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Tolle Totum
Oncology “Field Trip”
Integrative medical technology from
Germany comes to North America
Gurdev Parmar, ND, FABNO
I
took my third trip to Germany in spring
2009 to visit some cancer “kliniks” there.
There were 4 reasons that prompted that trip.
First, my associate, Dr. Johan Ghazali, and
I had talked about visiting German cancer
kliniks and Mexican clinics for years. Second,
and perhaps the precipitating factor, is that
my wife, Karen, and I recently had negotiated another 1500 square feet of office space,
allowing us to expand our clinic into a fully
functioning cancer clinic. This new space
would be ours early in the fall of 2009. Our
decision about what to put into this space
encouraged us to make the trip when we did.
The third reason was a patient. A woman
who is a patient of Dr. Paul Klimo, MD, the
head medical oncologist at Lions Gate Hospital (where I work on Mondays), booked
an appointment to talk to me. She had been
given 2 months to live 5 years earlier owing
to aggressive breast cancer. She credits the
treatments she received at a German cancer
klinik as the reason why she was still thriving 5 years later. She wants to open a clinic
in Canada that does what the Germans are
doing. Her goal was to have Dr. Klimo and
me put our teams together (from the hospital
and my clinic) to create a private cancer hospital in Vancouver. And fourth, just when I
met with this patient, the Oncology Association of Naturopathic Physicians (OncANP)
circulated a copy of the Ralph Moss report
on German clinics. All these culminated into
what seemed a necessary trip.
So, in May 2009, Johan Ghazali and
I made an integrative oncology field trip
to Bavaria. Johan and I work together as
naturopathic oncologists at the Integrated
Health Clinic in Fort Langley, British
Columbia. We flew to Munich and immediately jumped into our rental vehicle and
braved the autobahn. We drove about 70 km
south of Munich to a small village called Bad
Heilbrunn—home of the Leonardis Klinik.
This quaint village and its surrounding area
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has a population of about 2000 people. It is
situated in a picturesque valley in the foothills of the German Alps. As the name would
indicate, Bad Heilbrunn was once a getaway
for Europe’s elite, for time in their spas and
baths (“Bad”) to rejuvenate and heal.
Leonardis Klinik
The Leonardis Klinik is a 30-bed in-patient
facility dedicated to treating cancer using an
integrated approach. The chief medical director is now Dr. Runish—a bright clinician who
is a medical oncologist and hematologist. The
clinic was started in the early 1990s by Dr.
Schellar and Mr. Rudolphi. Dr. Schellar is the
visionary clinician, and Mr. Rudolphi is the
entrepreneur. Many of the treatments used
since Dr. Schellar began the clinic included
local and total body hyperthermia, monophoresis for dendritic cell vaccines, chemosensitization, mistletoe, intravenous vitamin
C, intravenous selenium, and intravenous
glutathione. Dr. Drazinsky, a medical oncologist, and Dr. Runish were kind enough to
explain these treatments to us.
On the second day, we were taught the
methodology for total body hyperthermia
and received a 3-hour lecture on autologous
dendritic cell vaccines from Dr. Stucker, a
medical doctor and expert in development
and clinical use of dendritic cell vaccines.
Total body hyperthermia is used to heat
the body to over 40°C, ideally to 42°C, at
which point, apoptosis occurs. At temperatures of 40°C to 42°C, heat shock proteins
are released from the cancer cells that attract
an immune response. Once over 42°C, the
treatment also causes direct apoptosis.
The net effect is destruction of cancer cells
with heat, improved blood circulation,
and enhanced biochemical and immune
function. This therapy is usually used in
conjunction with other therapies. The patient
we observed was injected with dendritic cell
vaccine, interferon, and a chemotherapeutic
agent during treatment.
Dendritic cell vaccine is an autologous
vaccine in which dendritic cells that are
primed specifically to the host’s tumors are
injected into the patient. There are different
forms of dendritic cell vaccines that have
been developed around the world—although
the methodology used by Dr. Stucker’s
laboratory seems to show the best results.
The basic premise of their methodology
is that all tissues of the body are “registered”
in the thymus during normal development. When cells in these tissues become
cancerous, T cells do not recognize these
cells as foreign, because they have all been
registered and thus, do not “attack.” First,
monocytes from peripheral blood via monophoresis are isolated. These monocytes are
used to generate immature dendritic cells.
Tumor cells are then “primed” or made into
“tumor lysate.” The tumor cells have been
triggered to send a danger signal to attract
dendritic cells. The 2 methods used by the
laboratory currently are heat shock proteins
(via hyperthermia) and Newcastle virus.
The goal is to develop antigen-presenting
capabilities in dendritic cells and infuse them
into the patient so the host immune cells recognize the tumors and attack them. Several
articles have been published on dendritic cell
vaccines, and its efficacy has been modest.
On the third day, we received a private
lecture from Dr. Kathrina Pachmann—
perhaps the world’s foremost expert in
circulating tumor cell technology and
chemosensitivity testing—at a hotel adjacent
to the University of Munich. She has spent
most of her life researching these subjects,
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and she is a regular speaker at the American
Society for Clinical Oncology. These 2
technologies have been greatly developed
during the past 5 years.
