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Cancer Injection Experiment

From 1954 to 1963, Southam conducted clinical research in which human subjects were injected with cancer cells in order to study their immune responses. Between 1954-1956 at Memorial Hospital in New York, his team injected 14 advanced incurable cancer patients with various types of cancer cells, and measured the rate of growth or regression of the tumors. From 1956 to 1958, Southam experimented on healthy prisoners at the Ohio State Penitentiary. 150 men had volunteered to participate in the medical experiment, aware that they were to be injected with live cancer cells. The cells were injected in their forearms or anterior thighs and were left to grow for 1-4 weeks before biopsies were conducted. Some of the prisoners participated in this experiment up to three times. In 1963 at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital (JCDH) in Brooklyn, NY, they selected 19 patients with non-cancer related debilitating diseases that involved cachexia and were not associated with abnormal immune responses. Patient conditions included Multiple Sclerosis Parkinson’s syndrome and Jakob-Creutzfeldt syndrome among others. Patients were injected subcutaneously with cancer cells, and growth of the nodules was measured every 2-4 days.

The studies conducted at Memorial Hospital and at Ohio State Penitentiary concluded that that there was a significant reduction in immune response in advanced cancer patients relative to healthy Individuals injected with cancer cells. However, some doubt remained whether this reduction in immune response was due to the condition of cancer itself or whether it was due to some other condition associated with cachexia in debilitating diseases. The study at the JCDH concluded that non-cancer patients with cachexia in debilitating diseases did not have a reduced immune response relative to healthy individuals.