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" Cancer Decisions "

THE MOSS REPORTS Newsletter (03/14/04)

 

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Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. Weekly CancerDecisions.com

Newsletter #124 03/14/04

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THE MOSS REPORTS

 

 

In the thirty years that I have worked in the field of cancer I have been

privileged to encounter many exceptional people, and this week I celebrate the

life of one of them: Dr. Dean Burk, an early mentor of mine and a genuinely

original thinker.

 

 

As I look back over the career of Dr. Burk it occurs to me that while much has

changed in the field of cancer since his heyday, much, sadly, remains the same.

The war on cancer grinds on with depressingly little to show for the massive

investment that we have made in trying to fight the disease. Meanwhile the basic

philosophy of our approach to cancer has remained largely unchanged.

Chemotherapy and radiation continue to be the mainstay of treatment, and few in

the field are willing to acknowledge the fact that despite the increasing

complexity of the chemical arsenal now available to oncologists, the death rate

for many of the most common cancers has not fallen commensurately.

 

 

Meanwhile, knowledge remains perhaps the most powerful weapon of all. At the

Moss Reports we continue to offer cancer patients and their families the

information they need in order to make knowledgeable, informed treatment

choices. We have individual Moss Reports on over two hundred different kinds of

cancer, each one of which offers a panoramic overview of the available

treatments, both conventional and alternative. We also offer research services

to assist our clients in arriving at sound treatment decisions, and I am

available for phone consultations.

 

 

You can order a report, or schedule a phone consultation, by calling us at

1-800-980-1234 (814-238-3367 when calling from outside the US). You can also

order reports through our website, http://www.cancerdecisions.com

 

 

IN MEMORY OF DEAN BURK

 

 

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Dean Burk. It is a

centenary that is not likely to be noted in many places around the globe. In an

ideal world, this anniversary would be marked with a Festschrift, a volume of

learned articles by colleagues and admirers, which could serve as a tribute to

one of America's most celebrated biochemists. In the absence of such a formal

gesture, perhaps this short essay can serve as a fitting memorial.

 

 

Dean Burk was born in Oakland, California on March 21, 1904. His father,

Frederic Burk, was president of what is now San Francisco State University. Dean

entered the University of California at the age of 15 and received his doctorate

in plant nutrition and chemistry at 23. He did post-doctoral work at Harvard

University and then went to London to study with the Nobel laureate, A.V. Hill.

 

 

To view a photo of Dr. Dean Burk, click or go to:

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/images/dean1.gif

 

 

In Dean's day, Germany was the Mecca of science and the young American was

strongly drawn towards, and soon welcomed into, the scientific circles of two of

Germany's most famous biochemists, the Nobel laureates Otto Myerhof (1922) and

Otto Warburg (1931). Returning to the United States, he joined the US Department

of Agriculture as a chemist (Dagani 2004) and co-authored one of the most

frequently cited papers in the history of biochemistry, " The Determination of

Enzyme Dissociation Constants, " published in the Journal of the American

Chemical Society in 1934. In 1937, Dean became a co-founder of the US National

Cancer Institute (NCI), and headed its Cytochemistry department for over three

decades.

 

 

Otto Warburg was generally regarded as the greatest biochemist of the 20th

century and Dean Burk was his foremost American disciple. Their friendship

lasted 40 years. Warburg was an eccentric genius who also had many enemies. He

propounded a theory of cancer that was initially greeted enthusiastically but

was later widely ridiculed in academic circles. Basically, he claimed to have

shown that cancer cells were anaerobic in nature, more akin to primitive

bacteria than to normal mammalian cells. The implications of this were vast and

pointed towards what we today would call " oxygenation therapies. " Although

Warburg's data were impeccable, other scientists later claimed to find

exceptions to Warburg's rule. In time, Warburg's theory became not just

old-fashioned but anathema to a scientific establishment that was increasingly

focused on viruses and aberrant genes as the source of cancer. But, despite

this, Dean Burk saw no reason to modify his own most cherished beliefs simply

because

they had gone out of fashion.

 

 

World politics also entered the equation. Otto Warburg's father was a scion of a

famous German-Jewish banking dynasty. This fact alone would normally have marked

Otto for death in Nazi Germany. Yet (to the increasing astonishment of the

scientific world) he remained in Germany throughout the war, continuing to work

as director of a scientific institute in Berlin. The reason he survived was that

Adolf Hitler had had a polyp removed from his vocal cords and had a pathological

fear of cancer. He thus ordered Warburg to be kept alive, since he thought that

Warburg was on the verge of discovering a cure for cancer. In 1941, Warburg was

fired from his post, but on Propaganda Minister Hermann Goering's orders, was

reclassified as only one-quarter Jewish and allowed to continue his work as an

" Honorary Aryan. " As Otto Warburg's student and biographer, the Nobel laureate

Hans Krebs, later wrote, " Warburg's willingness to...make a pact with the Nazis,

incensed colleagues outside Germany. "

 

 

One can contrast this with the fate of other Jewish scientists, such as Otto

Myerhof, who fled Germany in 1938 because of anti-Semitic persecution. He, his

wife and children narrowly escaped death in the Holocaust but lost all their

possessions, including Meyerhof's beloved library. He died in exile in 1951

(States, n.d.).

