A newly surfaced CIA document suggests US intelligence once reviewed research that hinted at a possible cancer treatment more than 60 years ago.
The document, produced in February 1951 and declassified in 2014, summarizes a Soviet scientific paper that examined striking similarities between parasitic worms and cancerous tumors.
The report describes how researchers believed both organisms thrived under nearly identical metabolic conditions and accumulated large reserves of glycogen, a form of stored energy.
The research also highlighted experiments showing that certain chemical compounds were capable of targeting both parasitic infections and malignant tumors.
One drug, Myracyl D, was reportedly effective against bilharzia parasites as well as cancerous growths, hinting that treatments developed for parasites might also attack tumors.
Other compounds were found to interfere with nucleic acid production, a process essential for the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.
Experiments on mice even showed that tumor tissues reacted differently to certain chemicals than normal tissues, further reinforcing the perceived biochemical overlap between parasites and cancers.
Although the document was declassified more than a decade ago, it has recently resurfaced online, fueling outrage among some Americans who say it raises troubling questions about why Cold War research hinting at possible cancer treatments sat in intelligence archives for decades.
‘The Americans knew. They read it, classified it CONFIDENTIAL, and locked it in a vault for 60 years,’ one person shared on X, including the CIA documents in the post.
Another X user said: ‘The CIA knew from 1951 that cancer was parasites.’
However, the document itself does not say cancer is caused by parasites, only that a Soviet study noted biochemical similarities between tumors and parasitic worms and observed that some compounds affected both in experiments.
Daily Mail has contacted the CIA for comment.
The CIA document was based on a 1950 article published in the Soviet scientific journal Priroda by Professor V V Alpatov, a researcher studying the biochemical behavior of endoparasites, organisms that live inside the body of a host.
American intelligence analysts translated and circulated the paper because it was considered potentially relevant to biomedical and national defense research during the early years of the Cold War.
According to the Soviet research summarized in the report, one of the most striking similarities between parasitic worms and cancer cells was their metabolism.
Parasitic worms that inhabit the human intestine rely heavily on anaerobic metabolism, meaning they generate energy without requiring large amounts of oxygen.
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