Case for Interferon

How a 1980s Cancer Drug Might Be the Wonder Therapy for the Twenty-First Century

Joseph Cummins, Kent Heckenlively

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781510765511
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Microbiology & Molecular Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Touted as a potential breakthrough cancer therapy in the 1980s by the scientific community and publications such as TIME and Newsweek magazine, the reputation of interferon has not lived up to its early promise. Interferons are small proteins with anti-viral and anti-cancer effects, which have the power to modulate the functioning of the immune system. But Dr. Joseph Cummins, an early interferon pioneer, holder of sixteen US medical patents, author of more than sixty scientific publications, as well as having taught veterinary medicine at the University of Missouri, University of Illinois, and Texas A & M University, argues that the current thinking on interferon is fundamentally flawed. Interferon is created in small quantities in the body in response to infection, and seems to work best at these low dosages. However, the public health cowboys, working under the assumption that anything good in tiny amounts must be better in massive amounts, pursued exactly the wrong strategy. High-dose interferon does not work in the body and may even cause problems. The first remarkable results for interferon and the flu were reported by the Soviets in the 1970s, but Western medicine discounted these findings because they believed the dosages were so low they couldn't possibly be effective. In the 1980s, when interferon was expensive to produce and only small quantities could be manufactured, the results were remarkable. Dr. Cummins was an early pioneer of low-dose interferon, and his remarkable findings among animals led to collaborations with medical doctors for human trials, even going so far as Africa at the height of the HIV-AIDS epidemic. Cummins reviews the evidence for this inexpensive, safe treatment and makes an eloquent argument for medical science to take another look at interferon to tackle today's most challenging health conditions, including COVID-19.

CHAPTER 1

An Ohio Farm Boy

My father joined the US Navy in 1935 when he and some friends drove to Cincinnati to visit a Navy recruiter. It was the depths of the Great Depression, and he considered himself lucky to be able to enlist and have a job.

He didn’t consider himself lucky several years later when he and my mother were at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941. Nonessential personnel were evacuated from Hawaii, and I came into this world a few months later in the sunny climate of Southern California in a nation at war.

My father remained at Pearl Harbor to help clean up the devastation and get the country ready for a long global fight. After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into WWII, Dad rose in rank quickly and was soon a chief petty officer, boiler tender.

In the war, two ships upon which he served were torpedoed by the Japanese and sunk. After the sinking of one of those ships, Dad spent what he euphemistically called “a night in the water,” before being rescued. What worried my father the most? Drowning? Sharks? Maybe being strafed by Japanese planes? He never said specifically, but he told me that whenever he went to sleep, he dreamed he was “back in the water.” He felt lucky to have survived the war, but there were invisible scars he carried for the rest of his life.

Dad was determined to raise his sons on a dairy farm in Ohio, far from the ocean. When my father retired from the US Navy in 1955, the family moved to Logan County, Ohio. There are few jobs as demanding as being a dairy farmer. Cows need attention every day, all year long. The milking had to occur every twelve hours. There were no holidays. And I think it was due to the focus on the livestock on that farm that I first developed my deep affection for animals.

Dad was determined that I learn to work hard, and there was no better place to instill a work ethic than the dairy farm. I never overcame the feeling that, at day’s end, there was still unfinished work to do. Just like other farm boys, I could put a hundred bales of hay or straw on a wagon so none would fall off. If necessary, I could back two full wagons, hooked together, into the barn. I was a good, hard-working, tough farmhand. The backbreaking work of farm life made everything else pale in comparison. As far as I was concerned, anything other than working on a farm was a vacation, sunshine and lollipops all day.

I was trained to work hard and put in long hours. As a veterinarian, I was busy all day and at night, if there was an emergency. I was ready to dash from my house to the office at a moment’s notice to lend assistance. Later, when I became a professor of veterinary medicine, I learned there is no end to the hours that can be spent trying to keep abreast of new scientific publications and developments.

I put a terrible burden on my home life by working endlessly. It is one of my great personal failings that I never learned to relax and enjoy anything except work. Even though I have various academic distinctions and publications in the top journals of my profession, I still consider myself a simple Ohio farm boy at heart.

***

I graduated from Washington Local High School in Lewistown, Ohio, best known as the place where Walter Alston started his legendary baseball coaching and managing career. His example of quiet, dogged persistence stood as an example to all of us.

Alston was nicknamed “Smokey,” playing nineteen years in the minor leagues and only appearing in a single major league baseball game for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1936. In 1954, he was captain of the Nashua Dodgers (the farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the first integrated baseball team in the United States).

