CANCER "CURES"

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 104, 19 May 1937, Page 8

CANCER "CURES"

-Own c/orrespondent.)

America a Land of Fakes MEDICAL MEN'S FIGHT

(Bv Teleprapb—

AUCKLAND, La'st Night. With the air flooded with advertising for one patent medicine or another and with the lack of legislative means for the suppression of "quackery," the Ameriean Medical AssOciation is facing a diffieult problem at the present time, stated Dr. H. M. Peery, a radiologist from Eugent, Oregon, who was " a hrough passenger on the Mariposa. A great deal of harm was being done, he said, by means of these serums and elixirs, which were supposed to be cures for all sorts of diseases. Dr. Peery was dealing with. tho research work being c-arried on in America on the question of cancer causation and treatment. A great deal of work had been done, he said, mainly through the development of efficient X-ray apparatus. It was only in the past few years that medical men had had the benefit of really adequate opparatus of this sort. As yet, however, nothing of a really vital nature had been discovored. "As yet there are only three recognised ways of treating cancer," said Dr. Perry. "They are'surgery, X-ray and radium. The Afncrican. Medical Association is trying by means of newspaper propaganda and by ' shorts ' on the movies to bring home that fact to the public, for, as you know, America is a great land for fakes. We have not the legislation to combat them, though I guess in time w;e will get it. At present they are not allowcd to use the mails to defraud, and we can stop them from shipping from one State to another packages that have misleading statemests on the label, or that have ' contents that contravene the pure foods regulations. "But the xadio is free and easy — and they are using that. Faked patent medicines and cosmetics take up, I think, the majority of sponsored programmes. . In addition some of the powerful companies own their own stations and put over what they like. There was one dootor, purely a faker, who owned a very powerful radio station in Kansas. As the result of the efforts of the Ameriean Medical Association this doctor was forced four or five years ago to close down in America, but he just shifted across the border into Mexieo and pnt up a new big powerful station. Later, I believed he had txouble with the Mex'cau Government >and for a while he established his station on a ship,. _ which cruisecl outside the three-mile limit at sea. The doctor maintained a'hospital in Mexico, and his big word ovter the air was ' the nrostrate gland.' The public is gulliWe, and to. anyone. who is -not trained in medicine these ' Cures ' sound quite all right over the air. "

One of the things which they were fighting at the present time, said the, doctor, was a patent "cancer cure,.", which was in the form of a serum. "The eountry is full of cults, atid somethin g-opaths — most of them paths that eventually lead to the grave, said the doetor.