The thrust of cancer / tumour immunological research is directed to finding out the foreigness of cancer cells on the one hand, and the mechanisms by which the body presumably develops immunity to them, on the other. The foreignness of cancer cells supposedly resides in the antigens they carry. The human body’s reaction against these cancer antigens resulting in tumour immunity is presumed to be mediated by the white blood cells - predominantly the lymphoocytes.

Today, eulogistic statements ^14,16 on tumour immunotherapy, on the basis of the clear evidence that medical scientists have, are common.

The reality is different. The outcome of the massive research on tumour immunity and immunotherapy has been negative⁵ for the following reasons:

1. Surveying the field of tumour immunology, a science writer ²² discovered that the science of immunology is so confused - thanks to its Tower of Babel - that one immunologist cannot make out what the other is talking about.

2. Scientists do not know exactly what tumour immunity is. It hasn’t yet been defined, and is unlikely to be defined in view of such editorial double-speak: ‘This article illustrates that under proper circumstances, tumour immunity can stimulate tumour growth.’¹³⁹

3. ‘Spontaneous tumours,’ Willis²⁰ generalized, ‘consisting of a creature’s own tissues, rarely if ever act as antigens.’ Paraphrased, this means that when not tailored by laboratory artifacts,¹⁵ a cancer forms an integral part of its owner, and does not exhibit the presumed antigens, nor does the body show any reaction.

4. Point 3 is best illustrated by the fact that in operations on stomach cancer, the stomach wound heals even when the knife has ‘actually’ run ‘through the cancer,’¹⁴⁰ amply proving the integral/ non-foreign/self nature of cancer cells, participating as they do in the vital, highly coordinated and complex process of wound healing.

5. Were the body to detect its cancer cells as foreign, it would do so at the very inception of cancer. The fact that cancer can present itself as a universal and a regular feature, in a predictable proportion of human beings of all ages the world over means that our assumptions about the foreignness of cancer cells are ill- founded.

6. The review of a recent book Immunotherapy of Cancer in Man: Scientific Basis and Current Status¹⁴¹ sums up the situation as one of failure, disappointment, frustration and difficulties, the latest one being that a cancer antigen circulating in the blood may, in fact, protect the cancer against the body’s immunological mechanisms.

7. The two arms of tumour immunity are supposed to be (I) the antibodies (humoral immunity), and (ii) the lymphocytes (cellular immunity). The former has long since been recognized as, in fact, protecting a cancer against whatever may be the body’s defense.¹⁴² Now, even the cellular immunity is suspect as facilitating the initiation and the growth of a cancer.^143,144

8. Even when immunotherapy has succeeded in producing what is termed as tumour immunity, the outcome ^144,145 has not necessarily been beneficial: In some cancer patients, the tumour has regressed somewhat; in others, the tumour has worsened. The reasons for these findings may be clear from the next point.

9. Oettgen and Hellstrom, ¹⁴⁶ writing a chapter in the massive book, ^{Cancer Medicine} raise enough anti-cancer hopes before and after the few lines that follow: ‘Thus, it is not simply a matter of deciding whether "immunity" inhibits or fosters cancers. Only if means can be devised to shift the balance between inhibitory and enhancing immunologic forces in either direction can we hope to find a clearer answer.’

10. Point 9 indicates the cancer-promoting danger of immunotherapy. BCG immunotherapy, probably the most talked about, produces ‘frequent complications’^143,147,148 and presents, in the light of point 9 a cancer-promoting hazard: ‘The use of BCG is not without danger since in some circumstances it enhances tumour growth.’¹⁴⁹ In today’s world of executives and business management, The Peter Principle ¹⁵⁰ illustrates how everyone manages to reach his own zenith of competence. BCG therapy of cancer having attained its Peterian zenith of incompetence, is now paving the way for a dubious drug, levamisole,149 that has proved an ‘immunostimulant’ with its own unpredictable efficacy and side effects.

    The current state of tumour immunity and immunotherapy has been summed up recently by Hewitt:¹³⁷ Genuine tumour immunity is probably non-existent because what is antigenic in cancer cells is not necessarily immunogenic against those cells. The in vitro findings have no counterparts in vivo.^98,281 The ‘highly antigenic’ animal tumour models bear no relevance to cancer in man.^{98, 282} The ‘long and inglorious’ story of immunotherapy merits only one comment - ‘a treatment which does not work can hardly be called a therapy.’ Hewitt¹³⁷ traces the foregoing to the fact that scientists got seduced by, and infatuated with tumour immunology much before any sound reason was present. The reason is not present even now. All that we have ended up with is, putting immunological interpretations²⁸² on all obscurities in cancerology.

    Regardless, the immunologic show^{282, 283} goes on. Recently, Mathe and others organized ‘The Immuno-Cancerology Week’²⁸³ in Paris, where Feldman of London harped upon the cancerologists attempts to help mankind immunologically fight its own cancer cells. The meeting concluded that all the research effort of ‘immuno- cancerology’ was justified.

    Let us face it: The science of tumour immunology has one outstanding feature - it has proliferated in a cancerous manner. It is also fundogenic - it gets funds for the asking. Yet, when scrutinized scientifically, it reveals itself as a vast exercise of applying utter logic to a false premise - that one’s cancer cells aren’t part of oneself. No human or animal cancer can be proved foreign (or non-self) ¹⁵¹ to its owner - ‘the first warning of the disillusionment to come’ having been given to science way back3 in 1911. In an individual, the genetic selfsameness of cancer cells (Chapter Two) allows oneself to honour one’s own cancer, by declaring it, a la Mr. Doolittle in My Fair Lady¹⁵², as ‘Me Own flesh and blood!’