 

 

Anger over Warburg's behavior seethed for decades. According to a recent history

of German science, " …there was little sympathy for passive involvement with the

government during the Nazi years. Anyone perceived as an active supporter faced

severe ostracism by international colleagues, as well legal sanctions imposed

from the occupational authorities. Often, German scientists were deemed guilty

until proven innocent " (States, n.d.). There may have been special scorn for

Warburg because of his denial of his Jewish roots.

 

 

Nevertheless, after the war, in 1949, Dean Burk brought his favorite mentor to

the US and from 1950 until 1969, Burk spent most of his summers in Berlin,

translating Warburg's works into English. Burk himself wrote more than 250

scientific articles, and won the American Chemical Society's Hillebrand Prize in

1953 and the Gerhard Domagk Prize in 1965 " for distinguishing the differences

between a normal cell and one damaged by cancer. "

 

 

This involvement with Warburg may have conveyed the impression to some that Dean

Burk was pro-Nazi. His later association with several causes advocated by the

ultra-right-wing John Birch Society may have reinforced that view. In fact, as

his friends knew, Burk was a liberal Democrat who voted for George McGovern in

1972. However, he generally refused to answer questions about his political

affiliations and enjoyed, in his cigar-chomping curmudgeonly way, watching

strangers draw totally wrong inferences about his political views.

 

 

I got to know Dean Burk in 1977 after I was fired from Memorial Sloan-Kettering

Cancer Center for exposing positive results in animal experiments with laetrile.

Thereafter, we both were asked to testify before various state legislatures on

the question of laetrile. We took three or four such trips together. Traveling

with Dean Burk was always an adventure. He insisted on being the last person to

board any plane. He would accordingly linger in the airport lounge, sitting

placidly through a series of increasingly urgent boarding announcements,

seemingly oblivious, until the gate was about to close. Then he would suddenly

jump up and make a mad dash - with me in tow!

 

 

For a government scientist he had an unusual appetite for heated controversy.

Towards the end of his life he got involved in two such controversies, amygdalin

and fluoridation. His Dean Burk Foundation issued a report on amygdalin, also

known as laetrile or vitamin B-17, that was ardently positive. His opinion that

laetrile was also a B vitamin carried some weight since in the 1930s he himself

had co-discovered one of the B vitamins, biotin. Burk analyzed the federal Food,

Drug and Cosmetic Act and concluded that amygdalin should " scientifically…be

regarded as a vitamin. " Unfortunately, he added, " irresponsible human nature

appeared certain to reject such an axiom in the same way the flat earth

advocates reject the view of a round earth. "

 

 

Online one can find a report by Dr. Carl G. Baker, director of the National

Cancer Institute from 1969-1972, of an interrogation he conducted of Dr. Burk in

1969. This fascinating six-page document, although framed in classic

Bureaucratese, captures some of the consternation that Dean Burk engendered in

his scientific colleagues.

 

 

He and I sometimes differed on basic issues, such as the likely fate of the

laetrile movement. I tended to be doubtful about its long-term prospects while

he tended, I thought, towards undue optimism. I remember a conversation we had

as we were flying to testify at the Michigan statehouse in Ann Arbor. The

previous spring (1977), US District Judge Luther Bohanon, of the Western

District of Oklahoma, had issued a historic decision permitting the importation

of laetrile for the treatment of terminally ill cancer patients through a

physician's affidavit system. Dean was ecstatic and insisted that within a year

or two laetrile would be accepted throughout the land.

 

 

Fresh from my bruising experience at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, I was dubious and

felt that the establishment would find a way to neutralize and defeat this

latest challenge. Dean chided me for my pessimism. Yet he lived long enough to

see Judge Bohanon's decision reversed by the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the

Tenth Circuit in December, 1986. On March 24, 1987, Judge Bohanon himself issued

an order ending the physician's affidavit system. Nowadays, of course, laetrile

is not recognized as anything but a pain in the neck by people in authority.

 

 

 

Anti-Fluoridation

 

 

Dean's other passion was the anti-fluoridation crusade. He was initially

skeptical that there was any link between fluoridation and cancer but later came

to believe ardently that fluoride was a major carcinogen, responsible for tens

of thousands of deaths per year. With his NCI credentials, he was the most

impressive witness the anti-fluoridation forces around the world had. Needless

to say, this role did not endear him to the public health establishment, which

fought for its right to medicate the entire public with fluoride in the public

drinking water in the name of preventing tooth decay among children.

