Immunoaugmentive Therapy (definition of)
Other common name(s): Immunoaugmentative therapy, or IAT, is a type of therapy that has recently been promoted as an alternative treatment for various types of cancer, like mesothelioma (including peritoneal mesothelioma and pericardial mesothelioma). For more information about IAT, patients should consult their mesothelioma doctor. According to Dr. Lawrence Burton, who developed this technique, a patient's immune system can be "trained" to attack cancer cells through injections of a protein mixture made from human blood. Dr. Burton claims that his mixture contains antitumor antibodies and "deblocking proteins" obtained from healthy donors.
IAT is not the same as immunotherapy, a line of research that uses immune cell hormones known as cytokines as well as genetically modified viruses as vectors in addition to vaccines and other mainstream methods.
About Dr. Burton
Dr. Burton, who died in 1993, was indeed a doctor - of zoology. He claimed to have developed a treatment using blood serum proteins that he had isolated using his own patented method. However, his technique has never been verified under laboratory conditions, nor have medical researchers ever found the "blood proteins" that he claimed to use. There is a clinic in the Bahamas that continues to offer this treatment
Not surprisingly, patients are told that their cancer will either stop spreading or go into remission, providing they continue to undergo the treatments - which after the patient has paid $7500 for the initial four-week treatment, costs $750 per week.
According to Burton and his successors, cancer cells begin to grow when the immune system is "out of balance." The treatment supposedly contains "antitumor antibodies," to attack the cancer, and "deblocking proteins," to remove the "blocking factor" preventing the immune system from detecting the cancer.
The Danger
Several patients who were treated with IAT in the 1980s wound up developing serious infections. This resulted in a ban on the import of IAT drugs in 1986. This seems to have been corrected; there have been no reports of such infections since that time. However, despite claims, researchers in the U.S. have been unable to duplicate the results reported by Dr. Burton. Although the treatment is apparently harmless, it has been found ineffective under strict laboratory conditions. Because the treatment is not regulated, there is always the danger of HIV or hepatitis. Cancer patients are advised not to forego standard treatments for IAT.
