Giblets & Cancer

If Dr. J. Maisin were not professor of pathological anatomy, radiology and cancerology at Belgium's learned University of Louvain, and if he were not Director of its Institute of Cancer, then cautious Editor Francis Carter Wood of the American Journal of Cancer probably would not have given 29 pages in the issue he published last week to Dr. Maisin's astonishing observations on the relation of giblets to cancer.

Dr. Maisin points out (and Dr. Wood verbally emphasized the point) that his observations have been solely on mice. Nonetheless, learned Dr. Maisin has determined that:

"The tissues of certain organs--namely, liver, pancreas, and intestinal mucosa-- when added to the food of mice [whose skin had been irritated by applications of tar], promote cancer growth."

"Certain other organs--brain, thymus, bone marrow, dried gastric mucosa. dried lymph nodes--exert an inhibiting action on tar cancer development."

"The same organ--brain, for example-- may contain both growth-inhibiting and growth-promoting factors."

Therefore: "It is reasonable to assume that by further studies it will be possible to find organic chemical compounds which, injected or given in the diet, will protect against the poisoning which leads slowly to atypical growth and to cancer. We believe, also, that in this way it will be possible to make a cancer slowly disappear, by re-establishing the organic defences which will take care of the growth, which will be absorbed slowly by autolysis, phagocytosis, or normal connective-tissue growth. Such a cure of cancer seems more logical than a specific remedy with power to kill cancer cells and leave untouched normal cells."

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