Serum Against Cancer?

Every report of a treatment that prolongs the life of cancer victims demands the most skeptical scrutiny. Many such claims add up to cruel quackery, and others, by reputable men of medicine, have proved to be overoptimistic. Last week physicians had a tough job: evaluating a treatment proposed by a brilliant Canadian surgeon and reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Dr. Gordon Murray, 64, of Toronto's Gardiner Medical Research Foundation, reported going back to an old idea that had never paid off before: using animals to make an anti-cancer serum. He could not make it work in small animals, so he turned to the horse--a recognized and prolific factory for serum used against several diseases. Dr. Murray injected tissue from human cancers into his horses. When he figured that they had had time to make antibodies, he bled them, extracted the serum from the blood and injected it into human patients in gradually increasing doses over 21 days, until they had received a total of half a pint.

Three Added Years. All his patients, said Dr. Murray, were "terminal": all had received some of the orthodox treatments (radiation, surgery, hormones) for their types of cancer. Some had had every recognized treatment, and all had reached the stage where their doctors had abandoned further treatment as hopeless. In all cases the cancer had spread to many parts of the body.

Reporting on 91 patients who got his full course of injections. Dr. Murray said: "On no occasion has there been any suggestion of cure, but a good many patients have had very satisfactory palliation . . . After all other forms of treatment have been given up, as much as three years in some cases have been added to the duration of life. During that three years there was relatively good health and many were in a good state of nutrition, without symptoms or pain; most of them were able to do their usual work." One of the most consistently predictable benefits, he said, was relief of pain from bone cancer. In some cases. Dr. Murray went so far as to describe patients' improvement as "spectacular." But he warned that some patients have sensitivity reactions to the horse serum, and he says it should never be given to those with damaged livers.

What of the Others? How much credence should cancer victims and their kin give to the Murray report? Experts on both sides of the border were puzzled to answer. Despite Dr. Murray's standing as a surgeon, he has little background in immunology. And some immunologists said flatly that his method would not work. U.S. critics called Dr. Murray's report superficial, wanted to know why it covered only 91 cases though he had begun treatment on 233. They also wanted many more details than he had supplied to be sure that all patients had been in the hopeless state that he asserted, and that their improvement could not be due to chance or delayed-action benefits from previous treatment. Some thought that the same results could have followed an added course of cortisone-type hormones.

Clearly, the verdict would have to wait. But inevitably, cancer victims had their hopes raised. Within the week after the story hit the newspapers. Dr. Murray's office was swamped with phone calls and cables from as far away as England, France, Argentina and Tasmania. Even if all the patients had got through to him, it would have done them no good, because Dr. Murray cannot handle more than he is already treating.

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