Dr. Adan Graetz is a member of the Cuernavaca community. He was born in Tel Aviv on May 4, 1928. At 25, he went to New York City where he became a student at the New School of Social Research. He met the eminent psychoanalyst, Eric Fromm, in New York and translated Fromm’s book, “Escape From Freedom,” into Hebrew.
Dr. Graetz followed Dr. Fromm to Cuernavaca, became interested in medicine and attended Mexico City College to obtain proper credits. He studied at Universidad National Autonoma de Mexico and interned at Women’s Hospital of the University of Zurich. There he learned that pregnant women with cancer usually have cancer-free babies. This prompted Dr. Graetz’ investigation and research into the anti HCG (human chorionic gonadotrophin) principle in amniotic fluid.
ADDRESS OF DR, ADAN GRAETZ TO THE CANCER CONGRESS IN BADEN-BADEN, GERMANY ON MAY 11, 1976.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I would like to apologize to you for errors in my German. I learned German as a child at home but never lived inside Germany for a time long enough to practice the language.
The point of departure to my subject,”Anti HCG as a Therapeutic Principle in Malignant Processes; is the known fact that,with very rare exceptions, a pregnant woman who has cancer, delivers a cancer-free baby. I asked if nature has provided the newborn with a defense against cancer, and if so, what is the nature of this defense, and whether it can be recuperated for treatment in patients who are not newborns.
In 1965 I published a communication in the Lancet where I gave the theoretical considerations for the existence of an Anti HCG principle in human amniotic fluid at term and suggested that it may be useful in cancer therapy. The nature of the normal curve for HCG in human pregnancy which reaches its apex in the first trimester and the fact that trophoblast from the placenta after delivery continues to produce HCG in vitro caused me to ask: If the factory works for 9 months, why does the product disappear after 3 months?
My experimental demonstration of the Anti HCG principle in human amniotic fluid was published in 1968 in my thesis in Mexico. The evidence consisted of 15 experiments which showed in vitro inhibition by amniotic fluid at term of the action of HCG in the immunological tests for pregnancy and in vivo inhibition of the action of HCG on the ovarian weight augumentation in immature rats by amniotic fluid at term. The Anti HCG fraction isolated from an alcohol-ether extract of amniotic fluid which eliminated estrogens proved to be a protein of over 200,000 molecular weight which agglutinated latex particles and HCG absorbed erythrocytes. It also destroyed completely the growth of cancerous cells in tissue culture.
It was now possible to understand the two opposing contradictory claims of acceleration and retardation in the literature about the effects of pregnancy on tumor growth: When HCG is in predominance there is acceleration of tumor growth. The normal predominance of Anti HCG during the second and third trimesters of intrauterine life and its absorption from the fetal to the maternal circulation with the amniotic fluid, neutralizes HCG producing loosened trophoblast cells which have been demonstrated in the fetal and maternal circulation from 18 weeks of pregnancy to term as a normal process in pregnancy. This is why every normal pregnancy does not result in choriocarcinoma. It also explains the virtual absence of B cells in the pituitary during the last iwo trimesters of pregnancy and the atrophy of the corpus luteum of pregnancy.
The fact that the fetus is protected from cancer in the mother; the isolated , reported, unexplainable cures from cancer in women who became pregnant; the description of retardation of growth rate or the size of neoplasms in pregnancy by Enge; the use of pregnancy by the veterinarians in Malmo, Sweden in order to cure the champion setter dog “Akka” of leukemia; the good results reported by Gillet who administered extracts of bovine, amniotic fluid to his cancer patients in 1923; the instinctive ingestion of amniotic fluid by the mammalian mother at delivery; all these can be attributed to Anti HCG in the amniotic fluid.
In 1975 at the Tenth International Congress of Anatomists, Bal’ooni, Gheri-Bryk and I discussed the experimental evidence in organ tissue culture of the effect of lyophilized amniotic fluid at term containing Anti HCG using Wolff and Haffen’s method. We discussed the effect on human, metastatic lymph node of gastric cancer, on adenocarcinoma of the uterus and on breast adenocarcinoma, showing inhibition of growth of tumor cells without affecting normal cells. Not all the amniotic fluids collected at term contained Anti HCG in effective amounts.
From Beard’s trophoblastic theory of cancer in 1911, to a demonstration of HCG positive, immunological reaction in urine of male and female patients with malignant disease, to Dr. Hans Nieper’s concept of HCG-shielding of cancer cells as an atavistic mechanism used by the normal zygote to avoid being detected as foreign protein by the immune defenses of the organism, my evidence for a physiological Anti HCG principle in amniotic fluid with carcinostatic potential opened the way for a physiological immunological alternative to surgery, radiation and chemotherapy in cancer treatment with AmnionAnti HCG.
Dr. Nieper was the first to report clinical results in patients with breast cancer in terminal phase treated with Amnion-Anti-HCG as “extraordinary and positive.” Modigliani confirmed an extreme analgesic effect. My clinical work in Mexico is too recent and too limited for a controlled clinical assay with statistical evaluation of 5-year post-treatment survival. The best results to date have been obtained in women with operated breast cancer who developed metastatic nodes in the axilla after the operation and who took my treatment with Anti HCG instead of submitting to additional surgery. After a six-week intra-muscular treatment, the axillary nodes shrank to practically nothing. In no case were there any toxic or other undesirable side reactions. My clinical experience to date indicates that the stage of cancerous growth in the patient at which Anti HCG is administered is crucial and that further purification of the isolated fraction may be desirable.
The difficulties encountered in Italy in collecting the amniotic fluid confirmed my earlier experience in Mexico that in order to make the amniotic fluid regularly available,”Banks for Afterbirth” must be established. Work with placenta, embryonic covering membranes, umbilical cord, amniotic fluid, in my experimental bank for afterbirth in 1963 led me to develop the concept that the human being is born with a unit of spare tissue which is the afterbirth. It is my recommendation that the entire afterbirth of every future born child be picked up at birth, processed and stored in a bank for later medical therapy for the child born with it and the mother giving birth to it, and when they no longer need it – in others. I have recommended legislation that will make the mother the legal owner of her own afterbirth in order to make the banks for embryonary, spare tissue a reality. What is at stake is reserving for mankind and making available as medical treatment the ultimate resource of physiological, individual -specific, therapeutic potential by using biological forces charged with propagation of the species during intrauterine life for the prolongation of the individual life-span after birth, as the need arises.
