From the Discard

If Chicago's hormone conference offered little new hope for arthritis sufferers, there was brighter news last week in Milwaukee, 80 miles farther north. There at a staff meeting at St. Mary's Hospital, Drs. Millard Tufts, S.B. Pessin and Tiber Greenwalt announced a new antiarthritic serum that can be extracted at any hospital from discarded afterbirths, i.e., placenta and umbilical cords.

Doctors have long noted that pregnancy relieves women suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Blood serum taken from new mothers soon after delivery has even proved effective in treating the disease (TIME, Nov. 27). Rather than take blood from new mothers, Dr. Tufts decided to try something else. The same factor that prevents arthritis in pregnant women and infants (who never have arthritis), he reasoned, must lie in the blood of the placenta, gallons of which are thrown away every day in any obstetrical center.

In company with his colleagues, Dr. Tufts refined from placenta blood some serum which he called PBS, and injected 20 cc. into the arm of a patient who had suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis for more than ten years. After three injections she reported, "My pain and swelling began to disappear and I could notice the lump on my wrist start to go down . . . It's wonderful, isn't it?"

Just as wonderful from the arthritis victims' point of view was the fact that Dr. Tufts's patients (nine so far) suffered no setbacks when treatment was stopped, and none of the side effects (diabetes and hardening of the arteries) generally resulting from hormone treatment.

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