many patients have pointed out that our medical suite is already much nicer than the old LFMC was at the end of its long and honorable history. (If you want to see pictures of my clinic, please check out www.sandiegoimmunotherapy.com/photos.)

My clinic is in an ideal location. I delight to point out to my patients that it is only six blocks from where Dr. Virginia Livingston started her immunotherapy program on First Avenue in downtown San Diego.

Although I am offering the same basic program we had at the LFMC, I want to use this newsletter to remind patients about some key points.

The single most important feature of our inmunotherapy program is probably the BCG vaccination. Dr. Livingston used BCG for patients with all sorts of chronic and difficult diseases, and a recent clinical trial involving the use of chemotherapy in colon cancer demonstrated that BCG extends the lives of cancer patients in particular. (The BCG vaccine beat the chemo group quite decisively with respect to ten-year survival.)

In my medical opinion, a patient who has received BCG should be checked every three months, using the PPD test—at least until we get a clear idea as to how long the vaccination is really lasting for that patient. A BCG vaccination ordinarily lasts a decade or more; however, patients with a history of chronic disease sometimes lose their BCG immunity after only a few months. Unfortunately, the LFMC’s procedures did not require that the patients be re-tested until they were scheduled to come back for their re-evaluation in San Diego. That approach poses a potential problem. If we discover at the time of an annual re-evaluation that the patient’s PPD test is negative, we have no way of knowing when the patient’s BCG immunity wore off. (The patient may have been unprotected for the better part of a year! That’s not good.)

I am offering all of my patients prescriptions for this test, one that can be administered by most medical clinics in the patient’s locale. Please contact me if you haven’t had a PPD test in the past six months.

The second most important item in our program is abscisic acid (contained in the Cis-14 capsules). This agent seems to oppose the disease-masking effects of chorionic gonadotropin (CG), a peculiar hormone secreted during pregnancy but also secreted by cancer cells and certain weird pathogenic bacteria. Because of its action against CG, the Cis-14 works with our vaccine therapy.

As an important aside, I should mention that Dr. Majnarich and I fear that it is difficult for many people to get very high levels of abscisic acid in the blood by taking Vitamin A or drinking carrot juice (which contains beta carotene, the precursor of Vitamin A). In theory, these substances can be converted into abscisic acid by the liver, but many patients do not have adequate liver enzymes for accomplishing the necessary chemical conversions to form the abscisic acid from the vitamins. (It may be even be that a liver deficiency in this regard is the reason why some cancer patients got cancer in the first place!)

Probably the most ominous thing in the overall picture is the fact that beta carotene itself is potentially harmful for some individuals who take higher doses than their bodies can convert into abscisic acid. In other words, really high levels of beta carotene—such as we see when a patient turns yellow-orange from drinking gallon after gallon of carrot juice—can have unintended adverse consequences for some people. Patients who have questions about this are more than welcome to call me. In the meantime, I would recommend that the Cis-14 capsules be used in lieu of high doses of beta carotene or Vitamin A.

The third most important thing in our program is the Immune Antigen (IA). I am now making IA sets at the rate of about fifteen sets per month. Patients are welcome to call me to get on my laboratory “waiting list” for IA production. Please be aware that I am forced to give priority to those who come to San Diego in person for their scheduled re-evaluation visits.

Some patients will discover that it takes longer for me to make Immune Antigen than it took us at the LFMC. At the LFMC, our laboratory staff would first try to grow the PC microbe from the urine but would soon switch to stool samples if this approach failed. I refuse to do this, for medical reasons. This occasionally forces me to re-culture the urine several times to get the species we need—which can add a matter of weeks to the schedule.

There are other important elements in our program for the immune system—ranging from Custom Formula to E+ Peptide to digestive enzymes. However, these are probably on a “second tier” of relative importance. Of course, much depends on the patient’s current status. (By the way, I now have all of the nutriceuticals we used at the old LFMC. Please call me if you need any of these.)

As a final comment, I would like to take this opportunity to lay out a new policy—or, perhaps, to clarify a policy that has been only informal in the past. I am insisting that patients with active cases of cancer be under the care of an oncologist (or a surgeon who can address the oncological concerns of the case).

My point here is that patients should not simplistically assume that immunotherapy will replace oncological treatment for them. Even if immunotherapy occasionally restores health when everything else has failed—and it sometimes does—the patient should not quickly and utterly rule out oncological treatment. (This was also Dr. Livingston’s position, by the way.)

I recently turned down a couple of prospective patients who seemed determined to sever all relationships with all oncologists. I have to take this stern position, unfortunately. It is for the patient’s own good.

There will occasionally be patients who have active cancer but also have oncologists that are evidently too narrow-minded to work with an immunotherapeutic practitioner. I plan to offer those patients a referral to an oncologist in Los Angeles with whom I have established a good working relationship. (As it turns out, he has a high regard for our immunotherapy program—and even knew Dr. Livingston very well!)

Sincerely,

Edwin McClelland, M.D.

P.S. Several former LFMC patients who have come to San Diego Immunotherapy have volunteered to serve as references. Former LFMC patients who would like further information are urged to call me for a list of names and phone numbers. (In any case, I am urging all former LFMC patients to make sure that their BCG immunity remains strong and that they are taking adequate doses of abscisic acid.)