But it was as a major league manager that Alston really made his mark. He was often referred to as “the Quiet Man,” for his calm demeanor, managing the Brooklyn, then Los Angeles, Dodgers for twenty-three years, from 1954 to 1976. In those years, his Brooklyn team won the World Series in 1955, and the Dodgers had more than two thousand wins during his tenure as manager. In Los Angeles, his team won three World Series, in 1959, 1963, and 1965; he managed seven National League All-Star teams to victory; and he was selected Manager of the Year six times. Alston’s dogged determination, “never-say-die” attitude, and calm professionalism loomed large as an example for all of us at his former high school.

Alston was well into his legendary managing career with the Dodgers by the time I graduated from high school in 1960 and enrolled in fall classes at The Ohio State University. I was accepted into the College of Veterinary Medicine after two years of undergraduate work in the College of Agriculture. Having been raised on a dairy farm, it was my intention to pursue a career as a practicing veterinarian.

Little did I realize my intentions were far removed from what eventually transpired. I had set my sights too low for the future that awaited me, when my discoveries would cause heated controversies in countries across the globe like Kenya during the middle of the HIV-AIDS epidemic.

I attended the College of Veterinary Medicine from 1962 to 1966. The competition in the professional curriculum was more intense than anything I’d previously experienced. It wasn’t much fun. As one of the youngest members of the class, I had trouble adjusting to the rigors of the schedule and subject matter. I was particularly terrified by embryology, the study of how a fetus develops to maturity prior to birth. Embryology seemed like a foreign language to me, as every descriptive term was new, and the learning pace was fast. I agonized over identifying the embryonic organs and tissues on our class slides, and it took the whole first quarter before I was the least bit comfortable with the subject matter.

Anatomy was the most boring class I’d ever experienced. Our professor, a wonderful man but a terrible speaker, started his anatomy lectures each morning at 8 a.m. in a quiet, gentle monotone.

Unfortunately, I was not a coffee drinker at the time.

Coffee probably would’ve helped.

The class was a struggle for everyone to keep awake, as each artery, nerve, bone, and muscle was discussed and described ad nauseam. As if all of that weren’t enough, late in the first quarter of my veterinary education, I developed acute appendicitis.

On a Friday, I left a bacteriology lecture and checked into the student clinic. A quick examination and blood test confirmed a diagnosis of appendicitis, and I had surgery that Friday night. By Tuesday, I was back in class, but I’d missed an important anatomy test. I was called into the professor’s office for a verbal makeup test. I did not expect to do well.

However, before the exam, he asked me where I was from. I told him I was from Bellefontaine, Ohio, in Logan County. He checked my name and my father’s name and concluded he’d known my great-grandfather. He told me that, as a boy, he’d often ridden in a horse and buggy with my great-grandfather, and my great-grandfather had once taken him to the local county fair. He remembered my great-grandfather with much affection and admiration. In looking back, that probably saved my veterinary career.

After briefly reminiscing, he asked a few simple anatomy questions and dismissed me.

I got a “B” for the course but probably deserved to fail.

My great-grandfather, through his kindness to a boy forty years earlier, had unknowingly helped me survive my first quarter in veterinary college. What are the chances of such luck? I felt like some sort of divine providence was guiding my life and didn’t want to waste the opportunity I’d been given.

After a shaky first quarter, I applied myself even harder in the second quarter and started to see results, suggesting I might even have a talent for this kind of study. I set a record-high test score on a practical histology test in which we moved from microscope to microscope identifying tissues.

In early 1963, we studied large and small lymphocytes, macrophages, and plasma cells and heard speculation about their role in the overall immune response. I was fascinated by it all. The professors felt science was at a turning point in understanding both animal and human health, and many of us shared that enthusiasm.

I did not know at the time how important these cells would become in my future as a research scientist studying immunology, virology, and interferon.

***

I was in my junior year of the College of Veterinary Medicine in 1965 when the military came calling. Because of the war in Vietnam, practicing veterinarians were being drafted out of practice to serve in the US Army.

My father had spent twenty years in the US Navy before retiring to an Ohio farm, so I decided it was possible that I might enjoy a career in the military.

Dr. Scothorn was teaching veterinary parasitology at Ohio State after a career in which he’d attained the rank of colonel in General Douglas MacArthur’s army. After arriving at Ohio State, Scothorn actively recruited veterinary students for the US Army, and I became one of them. He convinced me that if I signed up for three years (instead of the regular two years), he could obtain a juicy assignment for me in laboratory animal medicine at the Presidio in San Francisco.

I volunteered for three years. It was an understatement to say I was surprised when I subsequently received orders to report to Bayonne, New Jersey. My assignment would be to supervise inspections of fruits and vegetables shipped to our troops in Europe.

I took my new orders to Dr. Scothorn and asked how it was possible for him to promise me a laboratory animal medicine assignment in San Francisco and for me to receive, instead, an assignment to inspect fruits and vegetables in New Jersey.

He looked at my assignment for a long time and then said, “Well, I promised you a coast, and I got you a coast.” I think this was my first significant experience with the promises of people in power, only to be disappointed in what they actually delivered.