 

 

" We urge the governments of civilized countries of the world to bring about a

prompt end to artificial fluoridation of public water supplies, " he once wrote.

He strongly believed that if the policy of fluoridation were reversed it would

prevent tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. One of Dean's most personally

fulfilling moments came when he received the news that he himself was largely

responsible for the termination of fluoridation in the Netherlands. He had a

similar impact in Australia. And so the authorities in other countries were on

the lookout when Dean Burk arrived on their shores.

 

 

 

The Wembley Meeting

 

 

In the spring of 1980, Dean and I were among four leaders of alternative

medicine invited to present papers at the Fourth International Symposium on

Prevention and Detection of Cancer, a large scientific conference in Wembley,

England. Linus Pauling, PhD, and Joseph Gold, MD (developer of hydrazine

sulfate) were the other two. We had a wonderful time together. Then, one

afternoon of the conference, we all went to hear Dean's presentation on

fluoride.

 

 

For a picture of Joseph Gold (l.), Dean Burk (c.) and me (r.) at the Wembley

conference, click or go to:

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/images/burk1.jpg

 

 

The chairman of this session was a German who controlled the discussion in an

old-fashioned Prussian way. Dean gave a reasonable scientific presentation on

fluoridation but was followed by a string of other speakers who attacked him.

That they would differ with him professionally was not unexpected. But the

attacks became increasingly tendentious and even personal. Standing on the side

of the crowded conference room, Dean eventually tried to respond but the

chairman sternly ruled him out of order and continued to call on his attackers.

At that moment Dean seemed old and frail.

 

 

Unable to stand this injustice any longer I cried out, " Let him speak! " The

German moderator snarled at me in his heavy-accented English, " Are you the

Chairman? " We locked eyes and a hush fell over the room. Looking into his cold

blue stare I myself suddenly felt powerless to stop this persecution of my

friend. I managed to answer back, " No, but I am a human being. And I say let the

man speak. " It wasn't brilliant rhetoric but, to my amazement, the chairman

blinked first and relented. Dean was then able to answer his critics and restore

his honor at a person and scientist.

 

 

In the thirty years that I have been involved in this contentious field I have

seen my share of ugliness, but I still have rarely seen anything to equal the

level of viciousness that I saw that day in Wembley. In retrospect, I felt

certain that the whole attack had been carefully choreographed - that Dean had

been deliberately set up for character assassination. Dean himself shrugged it

off, although he seemed shaken. Later we laughed about the incident…but at the

time it wasn't funny.

 

 

One of the great pleasures of my career has been the opportunity to get to know

some of the finest scientists of the 20th (and 21st) centuries. Dean Burk was a

man of great integrity who also showed courage in the face of scorn and

rejection. It was a rare honor to know him and to count him among my friends. I

thoroughly agree with Prof. H.L. McKinney of the University of Kansas, who, in

his obituary of Dean Burk, stated that Dean " lived a rich and valuable life….He

probed abstruse mysteries; he proposed profound answers. He devoted his life to

science and mankind. He made an indelible mark where he had passed. The world is

infinitely richer having known such a gentle, brave man of genius, industry, and

altruism. "

 

 

 

--Ralph W. Moss, PhD

 

 

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References

 

 

Baker, Carl G. Discussion with Dr. Dean Burk on His Activities in Matters of

" Laetrile " and Cigarette Smoke Modification, Dec. 22, 1969. Retrieved February

21, 2004 from:

http://tobaccodocuments.org/atc/60331883.html

 

 

Dagani, Ron. Straightening out enzyme kinetics. Chemical & Engineering News

2003;81:27. Retrieved March 13, 2004 from:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/8124/8124jacs125.html

 

 

Lineweaver H, Burk D. The determination of enzyme dissociation constants. J Am

Chem Soc 1934:56:658-666. Retrieved March 13, 2004 from:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/8124/8124jacs125.html

 

 

McKinney, H.L. In Memoriam-Dean Burk (1904-1988). Fluoride 1989;22:3 Retrieved

February 21, 2004 from:

http://64.177.90.157/science/html/dean_burk.html

 

 

States, David M. A History of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research. The

Max Planck Institute for Medical Research: Reconstruction after the Second World

War. N.d. Retrieved February 21, 2004 from:

http://sun0.mpimf-heidelberg.mpg.de/History/index.html

 

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IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER

 

The news and other items in this newsletter are intended for informational

purposes only. Nothing in this newsletter is intended to be a substitute for

professional medical advice.

 

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