In Memory of Dr. Josef Issels

Dr. Josef Issels died on 11 February 1998, a few weeks after his 90th birthday, in California, of pneumonia. In Issels, the medical profession has lost both a brilliant and exemplary figure, one who -- like so many other protagonists of new healing methods -- to this day has not received the respect and recognition he deserves.

Issels was one the very first to maintain that cancer was, first and foremost, in all its stages a disease of the entire organism, arising from the combined effects of manifold endogenous and exogenous mentally and physically harmful factors, and that any improvement of the unsatisfactory curative success rate can only come from eliminating these impediments to therapy, restoration of metabolic order and (only then) optimum activation of the body's own defensive and cellular repair functions. However, if these preconditions are not met, as is the usual case in conventional oncological practice, then even the technically most refined methods of tumor removal or destruction will perforce continue to yield unsatisfactory results. As Issels was able to demonstrate hundreds of times over, only a complementary, adjuvant and supportive holistic therapy is able to increase the number of partial and total remissions -- and, moreover, to quell the healthy person's fear of cancer

The evolution of Dr. Issels' medical career was early on characterized by the fight against cancer. Fortuitous circumstances enabled him to open up the Ringberg Clinic in Rottach-Egern on the Tegernsee in 1951, in which Dr. Issels could realize his inspired program of complex immunological treatment of cancer patients and at-risk individuals in the above-named sense. As might be expected from the urgent need for an institution of this sort, an ever-growing avalanche of tumor patients, of both sexes, all ages and varying degrees of severity, stormed the institution from the beginning. Of these, the majority had been sent home to die, left alone, often after years of unsuccessful conventional clinical treatment, as "incurable". For these people, the Ringberg Clinic represented a refuge and their last hope of salvation from a hopeless situation.

The clinic and staff had to be expanded, X-ray equipment and dental facilities were added, the therapy plan was continuously improved as experience was gained. Treatment success among the most serious cases, at first sporadic, slowly improved. In his 1953 paper "Foundations and Guidelines of Internal Cancer Therapy", as well as in increasingly frequent lectures and essays in professional and lay publications, Dr. Issels informed the public and the medical profession of the need for the therapy initiated by him, how to perform it and what the chances of success were. With this he aimed for and achieved a considerable improvement and stabilization of the results attainable by surgical, radiological and chemotherapeutical means, without in any way belittling these methods, which he most definitely made use of from time to time.

Dr. Issels' therapeutic concept was not the aimless polypharmacy that many biased critics sometimes claimed it was, but rather a well-thought-out combination of both specific and nonspecific remedies and methods which had until then never been used against cancer in this form and systematology. The patients' reactions were carefully noted and entered into the properly-kept temperature charts and medical records. The patient remained in contact with the clinic even after termination or interruption of inpatient treatment, by continuing from time to time to fill in and submit, as instructed, temperature charts and therapy records, and then receiving in return new information, either for self-treatment or treatment from the family doctor.

Dr. Issels' 1953 paper was followed in 1959 by an objective report from the Dutch oncologist Prof. Audier on the course of illness of 252 patients with clinically-proven and documented malignomas who had come to the clinic after having been declared "incurable". Under Dr. Issels' combination therapy, 42 of these (i.e. 16.6%) survived symptom-free for the 5-year-term defined by orthodox medicine as constituting "total remission".

Of Dr. Issels' numerous publications -- the author of this obituary has a compilation of these -- his two main works should be emphasized: "More Cancer Cures" (1972) and "My Struggle against Cancer" (1981).

Of course, criticism from colleagues was not lacking, considering the heretofore unprecedented healing success being attained by these new methods. This culminated in the "Trial of the Century", fabricated out of malice, denunciation and false accusations, engineered by the Bavarian Medical Council under the leadership of its then-president Severing, which made its way through the court system for 4 years and led to the temporary closing of the clinic. In 1964, Dr. Issels was acquitted of all charges and fully exonerated. In this, an expert opinion from Prof. Zabel, then also well known for his holistic orientation, played a decisive role. It was a victory for progress over narrow-minded intolerant dogmatism.

Anyone fortunate enough to experience, as a co-worker, Dr. Issels' exemplary discipline, medical insight, scientific meticulousness, therapeutic consistency, psychological skills and infectious optimism, even in critical situations, will never forget these humanly and professionally formative impressions.

Exhausted by the struggle against orthodox medicine's lack of understanding and the windmills of dogma, but not giving up, Dr. Issels withdrew, in the mid-eighties, to Florida, whose climate more agreed with him healthwise. His orphaned clinic fell into the hands of speculators who thought they might be able to turn a handsome profit by trading on the Issels name, but succeeded instead only in driving the clinic to an inglorious end.

Dr. Issels himself did not remain idle in Florida, and gathered about himself a new circle of medical colleagues. A few years ago, he moved to California, where, until shortly before his death, he worked in an advisory capacity on his therapeutic plan at the Gerson Cancer Clinic in Tijuana. The therapy records of this hospital are now to be included in a prospective study of alternative treatment methods undertaken by the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC. Dr. Issels also founded and managed a foundation dedicated to research, promotion and dissemination of knowledge about immunological cancer therapy.

We can only adequately thank and posthumously honor this outstanding physician and researcher by recognizing specific multifactorial cancer therapy as his permanent contribution, and by applying it in its current form to bring relief to thousands of ailing and at-risk people, true to the challenge and promise bequeathed to us by Dr. Issels. May he rest in peace.

Dr. Karl Windstosser, Germany

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