The Guardian And Evening Star, with Which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JULY 26, 1928. CANCER RESEARCH.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 July 1928, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with Which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JULY 26, 1928. CANCER RESEARCH.

A serious omission is mentioned in the thought for the times to-day when attention is called to the fact that New Zealand is not represented officially at the Empire Cancer Conference now sitting in London. The omission is a serious one. As a contemporary remarks, it is not that there is nobody to send to it; it is not that New Zealand is so happily immune as to need no assistance. The last Official YearBook records the fact that “cancer is annually responsible for more deaths in New Zealand than can be assigned to any cause other than organic disease of the heart”; and it notes that the “increasing prevalence” of the disease is causing “no little concern in the Dominion.” The Government Statistician, however, has been unable to communicate to the Government the concern he records over an increase which brought the cancer death-rate in 1926 to the highest figure yet recorded—--1341 deaths, 9.91 in every 10,000—and which is painfully illustrated by a comparative graph. The graph shows the tuberculosis rate steadily falling, the cancer rate steadily rising. It has risen until one death in every nine is due to cancer. Research has so far made no decisive advance. False hopes have more than once been raised, most recently by the Barnnrd-Gye investigations, which appeared to identify a fil-ter-passing virus casually associated with cancer. But it is impossible not to agree with Dr P. C. Fenwick, who expressed in The Sun recently, his confidence that the decisive advance will be made. Inquiries so systematic and so many-sided, conducted hv the finest scientific intelligence in the medical profession, will not fail of their object. Every day adds to the mass of useful evidence, and any day may add the last significant fact from which all the. rest get new and collective significance. Laboratory experiment, the study of dietetics, clinical observation, detailed statistical records—from any of these or from all of them together certainly will sooner or later be derived, The suggestiveqess of statistics

is brought up by the remark of Dr T. H. C. Stevenson, cabled recently, that “the mortality among Anglican and Nonconformist clergy is the lowest.’’ When the British RegistiaiGeneral published lilguros in 1923, showing that cancer mortality among clergymen is to that among butchers as 45 to 105, among agricultural labourers 54 compared with 102 among hotel servants and 110 among merchant service seamen, lie directed inquiry towards differences in life-habits which might account for such striking differences in cancer death-rate; or at least lie confirmed the necessity of that sort of inquiry. In diet, of course, one factor obviously presents itself as a possible determinant. On every sido the observed facts demand investigation. For instance, the possible connection between coal-miners’ freedom from constipation and from cancer; the drop in Denmark’s heavy cancer mortality during the Great War, and its rise again afterwards; the facts of cancer incidence (i) geographically, (ii) anatomically, (iii) as between the sexes—investigation of every fact or set of facts is necessary, and is undertaken ; and almost every investigation points the way to another of the samo or a different kind. One great function of the present conference is to bring together the men who have pursued tlio’ir independent inquiries ns far, perhaps, as they can he pursued independently, and who can most usefully collate their results, drawing them into relations and seeing them in proportion. 'Hie synthesis which means victory may he their reward. If it is not to-morrow, it is at least so much the nearer. But New Zealand is there neither to learn nor to add its own knowledge to tho pool.