CREATOR OF HOMEMADE CANCER TREATMENT DIES : MESSIAH OR QUACK?: THOUGH HER METHODS WERE ROUTINELY DISMISSED AS QUACKERY BY THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT, EMBATTLED PHYSICIAN VIRGINIA C. LIVINGSTON FOUGHT TO TREAT CANCER WITH A REGIMEN OF “VACCINES” DERIVED FROM A PATIENT’S URINE.
Controversial physician Virginia C. Livingston has died at age 83, leaving behind a San Diego clinic that continues to advocate her methods of using homemade “vaccine,” antibiotics, enemas and megadoses of vitamins to treat cancer.
Livingston died of heart failure in Athens while on a visit to Greece with her daughter, Julie Anne Wagner of St. Helena, Calif., a spokesman for the clinic in San Diego said.
The pair had left for Europe June 11, after Livingston attended the 60th reunion of her 1930 graduating class at Vassar College.
Livingston’s death came five months after her Livingston Medical Center in Point Loma was ordered by the state to stop using “autogenous vaccines” to treat cancer patients. These extracts of bacteria, derived from a patient’s urine, were thought by Livingston to boost the immune system and fight cancer.
The clinic’s treatments are based on her longtime premise--never proven to the vast majority of researchers--that cancer is caused by a hormone secreted by a certain bacterium. The American Cancer Society issued a report earlier this year that said imprecise and sloppy methods were believed to have led her to mislabel a common staphylococcus strain a cancer microbe.
Among other things, the Livingston treatments use antibiotics and a vaccine against tuberculosis to attack the bacteria; enemas and dietary supplements to limit it in the intestinal tract; and a chicken-free and egg-free diet because Livingston thought the bacteria flourished in poultry.
Although her methods are routinely dismissed as quackery by the medical establishment, physicians and cancer researchers in San Diego declined to be interviewed about Livingston.
A staff member at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center who served for two decades on the state’s cancer advisory board said she concluded that Livingston was sincere but nonetheless a charlatan.
“Where her power was with individuals was that she explained things in this very simple manner: ‘You have a bug, and we can give you an antibody to that bug,’ ” said Helene Brown, a health educator at the UCLA cancer center.
“It’s not a theory that ever held water, but it certainly simplifies a complex disease, and that’s what people want, a simple explanation,” Brown said.
Elegant and vigorous into her 80s, Livingston brought an intensity to her mission that made her believable, Brown said.
“In my conversations with her, she led me to believe that she really thought she was a messiah in this business,” Brown said. “I don’t think she was in it solely for the money. I think she really believed that she was the messiah and she was going to find the cancer cure.”
Brown also has an analysis of how this messianic belief in herself originated.
“She was a woman who became an M.D. long before many women even had that opportunity. So she was quite accomplished in just having gone to medical school and having become a female doctor,” she said. “I think that’s what tripped her up. She was one of a kind, and she eventually grasped the idea that she was different and better, and that whatever she would do would be a success.”
Born Virginia Wuerthele in Meadville, Pa., on Dec. 28, 1906, Livingston attended Vassar College and received her medical degree in 1936 from Bellevue Medical School in New York. Both her father and grandfather had been physicians.
Livingston took jobs as an examining physician, and, in 1949, became a professor of biology at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
It was after the death of her first husband, Dr. Joseph Caspe, that she moved to the San Diego area in 1955 and became a staff physician with the San Diego Health Assn.
She and her second husband, Dr. A.M. Livingston, established the Livingston Medical Clinic in San Diego in 1969. After he died, she married a former cancer patient, Dr. Owen Wheeler, and renamed the clinic the Livingston-Wheeler Clinic. Her third husband died in 1988, and, within the last few months, the clinic was renamed the Livingston Medical Center.
According to a spokesman for the clinic, it was in 1971 that Livingston began dedicating the clinic-- work totally to the research and treatment of cancer based on her bacterial theory of how cancer grew.
Her practice over the years resulted in several complaints against her, said state health department investigator Daniel Walsh. Some were referred to the Board of Medical Quality Assurance, he said, but that agency has no record of any complaints having been pursued.
The federal government ruled in 1986 that the clinic was ineligible for Medicare funding. A peer review conducted as part of the investigation found several “serious deficiencies” in clinic operations, according to the American Cancer Society. These included poor record-keeping; inadequate medical exams and lab tests; lack of follow-up on medical complications and lack of informed consent.
Most recently, Walsh has led a continuing investigation into whether the clinic violates a state ban on use of unproven cancer treatments. It was this inquiry that led Health Director Kenneth W. Kizer to issue a “cease-and-desist” order against the autogenous vaccines in February.
Livingston’s lawyers are contesting the order and also are seeking state approval of formal tests of autogenous vaccines, Walsh said.
Linda Copeland, assistant manager of the clinic, said the clinic’s board of directors expects it to continue operation under the guidance of three physicians and one psychologist who remain. In the last few years, Copeland said, Livingston herself had concentrated on her writing, lectures and lab research, rather than patient care.
A resident of Rancho Santa Fe, Livingston is survived by her daughter and by a stepson, Dr. Brent Livingston of Rancho Santa Fe.
A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 12701 Torrey Bluff Drive. A private interment will follow.
The family asks that remembrances be in the form of contributions to the Livingston Foundation, 3232 Duke St., San Diego 92110.
