Dr. Yossi Brenner, surrounded by hyperthermia equipment used in his New Hope Clinic

Oncology has to be one of the most difficult specialties in medicine to practice. Dealing with cancer and cancer patients on a daily basis isn't easy. Dr. Yossi Brenner is an oncologist. He's been practicing his specialty for more than 35 years. Since 1982 he's been the head of the oncology unit at Wolfson Hospital in Holon, and in his capacity he's seen the worst that cancer has to offer to mankind and, ironically, was a cancer victim himself.

Never completely happy with the treatment for cancer victims that basically consists of chemotherapy and radiation with their many side effects despite all the advances that have been made, Dr. Brenner had a great desire to help more effectively those who had been diagnosed with the disease.

Some 15 years ago, after much research and study Dr. Brenner decided to offer an alternative cancer treatment as a supplement to what he was doing at his hospital. While continuing to work at Wolfson Hospital, he has opened a different kind of clinic to fight cancer. The name for his clinic reflects what it does and what it means to those who come to the private facility for treatment. It gives new hope and his New Hope Clinic has given many a new lease on life.

The approach used in his clinic is called hyperthermia. It's a technique that was developed in Germany and is being used regularly in leading hospitals throughout Germany, Belgium and Holland. Hyperthermia applies heat to the infected areas, with a temperature above 41.5 degrees C which is a killing temperature for cancer cells and shrinks or destroys the tumors that have developed. It is also a noninvasive approach to killing cancer cells. He also practices complementary medicine along with the hyperthermia.  This involves the use of alternative approaches to medicine that include vitamin therapy as well as many other healing and pain relieving techniques.

Hyperthermia as a means of fighting cancer was discovered by oncologists more than twenty years ago in Germany when cancer patients who had developed high fever from infections caused by pneumonia, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases had shown shrinkage of their tumors. It was thought that if a way could be developed to apply heat artificially to the body it might be a tremendous tool to fight cancer. The beauty of hyperthermia is that although it is effective in killing cancer cells it doesn't affect the normal cells around it and is completely nonintrusive.

I asked Dr. Brenner why he is the only practitioner in Israel using hyperthermia. He doesn't have a good answer, but says that he has delved deeply into the literature. Many surgeons, he said, use it in an evasive approach when opening a woman who may have ovarian cancer that has spread to her stomach and will wash out the area using very hot water before closing up the body. This has the same effect as hyperthermia but is quite invasive.

He does believe that in the very near future many, if not most Israeli hospitals, will make the investment in hyperthermia equipment and use it along with existing chemo and radiation approaches. He also mentioned a letter that has been circulated among oncologists from the Israel Cancer Society which suggests that hyperthermia should be viewed as another approach to cancer treatment. 

I read an article published by the American Cancer Society that said hyperthermia along with chemotherapy is one of the best approaches to cancer treatment. Dr. Brenner agrees, but says he doesn't have that option in his private practice. Most patients come to him as a last hope after having tried everything else. At least 90% of all his patients are in Stage IV, the last stage of cancer.

He told me a story: recently two sisters came into his clinic to talk to him about their mother who had been diagnosed with colon cancer and had a huge tumor in the upper portion of her colon. She had been through a series of chemotherapy treatments and then radiation. Nothing had helped and the hospital had told her to make herself as comfortable as possible and await death. He asked why the mother hadn't come with the two daughters for the consultation and was told that she was unable to walk and was completely bedridden except for going to the bathroom. He told the sisters that he didn't think he could help their mother. They insisted that he try since they were told it was completely noninvasive.

The woman was brought to Dr. Brenner's clinic on a stretcher. After six weeks she was able to walk and after three months they did a CAT scan and found the tumor had shrunk by 75%.

According to Dr. Brenner, he has a 35% to 50% success rate using just hyperthermia. I asked him to define what he meant by success and he said it meant that he was able to reduce the pain, shrink the cancer or even stabilize the disease and allow the individual to live a better quality of life with a longer life expectancy. In some cases he has even witnessed a complete cure.  

There are more than 20,000 articles in the professional literature recommending hyperthermia as a treatment against cancer. He also showed me two huge text books that are the bibles of oncologists around the world in which there were chapters on the use of hyperthermia as an excellent means of treating cancers.

The success rate in European hospitals using hyperthermia alone is also about 50%, says Dr. Brenner. The FDA in the US hasn't yet approved hyperthermia but at the University of Texas Medical School, Dr. Joan Bull, the head of oncology, has been doing research using the approach and it may soon be recognized and acquire FDA approval.

As to why hyperthermia hasn't acquired greater use in Israel, Dr. Brenner says that unfortunately there are no big drug companies backing the approach. Also, the drug firms aren't interested in promoting something that won't bring in the millions of dollars they acquire from selling drugs and medications.

Posted on the walls of Dr. Brenner's clinic are a variety of diplomas and certificates he has acquired in Chinese medicine, Reiki and other alternative complimentary approaches to medicine and cancer treatment. This is unusual for a medical doctor with a degree in oncology from the Sloan-Kettering Medical Memorial Cancer Center in NYC and a degree in radiology from Providence, R.I.

I asked Dr. Brenner if he had had any difficulties with the Israel Medical Association and his answer was that as a medical doctor his license says he should try to help the patient and avoid causing any harm. Practicing medicine using the approaches he knows have worked, he feels confident that he is meeting his task as a physician. When he originally started using hyperthermia he tried to convince his colleagues to also adopt this means of treatment. Some of them said unkind things about him. However, he had even more opposition when he instituted complementary medicine at his clinic and yet today there are complementary medical branches in the oncology units in several hospitals, including Beilinson, Tel Hashomer, Ichilov and Hadassah Ein Kerem. In the small world of his clinic, Dr. Brenner feels he has helped people who had no hope and has prolonged life and enabled a better quality of life for those who were suffering.

The textbook he wrote in Hebrew that is also being translated into English which is called "Stop the Cancer". It details alternative approaches to cancer treatment other than chemotherapy and radiation treatment and discusses his own experience as a cancer patient and oncologist.