Coley's toxins may still be applied by a licensed medical doctor, because in Germany there is "Therapiefreiheit" ("therapy freedom"), the legal right to apply whichever therapy a physician considers to be appropriate in the light of their medical knowledge. For example, Dr Josef Issels used several unconventional and controversial treatments, including Coley's toxins, for cancer patients in the second half of the 20th century. This kind of therapy is offered as "Fiebertherapie" (fever therapy) or better "Aktive Fiebertherapie" (active fever therapy). This term was introduced by E. Göhring in 1985. Hyperthermia therapy or thermotherapy is not the same type of treatment, although sometimes incorrectly called "fever therapy". Professional politics According to an article in the Iowa Orthopedic Journal, Coley's toxins were opposed by the medical establishment despite his reports of good results, because his reports were not believed to be credible. Hall (1997) extensively explores the issue; one of the lenses through which Hall explores it is the decades-long, complicated relationship of James Ewing and William Coley as colleagues at the same institution. Hall explains that the aspects of Coley's work that were scientifically underpowered—the anecdotal emphasis, the lack of a standardized formula for the toxins preparations, the lack of methodologically rigorous clinical trials, and (relatedly) the problem of poor replicability—led many scientists to dismiss all use of Coley's toxins as mere hogwash. Although the truth was more complex than that dismissal recognized, it is a fact that the toxins never made it to the stage of a safe and effective medication, and today their use as alternative medicine is clearly flawed for the same reason that malariotherapy as alternative medicine is flawed, given what humanity now knows about molecular biology that was not known when these older therapies were tried: Even if certain kinds of immune challenge or immunomodulation can produce desirable immunotherapeutic effects, these crude methods of inducing such challenge or modulation are not specific enough (not targeted enough), present too many harms, and do not work consistently enough to bring benefits to most patients, being dependent on idiotypic molecular factors (which were not understood at all when the therapies were first developed and which even today are still not easy for immunotherapy designers to deal with). See also Immunotherapy Cancer immunotherapy Cancer vaccine References External links Hospitals Hospital for Special Surgery, William B. Coley, Surgeon-in-Chief, 1925-1933 Companies MBVax Bioscience Inc Coley Pharmaceutical Group Scientific reviews Coley toxins,