Klinik St. George
On Monday morning, we went from Munich to Bad Aibling to visit a private cancer
hospital called Klinik St. George. Bad Aibling is about 70 km east of Munich, close
to Salzburg, on the Austrian border. Bad
Aibling is a beautiful town, where many
spas attract royalty during their travels to
Austria. The clinic’s founder and medical
director is Dr. Douwes—a medical oncologist with 35 years’ experience in integrative
oncology. The clinic is one of the most-comprehensive complementary and alternative
oncology clinics in Germany. It has 50 beds
for in-patient care and outpatient facilities,
and it receives patients from around the
world. There were many patients from Israel, the United States, Brazil, and Europe.
Dr. Douwes has a wealth of knowledge and
was eager to share it with us.
We asked each of these experts, who
shared so much information, whether they
would be interested in lecturing to our
colleagues in North America, and of course,
each was delighted to accept. We hope to set
up teleconferences or lecture opportunities
for these speakers through OncANP.
I have long held the belief that countries
like Germany are way ahead of us Canadians (and possibly even Americans) in accepting and incorporating naturopathic physicians in their medical system. What I have
come to realize is that the medical doctors
in Germany include naturopathic therapies
in their practices, that the German government has long supported research and use of
natural medicines. The medical doctors and
oncologists that we met on our travels think
that the naturopathic physicians of Canada
and the United States are a league apart from
the unlicensed heilpraktikers of Germany.
They also were interested to learn about how
the American Board of Naturopathic Oncology has created a testing and credentialing
process to award Fellows in naturopathic
oncology—that FABNO status that some of
us have worked for so hard.
Through my HELP Foundation, I have
been involved with a group of naturopathic
doctors (NDs) in the United States in talking
with the World Health Organization and
seeing how the World Health Organization
categorizes and understands what a naturopathic physician is and does. Through that
process, it became clear to me that NABNEschooled NDs from Canada and the United
States are the best-trained natural medicine
doctors. CCNM, Bastyr, and NCNM are
examples of the educational requirements
for becoming an ND—and they made a clear
distinction between naturopathic physicians
and “naturopaths.” What we found was
that most of what the medical oncologists
in Germany are currently doing is what we
NDs in cancer practice are already doing in
North America. This trip was also good in
that it affirmed that we are practicing good
medicine as NDs and that FABNOs are taking a significant role in the world’s oncology
picture. Where we fall short is in offering
hyperthermia treatments and administering
low-dose chemotherapy and radiotherapy
with the hyperthermia.
Back in North America
As a result of that first trip, we brought
back many new treatment options to our
clinic in British Columbia. Although there
are too many to list here, some examples
include mannitol for brain edema, intravenous procaine for ascites, intravenous
artesunate as a chemotherapy, high-dose
intravenous selenium, and certain other
techniques that I hesitate to mention
before receiving government approval to
import the necessary machines.
Hyperthermia treatment appears to be
the most important element that our clinics
are lacking and which the German clinics
rely on heavily. We have now successfully
brought one of these devices into our clinic
and have been treating patients with various
solid tumor types since July. We are receiving
referrals from local oncologists and from as
far away as Florida within our first month.
We are currently waiting to begin a
Phase I/II study on primary liver and
pancreatic cancer using our hyperthermia
device. As of this writing, the study is
awaiting approval by Health Canada’s
Research Ethics Board and funding. The
study will be titled, “Localized hyperthermia in the care of patients with pancreatic or liver cancer: an open label (phase I/
II) clinical trial.” Dugald Seely and Brenda
Leung are the primary investigators for
the study. As of July 12, we began treating
palliative patients with solid tumors.
It had already been my goal to bring
some type of hyperthermia machine back
from Germany. I am excited to offer hyperthermia treatments to my patients. I am so
enthusiastic about these prospects that I
now co-own the distribution company that
will sell the device here. We are excited to be
starting Oncotherm loco-regional hyperthermia here at Integrated Health Clinic and
to be starting a study on liver and pancreatic
cancer, which continues to be difficult to
treat and has a poor prognoses.
Naturopathic oncology, as practiced
in North America, is well-positioned to
continue to be a beacon of light in the
worldwide integrative oncology community.
I am proud to be a member of OncANP
and ABNO—it is this organization of likeminded individuals that will keep our group
at the forefront of integrative oncology.
Gurdev Parmar, ND, FABNO cofounded Integrated Health Clinic in 2000, one
of the largest integrated health care
facilities in Canada. Dr. Parmar has a
fellowship with the ABNO and focuses
on cancer treatment. He is a member
of the ASCO and the OncANP. He lectures regularly for the Canadian Cancer
Society and other cancer-related organizations. Dr.
Parmar founded the HELP Foundation, which after the
tsunami of 2004, built an Integrated Health Clinic on the
island of Kho Khao, Thailand (www.thehelpfoundation.
ca). He is licensed in British Columbia and Arizona.
He serves as co-chair of the advisory committee on
Disaster and Pandemic Preparedness for the province
of British Columbia. In his spare time, Dr. Parmar is a
competitive tennis player and enthusiastic Canuck fan.
His wife and clinic partner, Karen, and his 2 sons, Seth
and Devan, keep his life balanced and whole.
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