CANCER “SEEMS PRICE PAID FOR LONGEVITY’

Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 14

CANCER “SEEMS PRICE PAID FOR LONGEVITY’

Cancer "'seems to be in some ways the price we are paying for longevity,'’ according to Professor Hedley Atkins, Sims Commonwealth 'Travelling Professor for 1961. Professor Atkins, Dean of the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, London, is a member of the executive committee and grand council of the British Empire Cancer Campaign Society. “People used not to live long enough, in general, to contract the disease,'* said Professor Atkins yesterday. “There appears to be a real increase in the incidence of some kinds of cancer, however. Lung cancer is one of these.”

There was no doubt that cigarette smoking was a factor in this increase. Professor Atkins said, and atmospheric pollution was almost certainly another.

The aim of cancer research, like all research into surgical diseases, was "to do the surgeon out of a job.” The search all the time was to find ways of giving equally or more effective treatment by less painful methode. Russian Visit

Professor Atkins returned recently from Russia, where he went with a team from the British Council to discuss cancer research. He spent 11 days in Moscow, and three in Leningrad.

The Russians had much the same incidence of cancer as Western countries, and were making a tremendous effort to get to grips with the problem, he said. "Their claims were extremely modest, but their effort was impressive. We saw some of their operations. and the standard of surgery was excellent”

ITte British teem bad been most hospitably received, and had been shown everything they wanted to see. They had not come across anything unexpected, but this was to be expected, since there was free international interchange of ideas .and discoveries in the cancer field. N.Z. Doctors

Professor Atkins praised the Otago Medical School and its students. "We see a great number of New Zealand doctors in our institute, where they attend lectures while studying for their Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons,” he said. "The standard of your medical school must be high in-

deed, to judge by the quality of the chaps who come to us for post-graduate studies.”

The Sims professorships were e great benefit not only to doctors but to humanity. “I feel Sir Arthur Sims has done a wonderful job for the whole of the Commonwealth in founding these professorships,” he said. “They bring us all so close together. They enable medical men to meet and discuss problems of mutual interest, to their own benefit and to the benefit of humanity.” Professor Atkins is on the last stage of his tour of New Zealand. On Monday he will leave by air for Sydney, to spend two months in Australia. In Brisbane he will give the Syme oration at the annual meeting of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.