1. Virginia Livingston was an American physician and cancer researcher who advocated the unsupported theory that a specific species of bacteria she named Progenitor cryptocides was the primary cause of cancer in humans.
25 Facts About Virginia Livingston
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Virginia Livingston was born Virginia Wuerthele in Meadville, Pennsylvania in 1906.
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Virginia Livingston then attended New York University, Bellevue Medical College and in 1936, received her degree in medicine.
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Virginia Livingston was one of four women in her graduating class.
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Shortly after graduation, Virginia Livingston became the first female resident physician at a New York hospital where she was assigned to treat prostitutes infected with venereal diseases.
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In 1946, Virginia Livingston published a paper in which she stated she had established that a bacterium was a causative agent in scleroderma.
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In 1949, Virginia Livingston was named chief of the Rutgers-Presbyterian Hospital Laboratory for Proliferative Diseases in New Jersey where she continued her cancer research.
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Virginia Livingston claimed that when RSV cultures were passed through special filters designed to hold back all but the smallest virus particles, she was able to grow bacteria; this was considered a controversial claim since bacteria are considerably larger than viruses and should not exist in filtered RSV serum.
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Scientists have since rejected Virginia Livingston's findings, arguing there is no evidence supporting her claim.
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In 1956, Virginia Livingston published a paper suggesting a causative bacterium in Wilson's disease.
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Virginia Livingston published a paper describing the presence of a substance identified as Actinomycin-D which she said could damage chromosomes and promote cancer.
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Virginia Livingston prescribed antibiotics after cross testing them with patients' cultures to see which had the most antibacterial activity.
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Virginia Livingston recommended that patients not consume poultry products based on her earlier research.
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In 1970, Virginia Livingston officially named her cancer organism Progenitor cryptocides, and presented her findings to the New York Academy of Sciences.
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Virginia Livingston described Progenitor as an intermittently acid-fast mycobacterium that displayed highly variable growth cycles.
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In 1974, Virginia Livingston published a paper which described her isolation of human chorionic gonadotropin from cancer bacteria.
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Virginia Livingston theorized that hCG is both a component of human cancer, but innately involved in embryonic growth and fetal survival.
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Virginia Livingston wrote that hCG is saturated in the placenta, and blocks the mothers' antibodies from attacking the fetus, partly made of foreign DNA.
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Virginia Livingston believed that after Progenitor hybridizes with cancer cells, it imparts an ability for them to produce hCG in a manner similar to that of the developing fetus.
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Virginia Livingston stipulated that vaccines which target hCG-producing bacteria could halt the progression of cancer.
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Researchers confirmed that bacteria provided by Virginia Livingston produced hCG, but several other studies demonstrated that numerous bacteria in both cancer patients and healthy individuals produced the substance.
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Some evidence supports P cryptocides is the result of a mistaken identification of a Staphylococcus strain of bacteria and later studies of the samples provided by Livingston proved to be Staphylococcus epidermidis and Streptococcus faecalis.
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Since Virginia Livingston hadn't stocked earlier cultures of her alleged microbe, it is not possible to decipher precisely what those cultures contained.
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The study's lead investigator, Barrie Cassileth, acknowledged that "the University of Pennsylvania patients had a significantly better quality of life at all times, including enrollment" and that, quality of life "was different at base line", with Virginia Livingston's patients rated worse.
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Shortly after speaking before an Office of Technology Assessment hearing on alternative cancer therapies and attending her 60th reunion at Vassar College in 1990, Virginia Livingston accompanied her daughter Julie Anne Wagner on a European trip.