Word: austerely
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...through U.S. civil courts, and sympathetic judges or juries have granted hefty cash damages for claims of cancer contracted after an injury, usually suffered on the job. But can a single blow actually cause cancer, even in the sensitive, cancer-prone female breast? Probably not, says Dr. Lionel S. Auster of New York's Bronx Hospital. Speaking at last week's second International Meeting on Forensic Pathology and Medicine at the New York University Medical Center, Dr. Auster said: "Experimentally, a single trauma has never been able to initiate a malignant tumor...
Admitting dourly that "it is rare indeed to find a patient who cannot relate some trauma to his tumor," Dr. Auster said careful analysis of well-documented cancer cases shows a possible causal relationship between physical injury and cancer in only about six out of every 100,000 cases. Said Auster: "Twenty-five thousand people a day are reputedly injured in the U.S. Only four people per thousand have tumors. Were trauma to have significance in tumor genesis, we should be overrun with patients suffering from cancer incited by war injuries, surgical operations, biopsy procedures, industrial and sports accidents...
...courts often disregard incontrovertible medical evidence in granting damage claims, said Dr. Auster, citing specific cases. Sample: The scalp of a 45-year-old construction laborer, superficially grazed by a swinging hook on the end of a derrick cable, later developed a friable, fungating ulceration. X rays showed "extensive metastatic involvement"; cancer had spread to the head from a primary tumor in the workman's kidney. The cancer had obviously been spreading for months before the accident, and the scalp injury only served to call attention to it. Nevertheless, said Auster, the court granted a "substantial" award...
...that same year to war-ravaged Wewak, where bombs and bullets had destroyed all of the society's mission houses and killed half of its priests, nuns and lay brothers. Tall (6 ft. 3 in.) Missionary Arkfeld lunged into the task of reconstruction, bought an English-made Civil Auster, then the first of three Cessnas, personally air-speeded material for the missions' rebuilding. In ten years of bush flying, he has become an old hand at perilous uphill landings and downhill takeoffs, slalom-like runs to avoid wild pigs on the runways, hedgehopping to stay under hanging clouds...
...being pursued by six angry but ineffectual military planes. The Royal Australian Navy's fleet air arm, bitter rival of the R.A.A.F., then sent up a couple of piston-engined Sea Fury fighters, piloted by British veterans. Seven miles out to sea, Lieut. Peter McNay gave the Auster the full force of his 20-mm. guns. The tiny plane shook, burst into flames and slowly spiraled into the sea. Its pilotless flight had lasted 2¾hours...