STATE-OWNED RADIUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 236, 2 October 1920, Page 19

STATE-OWNED RADIUM.

A N£W YORK EXPERIMENT. The people of the State of New York owu nearly fifty thousand pounds' worth of radium. Any one of the people is entitled to its use as a curative agent. And, moreover, through the generosity of the State any citizen of the United States is to be given permission to ««e its curative properties free, although the citizens of the State have first rig-bte. ! This is the first time in history that a nation or a State has purchased a therapeutic agent for the sole use of its citizens. It is a step in methods of social science as , well as an important step in medicine. Dr. Harvey R. Gaylord, of the Institution for the Study of Malignant Diseases, issued a (Statement which he declared "would account to the people of New York for the stewardship over the purchase of 21 grains of radium for which £47,000 was appropriated by the State." FIRST GRAM IX VAULTS. •The first gram Is now in the vaults of the institution, at Buffalo, aud the appliances necessary for its use in the treatment of cancer, are now in the course of construction. The engagement of a competent physician to work with this radium is also announced. '"The rauium we are usLng is an American product, mined in Colorado, brought 2000 miles across the continent in tlie form of tons of caruotite ore to the extraction plant at Orange, N.J., where it Is reduced by fractional crystalisation to its present form. "The value of radium has already arrived at a stage where States, and, if necessary, the Federal Government should make available gratuitously and beyond the realm of financial limitations, radium for cancer treatment. "The usefulness of radium for the treatment of neoplasms is still in its infancy, but there are already certain kinds of cancer In which its use offers advantages, and its use under scientific conditions Is sure to Increase our knowledge of cancer. '