Word: phosphorus
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...accuse the Hitler system," cried Sachsenhausen's Dr. Heinz Baumkoetter. (He used to pour burning phosphorus on his patients, so that afterwards he could test the efficacy of burn salves.) "I accuse the system which made me-a harmless man by nature-into a criminal against humanity." Only dandified, cadaverous Willy Shubert, who had once earned a medal and a holiday in Italy for helping to kill 18,000 Russians in three months, refused to grovel. "I killed men on orders," he boasted, "and I killed men without orders." Sachsenhausen's commander in chief, pig-eyed, bulletheaded Anton...
...most successful treatments. Some 90% of Memorial's patients are operated on (the hospital's "fiveyear cure" rate for stomach cancer: 25%). But Memorial is also pioneering in hormones for breast and prostate cancers, radioactive iodine for thyroid cancers, nitrogen mustards for Hodgkin's disease, radioactive phosphorus for certain forms of leukemia, a urine test for early cancer detection, studies of an extract of the adrenal gland, which looks like a hopeful candidate against stomach cancer...
Most of the isotopes have been used as "tracers." Radioactive phosphorus, for instance, has exactly the same chemical properties as ordinary phosphorus. So it can be made into phosphorus compounds and fed to plants or experimental animals. Wherever it goes it betrays its presence by telltale radioactivity. Thus, biologists can use it to measure the amount of phosphorus-containing protein which moves out of the nucleus of a microscopic living cell. Without radiophosphorus, such an experiment would be impossible. Many researchers, hoping to learn how disease germs enter the body and how they do their damage, are tagging living bacteria...
...spot this "something," they used the ultramodern technique of radioactive tracers. First they grew yeast cells in a solution containing radioactive phosphorus-32, whose uneasy atoms the cells built into certain of their proteins. With a Geiger counter, the scientists could follow these radioactive protein molecules...
Radioactive phosphorus has been tried against certain types of leukemia, a cancer of blood-forming tissues. But in most cases of leukemia and thyroid cancer, these treatments do no permanent good. (One reason: in thyroid cancer, the more malignant the cancer, the less prone it is to pick up iodine.) Dr. Rhoads believes that inorganic elements like iodine and phosphorus offer little real hope...