Word: cancer
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...laymen, the 21 pounds of charts, diagrams, photographs, mortality tables, minute surgical instructions, all boiled down to the hard conclusions of the No. 1 U. S. cancer expert, Memorial's Director James Ewing. Said he: "Too much has been expected from the modern advances in the diagnosis and treatment of established cancer. Too much should not be expected from the prevention of cancer. ... It is certain that efforts in this field have thus far been quite desultory and inefficient. . . . [No] new curative agent or method will be found in the near future. . . . The only successful methods of treatment...
Contrary to popular opinion, said Dr. Ewing, cancer cells are very like normal cells in growth and structure. (This opinion was amplified last week by Pathologist Balduin Lucke of the University of Pennsylvania, who planted cancer cells in a frog's eye, studied the cell growth under a microscope. Cancer tissue, said Dr. Lucke, does not bloom wildly, but spreads "in definite, well-defined patterns...
...Ewing firmly believes that all adults should have frequent medical examinations, so that young cancers, especially those of breast and skin, can be nipped in the bud. "Yet there are no early symptoms in cancer of the esophagus, stomach, rectum, intestines, pancreas, kidney, lungs, and other internal organs. ... In such cases . . . which constitute 65% of all cancers . . . little or nothing can be expected from curative medicine under any circumstances...
Although many researchers are seeking a universal chemical test to show up the presence of early cancer, "there is no rational basis for the hope that any such test will ever be found. The early cancer process is local . . . and there is certainly no evidence to show that it excites any specific reaction in the body or disseminates any peculiar substances into the blood...
...skill of U. S. surgeons "has failed to affect the recorded death rate from the major forms of cancer." Operations on advanced internal cancers save few lives...