Money ‘Most Important’ In Research On Cancer

Press, Volume C, Issue 29427, 1 February 1961, Page 12

Money ‘Most Important’ In Research On Cancer

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, January 31

Money was perhaps the most important thing in the worldwide search for a cure for cancer, said Mr A. Lawrence Abel, a member of the council of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and of the Royal College of Surgeons, in an address to the Auckland Rotary Club today. . "In cancer research we always seem to be on the verge of something good. If we can only reach a bit further we misht get an answer.” said Mr Abel. “Within the possibility of our lifetime, there can be a cure for cancer provided funds for the work can be found and there are enough workers to do the research.”

Recent experiments with new. powerful drugs were very promising, said Mr Abel It had long been the dream of cancer research workers to find some anti-cancer drug. "One such drug has already been introduced in recent years,” he said. “The problem is to restrict it to destroying living cancer cells and at the same time allow normal cells to go on living.” Mr Abel said that in the last 40 years the incidence of cancer had increased by about 125 per cent, in England and Wales. “The figures are probably not very different in the

United States, Australia, or New Zealand,” he said. Some proportion of the increase could be accounted for by the fact that the population had increased (in England and Wales the population had grown by 25 per cent, in this period) and part could be attributed to the fact that cancer was a disease of old age and persons were living longer. “But with all the new means of diagnosis and ' treatment, cancer is still increasing," he said. Mr Abel said that cancer research organisations and doctors owed it to the public to let them know the suspected signs of any malignancy. If patients reported to their doctors in plenty of time there was every chance of a cure.