The Beard Centenary

June 21, 2002, was the centenary of The Lancet's publication of "Embryological Aspects and Etiology of Carcinoma" by the Scottish embryologist John Beard (1858-1924) (1). This paper, and half a dozen that followed, presented a novel theory and treatment of cancer. While Beard's work has long been forgotten by mainstream researchers, it continues to influence the field of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

Little is known about Beard's personal life. His initial research was on the embryonic development of parasitic worms and fishes, but he always maintained a larger vision of "the blossoming-forth of life itself…the phenomena which culminate in the appearance of new living beings" (2). In 1885, he became Berkeley Fellow of Owens College, Manchester, and in the late 1880s he studied at the Anatomical Institute of the University of Freiburg, writing his dissertation on the life history and development of a fascinating class of worms called the Myzostomida (3).

From 1889, he worked for the Scottish Fishery Board and the Marine Station in Dunbar. In 1896 he returned to academia, becoming Lecturer in Comparative Embryology and Vertebrate Zoology at the University of Edinburgh, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Beard's meticulous work was much appreciated in its day. Along with the Nobel laureate Elie Metchnikoff, Beard was cited by the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) as one of the five world experts on Myzostomida. A high point of his career came when the great physician Sir William Osler (1849-1919) referred to Beard’s "patiently worked-out story of the morphological continuity of the germ-plasm" as "one of the fairy-tales of science" (4).

The Trophoblastic Connection

Beard’s interest in cancer began during a research expedition in May-June 1888 to Black Lake in northern New York. Strange to say, the finding of a few stray cells in the development of an American lake-fish led ultimately to certain insights on sexual and asexual generation in animals and then to cancer. After 14 years of investigating such phenomena, he published his conclusion that cancer was identical to the trophoblast.

What Is the Trophoblast?

The trophoblast is a key phase in the development of mammals. A germ cell’s first differentiation is into a blastocyst with two cell subtypes, the inner cell mass, which becomes the embryonic disc, and an outer layer of trophoblastic cells. The purpose of the trophoblast is to enable the embryo to burrow into the womb. To do so, its cells must be invasive, corrosive and metastatic, which, as Beard noted, are the key characteristics of cancer as well. Trophoblasts, if unrestrained, can turn into choriocarcinoma, which is among the most malignant of cancers. What normally keeps the trophoblast from doing so, said Beard, is the presence of pancreatic enzymes of both the embryo and the mother.

Once the organism is born, pancreatic enzymes, in addition to their normal digestive function, provide an endogenous cancer surveillance system. Beard claimed that cancer arose from germ cells that had strayed into other tissues during their migration to the gonads and then become trophoblastic. Cancer, Beard claimed, was "a natural phenomenon, not a disease" (5). It became a disease when this surveillance system failed, through a deficiency of pancreatic enzymes.

In February 1905, Beard theorized that "the secretion of that important digestive gland, the pancreas," could be employed as a cancer treatment. The first evidence that injections of the pancreatic proteolytic enzyme trypsin did indeed kill cancer cells was published within the following year (6).

TIn 1911, Beard published The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer and Its Scientific Basis. This generated considerable attention. The Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) noted:

"Then we have Beard's 'germ-cell' hypothesis, in which he holds that many of the germ-cells in the growing embryo fail to reach their proper position--the generative areas--and settle down and become quiescent in some somatic tissue of the embryo. They may at some later date become active in some way, and so give rise to a cellular proliferation that may imitate the structure in which they grow, so giving rise to new growths."

Beard based his claims not just on theory but on several cases of apparent remission that followed treatment with enzymes. In March 1909, his friend, Captain F. W. Lambelle, MD, then at the Military Hospital in York, treated an ex-drummer of the West Yorkshire Regiment who had a metastatic sarcoma of the left upper jaw. Lambelle gave the man 120 injections of pancreatic enzymes. By the following year, the ex-drummer had completely sloughed off the cancer and remained cancer-free for at least two years. Another case of breast cancer was also successfully treated.

However, other physicians were unable to consistently reproduce this work. There were "countless failures," as Beard himself admitted. He believed, with some justice, that commercially available enzymes were of variable quality, and that inadequate doses had often been administered to patients. Due to the lack of reproducible results, interest in his ideas fell away. He died in 1924, a disappointed man. A lifelong bachelor, he left no progeny nor any personal information beyond what can be gleaned from his scientific writings.

NEXT WEEK:   I will discuss the connection of Beard’s theories to the Laetrile controversy.

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Beard J. Embryological aspects and etiology of carcinoma. Lancet 1902;1:1758.

2. Beard J. The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer. London: Chatto and Windus, 1911, p. 49.

3. Beard J. On the life-history and development of the genus Myzostoma (F.S. Leuckart). Leipzig: William Engelmann, 1884.

4. Osler W. Science and Immortality. London: Archibald Constable, 1904, p. 58.

5. Beard J. Enzyme Treatment of Cancer, p. 40.

6. Beard J. The action of 'trypsin' upon living cells of the Jensen sarcoma. Brit Med J 1906;1:140-141.