Secondary Cancers

Dr. Francis Carter Wood, director of Columbia University's Crocker Institute of Cancer Research and editor of the Chemical Foundation's American Journal of Cancer* had the authority to state last week, though with scholarly ifs & ands, that treatment of cancers by x-rays or radium does not in itself stir up secondary cancers. That radiation cures a cancer in one part of the body only to metastasize or shift it into another part, has been a credible theory. Cancer of the skin often follows irradiation of the cervix. X-raying of bladder tumors is often followed by cancer of the bone-marrow, lung, liver or skin. Cancer of the neck or throat frequently follows cure of a lip cancer. Doctors almost never discuss such questionable points with their patients, seldom mention them in print. But as Dr. Wood remarked in an editorial last week, ". . . in private conversation [of doctors] the opinion [is] expressed that radiation seems to facilitate metastasis, and that patients who have been rayed have strange and unusual metastases which do not occur with other forms of treatment." His idea is that primary cancers usually throw off stray cells, which drift to distant parts of the body. Radiation probably has nothing to do with the drift. If the patient lived long enough the stray cancer cells would probably develop into secondary cancers. But the primary cancer ordinarily kills the victim before the secondary cancers have time to become annoying. Radiation destroys the primary cancer, prolongs the patient's life until the metastatic, secondary cancers have time to grow and cause their fatal erosions.

* Printed during 1931 as a quarterly continuation of the old Journal of Cancer Research, with 1932 it becomes a bi-monthly.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.