Progress Reports

Kicking off the 1956 drive for funds to support their work, the nation's top cancer investigators reported on progress and problems. Chief among them was Dr. Charles S. Cameron, 47, medical and scientific director of the American Cancer Society, whose new 268-page book for laymen (The Truth About Cancer; Prentice-Hall; $4.95) outlines the symptoms and the treatment of cancer. The book's main point: prompt medical checkups at the first sign of such cancer signals as bleeding, unusual growths can easily double the current U.S. cure rate of 25% in 500,000 new cases a year.

Barnstorming in Boston, Chicago and Manhattan lecture halls, Dr. Cameron also furnished new data last week on the most promising scientific developments in the hunt for a cancer cure. So far, even supervoltage radiation has failed to eliminate more than a small percentage of serious internal cancers; surgery has proved successful only in localized, easily removable cancers, e.g., of the breast and cervix. Cameron's conclusion: "Drug treatment has to be the solution."

Trial & Error. Although Cameron and his colleagues have come to agree that all cancer cells must have a common vulnerability, the search for a killer drug has been costly, timeconsuming. It is likely that only when the chemical peculiarities of cancer cells are known, said Cameron, "can we interrupt the process for reproduction by interposing chemicals to block the cancer cell's required 'food.' " Currently, researchers must apply one chemical compound after another to each of a dozen types of animal tumors. Once a drug seems effective, it is put through an exhaustive series of tests, so far has always proved to be of limited effectiveness. Needed first is a chart of cancer cell behavior to eliminate the present trial-and-error approach. "I see more optimism that this can be achieved," said Dr. Cameron. "Pure scientists are getting excited about human cancer. There is no question of an ultimate solution to the problem of abnormal [cancerous] growth."

Other developments:

P: In Baltimore, Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads (TIME, June 27, 1949), director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, told how five years ago chemical research was directed into all kinds of areas--hormones, alkylating agents. Today, cancer chemists are concentrating on nucleic acid, which all cells need in order to live. If the cancer cells' supply of nucleic acid can be poisoned, the cells will die.

P: In Dallas this week, an encouraging advance on the drug front was jointly announced by Sloan-Kettering, the Mellon Institute and Parke, Davis & Co. Their newest drug: "D.O.N." (for 6-diazo-s-oxo-l-norleucine), which effectively inhibits the formation of nucleic acid in mouse cancer cells, but causes negligible harm to healthy cells.

P: The U.S. Public Health Service announced contracts with five private laboratories for large-scale screening of 2,000 chemical compounds as possible cancer cell killers. Each compound will be tried on three different types of cancer implanted in mice.

Dr. Cameron and his colleagues are quick to admit that the ultimate solution is still far away. Under present methods of treatment, roughly half the nation's 700,000 cancer patients cannot possibly be cured, and many laymen think it senseless to prolong the agony of the hopeless cancer patient. To such doubters, Cameron answers in The Truth About Cancer:

"For a doctor to relax in the least degree his efforts to maintain life means that the question of when to stop fighting will arise to plague him every time he undertakes the care of an incurable cancer patient ... Where can anyone, no matter how wise, draw the line?" There is always the chance that "spontaneous remission," a rare inexplicable halt to tumor growth, may restore the cancer patient to health. Moreover, says Cameron, the possibility always exists of a timely cure for the patient's case of cancer. "The humane course is to hold on to such a hope, slender as it is, and help the patient to live on ... The difference between euthanasia and letting the patient die by omitting life-sustaining treatment is only a moral quibble."

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