The Conquest of Cancer
MUCH interest and hope will be aroused by the meeting in London of an International Conference on Cancer a few days hence, and the British Empire Cancer Campaign is to be thanked therefor.
We earnestly hope that the distinguished authorities who are to discuss the subject will take steps to allay the grave and growing anxiety which exists in the public mind. In this country and in the United States vast sums have been raised and spent in cancer research, but the death-rate continues to rise. A few years ago the discovery was announced, under the auspices of the Medical Research Council, of the cancer-parasite, which was stated to be an ultra-microscopic germ, only to be detected by the use of ultra-violet light in the microscope. No confirmation of this discovery has been forthcoming, and we observe that the programme of the forthcoming Conference pays the least possible attention to it.
Meanwhile, surgical operations for cancer become ever more numerous and extensive. We observe that many of the most formidable are to be demonstrated during the afternoons of the Conference. But, unfortunately, the death-rate continues to rise : nor can it be denied that the immediate operation-mortality rate following the recognized operation for cancer of the womb is appallingly high—one patient in three dies forthwith. The special importance of the surgical aspect is obvious, but for the public the most important sessions will probably be those devoted to the study of the relative Value of surgical operation and of radiation by radium or X-rays in the treatment of cancer. The radiologists have-been subor- dinated long enough, and the most recent statistics appear to tell in their favour.
If the Conference promises most for the publie in respect of the treatment of cancer, evidently the problem of prevention is not to the fore : and that, unfortunately, is the case. The teaching of the New Health Society and of its distinguished"'President, Sir Wffiiarn 'Arbuthnot Lane, is entirely ignored. No reference to food is to be found in the programme. We consider that this is a serious mistake. Public attention has been directed, in many countries, to " New Health " teaching. Large numbers of people have read the books of Mr. Ellis Barker, the second of which was recently reviewed in our columns. The evidence of Professor Rindhede, the great Danish expert, has been widely studied. If the professional students of cancer, who have failed us so signally hitherto, and who ask for continued public support, are 'prepared to refute the doctrine that the dietetic habits of civilized man are responsible for a vast amount of cancer in and near the food canal, they should take this opportunity of doing so.
A leading American authority is to discuss the etiology the causation—of cancer, during one morning session, whilst another subject is being simultaneously discussed elsewhere. Mankind will listen with deep interest to what will be said, but with no small concern at the insignificant place given, on this international occasion, to what is claimed by many eminent authorities to be the heart of the problem. Days are to be devoted to the study of the increasingly acute rivalry between the knife and the ray in the treatment of cancer ; but only a sectional session of two hours or so to the causation of the disease. What the public is entitled to expect is the concentration and co-ordination of the best minds in the world on the problem of causation, upon which the possibility of prevention depends. It is the unquestion- able fact that much is already really known about the causation of cancer in many sites ; and this knowledge could be immediately used for its prevention there. Instances are X-ray cancer, chimney sweeps' cancer, and other forms of cancer due to particular chronic irritations in industry. The real task of science to-day is to discover and condemn those analogous irritants which are responsible for internal cancer, and we could have wished that the full significance of the work of Professor Archi- bald Leitch on shale-workers' and mule-spinners' cancer had been thus recognized.
Every ten minutes there is a death from cancer in this country. Let us hope the Conference will- concentrate on the prevention rather than the palliation of 'this scourge of God, and that this meeting of scientists will become an annual event : such an annual Conference might well visit the great capitals of the world in turn.
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