Cancer

The draft text of a law authorizing vivisection of humans in an effort to discover a cure for cancer was unanimously approved, last week, by the board of National Sanitation at Havana, Cuba, and sent to the Cuban Congress for debate, action.

Criminals condemned to Death would be offered, under the law, a free choice between execution and inoculation with cancer. Twelve years would be the legal period of vivisection, and if, at the end of that time, the patient survived and had been cured he or she would return to society purged of guilt and perhaps honored as a hero, heroine.

While Cuba was thus preparing for direct, ruthless action, half way measures were again discussed, last week in London, by experts from 24 nations gathered for the International Cancer Conference.

Cancer Cause. Four hundred medical men listened intently to Dr. James Bumgardner Murphy, life member at Rockefeller Institute, as he described the experiments leading to his theory that cancer is caused by a ferment inside the body. The adherents of Dr. William Ewart Gye, famed propounder of the virus theory (TIME, July 27, 1925) were antagonistic; Dr. Archibald Leitch of the London Cancer Hospital, whose experiments corroborated Researcher Murphy's, approved.

Sixteen years of experimentation at the Rockefeller Institute substantiate this theory. Early in 1912 Dr. Murphy and his colleague Dr. Francis Peyton Rous produced tumors in young healthy chickens. From these tumors they made extracts; inoculated more healthy chicks; produced more tumors. Always the new tumor had all the characteristics of the tumor from which the extract was prepared. Extract from one species would grow only in the same, or occasionally in a closely related, species. This seemed scarcely the work of a microbe; much more closely did it resemble the activity of a ferment or enzyme like the bacteriophage (TIME, April 16).

Last week Researcher Murphy announced: "Dr. Rous and I began experiments in 1912. . . . But it was not until this year that I was absolutely convinced that proof was conclusive. . . .

"To me the enzyme-like--ferment-like--nature of the principle has been conclusively established. Final proof must be the production of the same substance from materials which beyond all doubt do not contain virus. And this has been accomplished."

Recent clamorous concentration on the virus theory, which is still in need of more conclusive evidence, throws the spotlight of controversy on the ferment theory. That too demands more research. Cancer controversialists agitate the Mur-phy-Rous experiments, eagerly await the forthcoming volume on the virus theory by Dr. Gye and Hatter Joseph Edwin Barnard which is now in preparation.

Cancer Cure. "Lead treatment" came in for bitter and acrimonious discussion among the international experts. Dr. William Blair Bell, leading exponent of lead (TIME, June 4, 1923) staunchly defended the treatment while admitting it was still in a crude state needing experimentation. Hotly opposing him were three London specialists who declared it not only futile but dangerous. No mincer of words, J. B. Hume of St. Batholomew's Hospital, London, vociferated that it "converted even the strongest patients into physical wrecks." America was divided on the issue, Dr. Francis Carter Wood refusing to commit himself; Dr. Burton Thorne Simpson, Buffalo, N. Y., reported "discouraging results led us to abandon treatment."

Life v. Death. The right of the physician to terminate a life of hopeless suffering was discussed by Sir Thomas Hor-der, physician in ordinary to the Prince of Wales. This is a grave problem in doomed cancer cases when "prolonging life" is often "prolonging the act of dying." When that is so, humanity rightly dictates that doctors' zeal is wholly misplaced. But no universal rule can be laid down.