In 1987 the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a late research arm of Congress, set to work on a report about cancer treatments that lie outside standard care. The OTA mulled over a number of terms for these treatments, none of which satisfied proponents and critics of non-standard approaches.

When the OTA published this report in 1990, under the title Unconventional Cancer Treatments, the introduction recalled efforts to come up with a single descriptor for the wide variety of therapeutic approaches surveyed.

“Unconventional’ is just one of the many terms, all imperfect descriptors, that were considered,” the Introduction said. It went on: “Other terms used by proponents to describe all or some of these treatments include: alternative, complementary, non-toxic, holistic, natural, noninvasive. Those used by the sharpest of critics include: unproven, questionable, dubious, quackery, and fraudulent.”

Sensitized by the bitter protests from proponents and critics over terms, the OTA noted: “We intend no implicit message in the use of the word ‘unconventional’; it was chosen with the hope that debate engendered by this report could center not on that word, but on the issues themselves.”

Like size, terminology matters at times–instrumentally. The terms in common use for therapeutic approaches developing beyond the domains of established institutions have long hampered unbiased evaluation and acceptance of outlier treatment. For instance:

Mainstream grants for research hardly ever go to “unorthodox” clinicians. Medical centers that have recently added integrative programs virtually exclude “alternative” therapy. Insurers routinely turn thumbs down on reimbursement for “unproven” treatment. The FDA continues to require developers of pharmaceuticals, fitting any of the terms just cited, to jump through more than the normal number of evidentiary hoops for marketing approval. Most state boards that discipline physicians for unprofessional conduct reflexively grab a noose when “unconventional” doctors fall into their hands. The media, covering doctors charged with departing from community practice (i.e., venturing beyond standard care), seldom bother to distinguish “bad” deviants (real quacks) from the “good” (whose treatments show effectiveness); they indiscriminately lump the latter under one of the above terms.

Decades from today, medical historians may view publication of the OTA report as a watershed event, not only for non-standard cancer therapy but for all forms of health care that depart from the entrenched approaches.

Government attacks against a broad range of “unconventional” therapies marked the 1980’s. Speaking solely about cancer, in the mid-80’s the Bahamian government, the FDA, and the state medical board in New York, the Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC), acted respectively against three prominent “unconventional” therapists: Lawrence Burton, PhD; Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD; and Emanuel Revici, MD.

All three therapists had pioneered treatments the mainstream oncology community regarded as unproven, despite publications of their scientific findings in peer-reviewed journals and extraordinary numbers of patients reporting improvement. Burton had developed a therapy for tumors utilizing immunological factors from blood. Burzynski had extracted peptides from urine, calling them “antineoplastons,” which produce beneficial results in human patients with negligible toxicity. Revici had discovered lipidic substances active against cancer generally, among them omega 3 fatty acids derived from fish oil and selenium compounds that can be given in high doses with little toxicity. Crucially, independent confirmation of the efficacy of the treatments originated by all three “unconventional” therapists had begun to filter into the research literature.

Robert G. Houston offers a reliable account of the early course of these actions in Repression and Reform in the Evaluation of Alternative Cancer Therapies, a monograph in support of non-standard treatment, published in 1987 and updated in 1989. Houston is a research specialist whose articles and letters on alternative medicine have appeared in leading journals and the popular press over the past 35 years.

Because the details he presents are too numerous for this column, I’ll summarize the actions and outcomes here. As liaison for Revici and his patients during their OTA project, an official reviewer of its report, the lay authority on Revici’s life and medical breakthroughs, and a privileged observer of pivotal developments in alternative and mainstream medicine from 1984 to the present, I’m well acquainted with the complete record of attacks on “unconventional” oncologists.

The OPMC initiated proceedings to revoke Dr. Revici’s medical license in January 1984, charging him in three cases with fraud, gross negligence, and gross incompetence (among other charges). The final determination in this proceeding, in July 1988, revoked his license but stayed the penalty, placing him on probation for 5 years.