Unfortunately, it was not to be my last.

Later I heard of a case of an US Army physician who sued the US Army because he’d been promised a specific special assignment but had received an undesirable duty station instead. The court was unsympathetic and ruled in the US Army’s favor. I remember the judge said that the physician was naive.

“Everyone knows,” the judge said, “that US Army recruiters lie.”

Wow.

What a thing to tell young people who want to serve their country. I wonder if a soldier could do the same in reverse. I know I said I promised to charge the enemy, but I changed my mind and I think I’ll head to the canteen instead because I’m hungry.

I think one would get court-martialed.

I spent thirty-nine months (thirty-nine months, six days, four hours, and twenty minutes—but who’s counting when you’re having fun?) in the US Army. In retrospect, I can categorically state I never did anything of the slightest importance toward the war effort. Later I learned that only 1 percent of veterinarians reenlisted in the US Army Veterinary Corp. The 1 percent reenlistment rate was the lowest of any division in the US military.

I took basic training in San Antonio, Texas, at Ft. Sam Houston and then completed US Army Veterinary Corp training in Chicago at Ft. Sheridan, before I finally arrived in New York for my duty. I lived on Staten Island (Ft. Wadsworth) and worked in Bayonne, New Jersey, for about a year supervising inspection of fruits and vegetables and inspecting food establishments in New Jersey, which provided food to the military. I inspected manufacturing facilities that produced mayonnaise, pickles, bread, cakes, olives, maraschino cherries, ice cream, milk, and other dairy products, as well as pizza, to name a few. I made sure there were doors on restrooms, screens on windows, and some effort at cleanliness.

Overall, I inspected food establishments as best I could, considering I had no confidence in what I was doing and no conviction my inspections were worthwhile. Maybe somewhere in the military there’s somebody who can explain to me why the skills of a veterinarian are best suited for work as a food inspector. But I never heard the explanation.

Fortunately, after a year, the post veterinarian left Ft. Wadsworth, and I replaced him. I was so relieved to leave behind the job of food inspector and return to the care of animals, which was my passion. For the two years remaining in my tour of duty, I was the post veterinarian for Ft. Wadsworth and Ft. Hamilton (Brooklyn). These military forts are at each end of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

As a post veterinarian, I held clinics for pets of military dependents on Governor’s Island, Floyd Bennett Field (Naval Air Station), and Ft. Wadsworth/Hamilton. In addition, I offered veterinary care to guard dogs at the various missile sites around New York City including Ft. Totten, Ft. Tilden, Highland Park (NJ), Franklin Lakes (NJ), and Suffern (NY). It was a pleasure to visit these missile sites and to care for these magnificent German Shepherd guard dogs.

The most vivid memory of my days working on guard dogs involved a powerful male German Shepherd named “Rocky” who’d developed a habit of licking his left front paw. The habit became destructive, as he would lick his paw until it was bleeding and raw. I would bandage the leg and it would heal, but Rocky would start licking it again once the bandage was removed, or after he chewed off the bandage.

I finally removed him from the missile site and hospitalized Rocky to give him constant attention. I eventually put a cast on his leg to keep him from getting at his paw. He was a very friendly, lovable dog and all military personnel lavished attention and affection on him.

One morning we came to work to find that Rocky had chewed off the cast and eaten his paw. His paw was gone. We all had become attached to Rocky and were sickened by the sight of his self-mutilation. I euthanized Rocky and reported his loss to the US Army. Later I talked to other veterinarians who had seen such self-mutilation in dogs in their practices.

Years later, I put human interferon in the drinking water of parrots, cockatoos, and other exotic birds living in a large outdoor enclosure. The purpose of the added human interferon was to offer some protection against bird flu.

Much to our surprise, the birds stopped feather picking, a classic example of obsessive-compulsive disorder. A colleague, John Chamberlain of Cocky Smart (yes, that’s the real name) in Perth, Australia, also reported cessation of feather picking in his cockatoos given low-dose oral bovine interferon.

This book contains many examples of oral interferon being safe and efficacious in helping manage many diseases in mammals. Our example in birds is not unique in that publications from China, Pakistan, and the United States report that low-dose oral chicken interferon is safe and efficacious in helping manage viral diseases in poultry.

Looking back, I wonder if low-dose human interferon might have saved Rocky’s paw.

Feather picking is an animal model for a human disease called trichotillomania, characterized in its worst form by the removal of all body hair including eyebrows and eyelashes. I have not yet had a chance to offer low-dose human or bovine interferon to anyone with trichotillomania, but I believe it would be an interesting and safe experiment to try.

At that time, most of the German Shepherds in the US Army were adopted. I examined prospective dogs and radiographed their hips to rule out hip dysplasia in dogs from the metropolitan New Jersey-New York area. People often bought a cute little puppy but lost interest and g...