© THOM GRAVES
At the turn of the 20th century, physicians observed that some cancer patients who contracted an infectious viral disease saw their tumors spontaneously regress. A particularly compelling case report, published in 1904 by the American pathologist and clinician George Dock, told the story of a female leukemia patient he had treated some years earlier. Though she had failed to respond to conventional therapies, her white blood cell counts dropped sharply, and her leukemia went into remission after she contracted influenza in February 1897. Sadly, within a year her counts climbed back to preinfection levels, and she ultimately succumbed to her disease.1 But her case revealed a link between cancer regression, infection, and the body’s antiviral response.
Today, researchers have made great progress in understanding how ...
