Jewish Invention Myths: Chemotherapy Revisited

Recently I had a debate with a member of Israel’s Hasbara initiative on X (formerly Twitter) where they objected to my argument that the nineteenth century jewish doctor Paul Ehrlich – who lived and worked in Germany - was not the father of chemotherapy. (1)

I argued instead that the man responsible for inventing chemotherapy was the Anglo-American doctor George Clowes who was the first to apply the idea of ‘chemotherapy’ in 1904.

As the ‘American Association for Cancer Research’ observes in their article on Clowes that:

‘Dr. Clowes was born in Ipswich, England, graduated from the Royal College of Science in London in 1896, and earned his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Göttingen, Germany, in 1899. After six months of postgraduate work at the Sorbonne, he moved in 1901 to the New York State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases. There he established a strain of tumors for testing chemotherapies. He also observed spontaneous regression of tumors in rats, which led him to search for an antigen to confer immunity against cancer. He is credited with establishing the viability of chemotherapy in his early studies in 1904.’ (2)

So, then Clowes established the viability of chemotherapy in 1904 – as well as being instrumental in the mass production of insulin to treat diabetes in 1923 – (3) with Ehrlich by contrast only discovering arsphenamine in 1909 not 1907 as often claimed (although his priority for this was heavily contested by his non-jewish assistant Paul Uhlenhuth who claimed priority for himself) to treat syphilis. (4)

Now it is true that Ehrlich coined the term ‘chemotherapy’ before 1900, but this is insufficient since Ehrlich hadn’t proved the concept himself till five years after Clowes had done so in 1904.

The ‘National Cancer Institute’ explains as much when they write that:

‘Dr. Ehrlich coined the term “chemotherapy” before 1900 and advocated the use of animal models to study the effects of drugs on diseases. Among his achievements were the synthesis and testing of hundreds of organic arsenical compounds for the treatment of syphilis, resulting in the discovery of arsphenamine (salvarsan, compound #606), the first synthetic chemical shown to be an effective treatment for a human parasitic disease.

At the same time, the demonstration that a cure for a human disease could be found using a rodent model inspired Dr. Clowes, working at Roswell Park Memorial Institute, to develop rodent models that could carry transplanted rodent tumors. He is credited with initiating the first cancer chemotherapy program in the United States.’ (5)

In essence then we are told that while Ehrlich coined the term; it was Clowes who first successfully applied five years before Ehrlich.

Vincent DeVita Jr. and Edward Chu also write how:

‘In the early 1900s, the famous German chemist Paul Ehrlich set about developing drugs to treat infectious diseases. He was the one who coined the term “chemotherapy” and defined it as the use of chemicals to treat disease.’ (6)

They don’t mention Clowes, but they also quite explicitly state that Ehrlich ‘coined the term’ not that he actually ‘invented chemotherapy’ as the two are quite different assertions.

The principal argument made by my Hasbara interlocutor was to claim that Ehrlich’s research pre-dated Clowes’ work and he specifically cited his work on arsphenamine as a cure for syphilis in 1907 (which was wrong and actually occurred in 1909 as Ehrlich discontinued his research on another compound in 1907 that might have actually worked had he continued to work on it).

As we’ve seen this is incorrect as Clowes’ successful use of chemotherapy dates to 1904 while Ehrlich’s possible use in the case of arsphenamine for syphilis dates to five years later in 1909 and his priority for that discovered was and is contested by Uhlenhuth’s counterclaim.

The secondary argument made by my Hasbara interlocutor surrounded my contention that Ehrlich’s work wasn’t actually chemotherapy per se anyway but rather pharmacotherapy since arsphenamine is a drug (as it was manufactured and marketed under the brand name Salvarsan) not just a chemical compound.

He argued based on the definition of chemotherapy offered by different dictionaries that because he was technically using a chemical compound – since arsphenamine is such – then Ehrlich also applied it first in 1907 (really 1909).

The problem with this of course is that chemotherapy as defined by Ehlich as meaning the use of any chemicals to treat disease as well as similarly by dictionaries as such as the Oxford English Dictionary:

‘The treatment of disease by the use of chemical substances, especially the treatment of cancer by cytotoxic and other drugs.’

The Cambridge Dictionary:

‘The treatment of diseases using chemicals.’

And in Merriam Webster:

‘The therapeutic use of chemical agents to treat disease.

Especially: the administration of one or more cytotoxic drugs to destroy or inhibit the growth and division of malignant cells in the treatment of cancer.’

This is so broad that it refers to the use of any chemical to treat disease which then per force must mean that chemotherapy predates Ehrlich by millennia since the Sumerians were doing this in Mesopotamia in 4,000 B.C. (7) and thus my Hasbara interlocutor’s argument actually contradicts itself because by applying the widest possible definition to the term chemotherapy. They have necessarily brought all of previous chemical compound and all plant-based medicine under the umbrella of chemotherapy and thus relegated Ehrlich to the role as having given a name to a long-standing medical practice and nothing more.

Thus, we can see from the foregoing discussion that Paul Ehrlich did not invent/discover chemotherapy but rather George Clowes did and further that arguing in any way that Ehrlich ‘discovered it because he named it’ renders that argument invalid because of what it necessarily brings under the umbrella of chemotherapy.

References

(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-chemotherapy

(2) https://www.aacr.org/governance/george-h-a-clowes/

(3) https://www.capenews.net/arts_and_entertainment/new-biography-chronicles-life-and-achievements-of-george-clowes/article_69a1eef5-db76-5b67-86f6-2cc1bd7a2d05.html

(4) Frank Heynick, 2002, ‘Jews and Medicine: An Epic Saga’, 1st Edition, Ktav: Hoboken, pp. 354–355

(5) https://dtp.cancer.gov/timeline/noflash/milestones/M1_earlydrugdev.htm

(6) Vincent DeVita Jr., Edward Chu, 2008, ‘A History of Cancer Chemotherapy’, Cancer Research, Vol. 68, No. 21, p. 8643

(7) Zaheer-ud-din Babar, 2019, ‘Historical Evolution of Pharmacy Practice’, pp. 191-202 in Zaheer-ud-din Babar (Ed.), 2019, ‘Encyclopaedia of Pharmacy Practice and Clinical Pharmacy’, Vol. 1, 1st Edition, Elsevier: Amsterdam