Does Mistletoe Therapy Work for Cancer?

In anthroposophic medicine mistletoe, Viscum album, is the principal remedy for cancer, given by injection alongside surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, over months and years, to restore the organism's mastery over a growth that has escaped it. The tradition's account of what it does is exact: it raises the warmth organisation, the I's own instrument in the body; it stirs the immune response; it improves appetite, sleep, and strength through treatment; and, over time, it sets the organism against the tumour's process. Rudolf Steiner gave the indication in the medical courses of 1920 and 1921 and in his work with Ita Wegman, who made the first preparation at Arlesheim; Fundamentals of Therapy, their joint written work, gives the picture of the illness.

What cancer is in this picture

The human being is fourfold: physical body; etheric body, the life body that grows and repairs; astral body, the bearer of sensation; and the I, which works as warmth and holds the whole in its human form. In a healthy organ the etheric growth forces are governed by the astral body and the I. A tumour is where growth has slipped that governance: the etheric forces build on as in a plant, forming tissue indifferent to the whole. Steiner's description is of a forming of new organ-like tissue, arising where it does not belong and at a stage of life when the I should have taken the forming in hand.

The remedy must therefore do what the I has failed to do: bring warmth and astral governance into the ungoverned growth. Fever, in this tradition, is the I's own weapon, and mistletoe is the plant that acts as the I acts.

Why mistletoe

Mistletoe stands outside the earth's order. It roots not in the ground but in a tree; it grows as a sphere, without regard to gravity or light; it flowers and ripens its berries in winter, against the year; it has kept, in Steiner's account, a form of life from an older stage of the earth's evolution, before the plant was bound to soil and season. Everything the tumour does within the body, mistletoe does within the plant world, but in balance with a living tree and within its own form, and that balance, brought into the human organism, opposes the tumour's imbalance. The plant is harvested in summer and in winter and the two saps are combined, because the two states carry opposite forces and the remedy needs both.

The preparations

Three makers produce the extracts in use, all from Steiner's indications; the choice among them belongs to the physician.

Iscador, made at Arlesheim by the Society for Cancer Research, is a lactic-fermented extract of the combined summer and winter saps. It is sold by host tree, Iscador M from apple, Iscador P from pine, Iscador Qu from oak, Iscador U from elm, and in variants carrying a trace of silver, copper, or mercury, chosen for the tumour and the person.
Helixor, made in Rosenfeld, Germany, is an unfermented aqueous extract in Helixor A (fir), Helixor M (apple), and Helixor P (pine).
Abnobaviscum, made by Abnoba in Pforzheim, is a pressed-juice extract in a wider range of host trees: fir, apple, pine, oak, ash, almond, birch, maple, and hawthorn.

The host tree is part of the remedy. The practice assigns apple mistletoe to tumours of the female organs, oak to the male organism and the digestive tract, pine to the skin and the nervous organisation, with the physician's judgement of the person as the final measure.

How it is given

The extract is injected subcutaneously, in the abdomen or thigh or near the tumour region, two to three times a week, from ampoules graded in strength from 0.01 mg upward to 20 mg of extract, Helixor to 100 mg. Treatment begins low and rises stepwise until the organism answers: a local redness of a few centimetres around the injection and a slight rise in body temperature are the wanted signs, and the dose is held there. A fever or a redness wider than a hand means the dose is too high and is lowered. Courses run for months, with pauses, and continue for years after conventional treatment ends; the anthroposophic clinics also use intravenous and intratumoral routes.

The tradition's contraindications are acute inflammatory or febrile illness, in which the injections are paused; an overactive thyroid with rapid pulse; allergy to mistletoe; and raised pressure within the skull from a brain tumour, where the higher strengths are not used. No interactions with prescribed drugs are recorded; the extracts are given through chemotherapy and radiotherapy without adjustment of either.

With conventional treatment

By its own account, anthroposophic medicine extends conventional medicine and is practised by fully trained physicians who have added the anthroposophic training; mistletoe is never offered in place of surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation where those are indicated. It is given before surgery, through chemotherapy, after radiation, and on into the years afterwards, and the tradition's measure of its work is the whole person: warmth, appetite, sleep, the strength to bear the other treatments, and the organism's hold on itself. Clinical study of mistletoe extracts exists, on survival and quality of life, and its interpretation is debated.

Western herbalism knows Viscum album as a remedy for high blood pressure; the two uses share the plant and nothing else.

Not medical advice.