CANCER TREATMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 36, 11 August 1939, Page 4

CANCER TREATMENT

AN ALLEGED CURE

COMMITTEE'S VIEW

"ILLUSORY HOPE"

Claims made for the treatment of cancer are referred to in the annual report' of the Director-General of Health for the year ended March 31, 1939, which has been presented to Parliament.

At the request of Dr. Ulric Williams the Government appointed a committee to investigate a special treatment of cancer, known as the "Koch and Baker," which has been widely advertised in the United States of America, states the report. With Dr. Ulric Williams was associated Professor Henry Brose, of Sydney, and Mr. McCulloch, who describes himself as a naturopath. The committee consisted of Sir James S. Elliott (chairman); Dr. H. Hardwick Smith; Dr. J. O. Mercer, pathologist, Wellington Hospital; and Dr. T. R. Ritchie, Director, Division of Public Hygiene. This committee was not given an opportunity of completing its investigation as Dr. Ulric Williams broke up negotiations on the grounds that Baker and Koch declined to submit their products to test in their absence. "However, as a result of the examination of cases that had been treated with this method the committee in its report states:—'From our general knowledge and from observations we were permitted to make in investigating the cases at Wanganui, we have no reason whatever to suppose that Koch's fluid has any effect in curing generalised cancer. All the evidence available, without exception, convinces our committee that the claim cannot be substantiated that the treatment which we saw practised at Wanganui has any merit as a cure or palliative for cancer. The claim that a cure has been found for cancer should never be made and promulgated until prolonged tests have shown that the claim is a reasonable one, otherwise patients who might be cured or their lives greatly prolonged by surgical or radiological means, because of their dallying, with vaunted cures such as Baker's or Koch's, have thereby allowed their disease to advance from the early stages, when it can be treated by recognised and approved methods. This is all the more important when such alleged cures as Baker's and Koch's are sold as commercial products and when cancer patients are., called upon to pay, in some cases, high fees for treatment. Your committee considers that it is in the public interest that a statement should be made that our hope of finding anything useful in the treatment by Dr. Williams and his colleagues has proved illusory.' DANGER OF FALSE HOPES. "The danger of raising false hopes in regard to the cure for cancer was also emphasised at the cancer conference, which issued the following statement after considering reports upon the nature and effects of treatment of cancer cases with the Baker and Koch fluids:— " 'It is obvious that it would be a heartless proceeding to attempt to. exploit sufferers from so dread a disease as cancer unless there was a reasonable belief, based on experience, that the remedies vaunted as cures are reliable. The mental anguish and suffering] caused to patients so treated is the same whether they have been induced to try unreliable treatment through exploitation or through misguided enthusiasm. "'The patients that have been investigated in Australia and New Zealand have not, in the opinion of the conference, derived any benefit from Baker's or Koch's treatment. These methods of treatment are of no value, and, moreover, tend to cause patients to lose valuable time in adopting reliable methods of surgical or radiological treatment. ;/ " 'The conference is of opinion that vaunted claims or discredited or doubtful remedies for cancer should be discouraged and that it is highly improper for any person, medical or; lay, to claim success for an alleged cure ' unless such treatment has been investigated by competent observers, particularly when by so doing they are"exploiting a secret and purely commercial < i nostrum." '