IS CANCER INHERITED?

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1033, 25 July 1930, Page 12

IS CANCER INHERITED?

GOVERNED BY MENDEL’S LAW, SAYS GERMAN BIOLOGIST’S CLAIM Special to THE SUX WELLINGTON, Today. The claim that he has made epoch making discoveries in the domain ot cancer is lodged by Dr. F. Bernsteiu. a German biologist, according to information which has reached the Health Department. Dr. Bernstein claims to have discovered that cancer is inherited according to the well-known Mendel inn laws. For many years research-workers have been endeavouring to establish • whether the disease is inherited and the German scientist now says that ho has proof of this. He has for many years been engaged in a statistical study of heredity, and his announcement, which was made to the Berlin Medical Society, followed a visit to the United States, where he had the opportunity of examining the vast masses of statistical information which has been accumulated in America. Dr. Bernstein advances the theory that not only is cancer inherited, but the hereditary factor plays Its part in the time at which the disease makes its appearance and that, according to biological laws, a tendenev to cancer can be cancelled out if there is inherited from the other parent a non-cancerous factor. It is only when two tendencies combine in the on? individual—when both parents have ri cancerous tendency—that the disease is passed on. Dr. Bernstein does not find himself able to endorse the supposition that cancer increases in “cancerous" families during the course of several generations. The non-cancerous fac tors are always entering to rescue the human being from the cancerous tendency. Dr. Bernstein’s theory is now being examined in the light of the data which has been accumulated by other workers in the same field.