Recovery from Cancer

Of the two men who worked most closely on the nuclear chain reactions that made the atomic bomb possible, one, Enrico Fermi, died of cancer. In 1959 the other, Leo Szilard, went to his doctors with a bladder cancer; they could not remove it all. Said Szilard then: "I don't expect to live, but I hope to be active for a few months and perhaps a year." Last week Dr. Szilard, 64, physicist turned biologist and crusader for the abolition of war, quietly noted that he has now gone two full years free of cancer symptoms. "I feel fine," he said.

What wrought the change in Szilard's case was a four-week series of treatments with 2,000,000-volt X rays at Manhattan's Memorial Hospital. His convalescence was supervised, as is his current care while he lives at a Washington hotel, by his personal physician, Dr. Gertrud Weiss--who is also his wife. With the same realism that he showed when his prospects were poorest, Dr. Szilard now says: "I have not been in a hospital since I left Memorial. But I don't want to mislead people into thinking I am cured, because I do not know if I am. There is no telling how long I will be well."

Of patients with cancer of Szilard's type who get similar treatment, 5% live for five years. Doctors are trying to perfect ways of making recoveries like his the rule rather than the exception.

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