For some twenty or so years I have been interested in the idea that bacteria and other non-virus microorganisms are the cause of most, if not all, cancer in humans. It is interesting how I became involved in researching this idea. Some twenty years ago two of my sister Ann and Lynn died from colon cancer. Since then, the remaining members of my family have been checked for this horrific disease. Just after my sisters died I was looking through my collection of Common Place Books (CPBs) when something became obvious. A CPB by the way is just a notebook in which one haphazardly writes down anything of interest. It is not a diary and is certainly not organized in any way by an index. Common Place books were commonly used by thinkers during the Victorian age, but because of with computers and our current fixation with organization, few scientists now keep them. The main point about CPBs is that you write down points of interest and then forget about them. You must however, but periodically look through the books to remind yourself of what had previously interested you. In this was you allow chance or serendipity to intervene in your work. When I looked through these CPBs after my sister’s death I noticed the large number of references to bacteria causing cancer with I had collected, but which as yet had not induced me to start a research project on the subject. So the death of my sister by chance led me to the so-called “Cancer Gem” hypothesis.

A highly pleomorphic bacteria isolated, by me, from a canine breast tumour. Amazingly, this is a single organism, although it looks like a fungus and bacterium possessing a variety of morphologies. The historical “cancer germ” was also said to be pleomorphic.

This “cancer germ “ theory has a long history and is re-discovered by nearly every generation of microbiologists, but as yet has not been taken seriously by the cancer research establishment. My efforts to research this theory has been hindered over the years my inability to acquire human cancer, or get cancer experts with access to tumours to show any interest in the idea. I did get a friend of mine who was veterinary surgeon to supply me with dog tumours for a while, but he soon became worried that this was somehow unethical and my practical work has to stop. The only way I could contribute to this idea has been to write reviews and letter to the major national newspapers pointing out that the Establishment is on the whole not taking this idea seriously. I remain confident that most human cancers will be shown to involve bacteria and other non-virus microorganisms.