FIGHTING CANCER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 946, 12 April 1930, Page 10

FIGHTING CANCER

ARRIVAL OF RESEARCH SPECIALIST PREVALENCE OF DISEASE “In England the idea that cancer is a universal disease is gradually being accepted. Experiments and investigations have indicated that cancer exists in all human races and all forms of animal life. “Rats, mice, chickens, fish —all have be«n found to .suffer from cancer.” The speaker was Dr. X. M. Begg, of by a central committee in Wellington to carry out cancer research work in New Zealand. Ho arrived yesterday on tho Port Hardy, and will proceed South on Monday. Dr, Begg’s headquarters will be the Medical School of the Otago University. Ho qualified there 10 years ago. afterward spending two years in Timaru. Ho then left for England thereafter specialising in cancer research work. In London he joined the staff of the Imperial Cancer liesearch Committee, which, today, has eight members. “I am not a surgeon, and my work in New Zealand will be purely of an

experimental research nature.” Dr. Begg told The Sun this morning. The details of my research work have yet to bo arranged when I meet the committee. So far my work has been with small animals, and this will be continued at the Medical School.” Referring to the general progress ot the past eight years—the period of his cancer research work —Dr. Begg said that a slow but steady advance was being made, although, as had been inevitable, a great deal of negative work had been done. Ho had no doubt that, ultimately, experimentalists would get to the bottom of the cancer problem. As far as the Research Committee and its followers were concerned, the investigations and experiments with small animals were being mads purely to determine the cause of the disease. For the time being all questions of treatment were being put to one side. Today the cancer problem was being tackled by surgical treatment and research, by radium and X-ray treatment, and a third method started in Liverpool and being tried in Bristol was that of treatment with a lead compound, sl method that was said to be giving relief. “It is being boomed in England just now. ... I would not care to sav more,” was Dr. Begg’s answer when asked to comment on the possibilities of radium in the treatment of cancer. Dr. Begg added that, personally, lie favoured the Gye theory that cancer was caused by an unknown factor—an invisible germ. The experiments with small animals had shown, however that the disease could not be transferred from one animal to another. A tumour in a chicken could not bo transferred to a rat. The evidence that cancer was a universal disease went to disprove the contention and widespread impression that it was a disease of civilisation. Some time ago the theory that it was brought about by meat eating was exploded by a man who was attempting to prove that such was the case. He made investigations among an order of Trappist monks who were vegetarians and found that earn er sufferers were included in their ranks.

As Dr. Begg’s work in New Zealand will embrace the experimental production of tumours in small animals, ho has brought with him numbers of infected rats and mice. In tho freezing chamber of the Port Hardy is another package, unpleasant enough, but necessary to his work. It contains the cancer tumour of chickens, dried, and in powdered form, but still contagious. In this form it has been known to remain contagious for seven years.