Dr. Revici's approach to Cancer: a Metabolic Typing perspective

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  June, 2004  by Harold J. Kristal

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Editor:

Approximately twelve years ago, I had a chance to meet the late great Romanian physician, Dr. Emanuel Revici at a gathering in San Francisco to honor his extraordinary research work. Dr. Revici, who developed the theory of anabolic and catabolic imbalances as a factor in disease progression, was a genius whose monumental contribution to medicine and to our understanding of the disease process has yet to be widely recognized. Recently I had a chance to meet with Dr. Revici's niece, Elena Avram, who is proudly carrying on her uncle's work at the Revici Metropolitan Center in New York City. She gave me a copy of The Doctor Who Cures Cancer by William Kelley Eidem, a book about Dr. Revici's work, as well as a short monograph titled Cancer: Causes and Implications for Treatment that she herself had written summarizing Dr. Revici's observations about the pathogenesis and progression of cancer. I will be drawing primarily on this short essay in the following discussion of Dr. Revici's research, and how it dovetails with my own work on Metabolic Typing.

The current thinking is that cancer is caused by an alteration of the DNA at a cellular level. Dr. Revici concedes that this might indeed play a role, but he feels that it is neither the only nor the most important cause. Oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes control how cells divide, playing an important but not exclusive role in the evolution of cancer. Proto-oncogenes exist in all cells, and may be converted into active oncogenes that promote unregulated cell growth when damaged by free radicals, toxins or viruses. On the other side of the coin, tumor suppressor genes down-regulate cell growth, but are also susceptible to damage by the same influences as the proto-oncogenes, in which case they lose their ability to prevent unregulated cell growth. Thus, a lack of homeostasis at the cellular level, due either to damaged proto-oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes, can set the stage for the unregulated cell growth that characterizes cancer.

The current accepted medical treatments for cancer involve directly killing the cells that display such unregulated growth. In addition to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are the only two accepted forms of cytotoxic therapy. However, three very important questions come to mind when considering these treatment modalities. 1) Do they really address the cause of the cancer? 2) Do they risk causing too much "collateral damage" to the patient? 3) How effective are they at preventing a recurrence of the disease? When used judiciously, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation may have important roles to play in controlling the progression of cancer, but at best they represent a delaying tactic. The underlying cause of the disease remains unaddressed.

Dr. Revici's great contribution to our understanding of the pathogenesis of cancer stems from his delineation of the links between the five progressive stages of cancer development and the different levels of hierarchical organization in the body that are affected by each stage. This hierarchy involves the sub-nuclear, nuclear, cellular, tissue, organ and systemic levels, correlated with the stages of initiation, proliferation, invasion, metastasis and shock, Dr. Revici's term for end-stage cancer.

Impairment of the DNA occurring at the sub-nuclear level represents the initiation stage in the pathogenesis of cancer. This impairment can be caused by free radicals, chemical carcinogens, radiation, viruses, physical trauma, and acute or chronic stressors. When the DNA of enough cells has been deranged, it marks the transition to the proliferation stage. The invasion stage follows if the unregulated cell growth is able to spread from the cell to the tissue level, in part mediated by the secretion of proteolytic enzymes by the cancer cells targeted to break down the connective tissue. This itself can only successfully occur in tissues which are deficient in protease inhibitors, whose purpose is precisely to protect against such invasive destruction of the integrity of the tissues.

Once the cancer has moved from the cell to the tissue, it has the potential to migrate via the circulatory system (bloodstream and lymph), and to attach itself to distant organs. However, as with the shifts between the previous levels, the process of metastasis can only occur if certain conditions are met, including the cancer cells detaching themselves from the original tumor, evading the patrolling white blood cells of the immune system, successfully crossing the vascular wall and attaching to the target organ, and establishing an adequate blood supply for the survival of the new tumor. If any one of these numerous steps is interrupted, metastasis will not occur. The final or shock stage is characterized by disruption of metabolic function at the systemic level, and typically involves fatigue, generalized weakness and cachexia.

There is a widespread bias among alternative health practitioners favoring anabolic processes over catabolic ones. This, however, is an oversimplification that Dr. Revici went to great pains to clarify. Both processes are vital to the survival of the organism, and need to be in proper balance for optimal health to be maintained. A persistent anabolic imbalance is equally undesirable as a persistent catabolic imbalance. In fact, up until the shock or terminal phase, the progression of cancer is marked by an imbalance of anabolic factors, which push the cell in the direction of unregulated growth, beyond the original need of the body to heal itself from the damage caused by the initiating insult. It is only in the shock phase that the catabolic processes start to dominate the anabolic, and the organism begins to break down at a systemic level. However, even at this stage, the cancer process itself remains anabolic; but it has so deranged and destabilized the metabolism that the body systemically begins a downward catabolic spiral.