NEW PHASE OF CANCER RESEARCH

Evening Star, Issue 23377, 21 September 1939, Page 9

NEW PHASE OF CANCER RESEARCH

DISCOVERY "AT ANY MOMENT"

Striking statements on the pa-ogress of cancer research were made by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, former president of the Royal Society and of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in an address at the opening of the new laboratories of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund at Mill Hill, London, says a Sapa-Reuter message. “It is not much to hope that at any moment some pregnant item of new knowledge may appear which will point directly to the_ right path for effective action,” he said. “ As an onlooker—for in this great field I have been no more—l have reached the conviction that recent years have seen cancer research enter on yet another new phase, one in which experimental studies are going deeper than before in the nature of the phenomena involved and yielding results of unforeseen promise. GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM. “ With the assurance that fundamental knowledge concerning the actual nature of cancer is continuously increasing, together with the realisation that success in treatment grows with the clinician’s increasing skill and equipment. there is surely justification today for an optimistic outlook. It is most desirable that the lay public should be persuaded to share in such optimism.” „ Sir Frederick observed that while their knowledge of Nature had grown great the extent of their ignorance was much greater. It was most unlikely that a complete mastery of cancer would arrive until they had reached to fuller knowledge of its intimate nature as a phenomenon of uncontrolled growth. While the cause of cancer must become ultimately a medical problem, to discover its fundamental nature was a biological problem of great perplexity. They were at least not likely to reach any solution of this without sustained efforts based on experimental methods. INCREASING KNOWLEDGE. One used some years ago to hear it said pessimistically that we should never fully understand the manifestations of cancer until wo had solved the riddle of life itself, with the implication that this would always remain unsolved. Current research was showing that they weie by no means powerless to

reach significant knowledge _of the events which progressed in living cells, and one line of endeavour to-day was to compare those events in normal and cancer cells respectively. Workmen liable to continued contact with shale oil products, with tar or soot, and more rarely, on exposure to arsenic, aniline, and some, other substances were prone to develop cancer. Long-continued mechanical irritation might induce it and also long exposure to certain forms of radiation. _ They had to learn why only in certain circumstances irritation became a stimulant to growth. Knowledge was fast not in extent alone, but also in precision and significance. BRILLIANT WORK. While they had long known that prolonged contact with tar could induce cancerous growths, brilliant experimental work daring the last few years had extended this empirical knowledge on remarkable lines. The combined efforts of the pathologist and organic chemist had shown that it had certain specific effects. The exact constitution of these substances was known, while others related to them had been artificially synthetised, and their graded capacity for inducing cancer carefully determined. Among them were some which were remarkably active. Such objective facts should encourage equally objective and sane thought about a malady which had so oftenbeen viewed in the past from a standpoint which was almost that of superstition.