History

We were founded in 1977 by a number of physicians and a young researcher who were concerned that virtually no funds were going into the important field of cancer immunology, and no charity was educating the public and the scientific community about this important field.

Our first office consisted of a card table in the corner of a Shaklee office in La Sierra, with the space freely donated by our first secretary, Vivian Smith. Six months later we had moved to a tiny, 15 foot square office in downtown Riverside, where the rent was around $75 a month. We later moved down the street to a slightly larger office, which being on the street level, served as a magnet to people passing by who wanted to borrow books and tapes on the subject of cancer. Much free material was distributed during those two projects, entirely by faith, since we had an annual income of about $15,000 in those days. We published our first book, An inward Stillness, and An Inward Healing, and distributed more than 10,000 copies for FREE over the next two years. We were given funds by Mary and Ed Currican , of Los Angeles, in the amount of $40,000 as I recall, to publish the book and to start out first research project. This project was at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Chicago. The researcher was Dr. Otto Lobstein, and the substance studied was LYSOZYME, a discovery of Sir Alexander Fleming, and the discoverer of Penicillin. $23,000 was sent to Dr. Lobstein to start the project.
We were receiving many phone calls and some letters, in those early days, asking us for a wide variety of things, including references to physicians and clinics, calls for help for all kinds, and request for materials on various kinds of cancer. With extremely limited funds, we did the best that we could do, and little by little the Federation continued to attract members and people who could help to promote our name and reputation. Eric Estrada, the TV star, was the first celebrity to come to our aid, allowing us to use his name to promote interest in this work. Gloria Swanson, the film star, became a life member in 1979, and blessed this work by allowing us to use her name to educate the public. She also taped a cassette for us, which we distributed, free, by the thousands.
Other important people who lent their names and reputations to this work over the years have been the Ink Spots; various members of the Welk program, including Joanne Castle and Betty Cox Johnson. Also, the famed movie director, Henry Koster, became a life member around 1989. Robert Shayne, who played the inspector on the old Superman TV show, did the same thing.
By 1984, we were in better headquarters in the city if La Sierra, where, for the first time, we began to fund a number of researchers and our scholarship list began to noticeably increase. Such institutions as UC Riverside; UC Santa Barbara; Loyolla University; Hektoen Research Institute, and many other started to get sums of either $1000 or $500 a month from us, on 10-year agreements. The same holds true for the scholarship program at high schools and colleges.
Our attempts to educate the public remained an important part of this work, as it had from the very beginning. We started to publish a rather shabby looking newsletter the first year. Twenty- five years ago we came out with our first little magazine, admittedly very amateurish and poorly put together. Little by little the magazine has improved in quality and scientific importance. Today the magazine, loaded with important articles, is sent to several thousand people and institutions, such as hospitals, schools and libraries, through the U.S. and Canada. Subscription to the magazine nowhere pays for the costs of its production. We feel this is a valuable educational tool, not only for the organization, but also more importantly for the public and professionals.
We have given away hundreds of free educational tapes on a variety of subjects, as well as thousands of copies of books.
We printed various educational brochures by the tens of thousands, and these were all provided free to the public. For instance, we printed a scientific treatise by one of our researchers, Dr. Aurelia Koros and we have distributed more than 10,000 copies of this booklet. We still receive requests for it. Our booklet on breast cancer has been very popular in hospitals.
In 1980 we published a small book by Nancy Purcel, dealing with the psychology and emotional aspects of cancer. Our initial printing was 5,000 and we gave all of those away. We have reprinted more than 15000 copies free.
The Federation has maintained an extensive audio and visual tape program over the years. Among the tapes, produced by the thousands for FREE distribution all over the nation have been the following: audio- Leslie Ralston; Dr. Virginia Livingston; Nancy Purcell; Dr. Richard Luther; Dr. Owen Wheeler; and many more. TV Tapes include a series by Dr. Virginia Livingston. We also paid for a professional tape of a benefit concert of the Cancer Federation, which featured the Ink Spots and others, and which we used in FREE distribution in order to familiarize people with this work and with the subject of cancer in general. We distributed hundreds of FREE tapes of a talk on health subjects by the film personality, Gloria Swanson, one of our many celebrity life members.
Over the years the Cancer Federation has put on dozen conferences free to the pubic. Some if these meetings have been in conjunction with institutions that receive grants from us, such as San Jose State University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Since the list of research locations and scholarships of the Federation is published elsewhere, we shall not enumerate them here, except to say that we have grown from a one project organization in 1977 to one that now has projects in many states.
The Cancer Federation counsels hundreds of people a year, on such subjects as panic stricken people who have just been diagnosed with cancer, to people who have had every kind of therapy and are looking for other options.
The Cancer Federation’s history shows remarkable endurance & faithful adherence to our mission statement.