TO FIGHT CANCER.

Evening Star, Issue 18393, 29 September 1923, Page 4

TO FIGHT CANCER.

Dn Barnett’s appeal for funds to enable the Dunedin Hospital to play its part in the Empire campaign against cancer is quietly worded, yet contains some most arresting statements. Prominent among these are the mortality from this disease in Australia and New Zealand, established in the case of the former country, and apparently accepted in the case of or.) own, f* One in every eight persons who

reach the ago of thirty is doomed under present conditions to die of cancer.” ■Plainly there is urgent need for an organised campaign to combat a disease which levies such a toll .on the community, especially as its ravages are undoubtedly on tho increase, for the recorded mortality for cancer has trebled in two generations. The British Ministry of Health is already •organising a cancer campaign; but the precise part which will bo allocated to Now Zealand in this Empire movement is not yet known. It is, however, safe to assume that the purpose to which tho funds now being solicited will bo applied will form an integral part of the methods to bo recommended for New Zealand to follow. It is estimated that £IO,OOO is needed to provide further hospital accommodation at Dunedin and equip it with tho most modern means for radium and X-ray treatment, including a radium emanation outfit for the treatment of cancer patients at a distance and a Jeep therapy appliance for tho treatment of certain types of cancer which baffle attack by the ordinary radium method. A sum of £IO,OOO may appear a large amount, especially as it has never been claimed that radium treatment is anything in the nature of a specific for cancer. Research work into the exact causes of this disease, as well as into its remedial treatment, has been largely in tho nature of groping in the dark. But it now seems to be fairly generally accepted by (he medical profession who have kept in touch with tho investigations that at last sometiling of real value has been ■ discovered. No false hopes are likely to bo engendered by tho studiously restrained reports ot some degree of success with radium. Tho clue has to be followed up, and the more tho field of investigation is widened tho more likelihood there will bo of progress towards finality. If Dunedin can be made one of the outposts in this campaign on behalf of humanity, so much tho better. Once funds are available there should not bo great difficulty in securing supplies of radium. The position in regard to that rare element has entirely changed through tiio discovery in 19.13 of new sources of uranium ore in the Belgian Congo. Tho war interrupted tho extraction of radium from this ore; but a little over a year ago it was resumed. Nov/ on a formerly uninhabited patch of land at Oolcn, near Antwerp, there is a fairly largo manufacturing centre, beginning to produce quantities of radium that would have been regarded as fantastic ten years ago, although oven in this rich ore there is, roughly speaking, only one part of pure radio-active matter in ton or twenty million parts of mineral. Tho monthly output, resulting from the treatment of many tons of raw material by forty different operations, is about half the size of an ordinary lump of sugar, but yet will much more than meet the world’s present demands.