CANCER RESEARCH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 170, 19 June 1934, Page 11

CANCER RESEARCH

PROGRESS IN TREATMENT. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, June 18. Comments on the transactions of the fifth Australian cancer conference haying a bearing on the cancer problem in New Zealand are contained in a report released for publication to-day by the Minister of Health (Hon. J. A. Young). • -■ The report was prepared by the president of the New Zealand branch of the British Empire Cancer Campaign, Dr J. S. Elliott, and the Professor of Pathology at the University of Otago, Professor E. F. D’Atli, who were two of New Zealand’s representatives at the conference held at Canberra in April. Other delegates representing the Dominion were Drs C. Fenwick, De Monchaux and Harvey, and Mr J. A. Strong, M.Sc. The authors of the report stated it was no exaggeration to say it was doubtful if . Europe, . with all its resources, could produce a conference on cancer wider in its scope, ’more informative and more authoritative than the fifth Australian cancer conference. “Australians are very advanced in the study of dosage and screenage, and our New Zealand radiologists who attended the conference were much impressed,’’ the report proceeds. “Original work in this form of research will soon begin in our research laboratory in Dunedin under Dr A. W. Begg and assistants.” The report states that the conference was unanimous that radiotherapy was so powerful for good or ill and so complex a study that, except for treatment of superficial growths, the operation should only be carried out by surgeons with the qualification of training in radiotherapy. At Melbourne a curriculum for this combined training was being established. The New Zealand branch of the 8.E.0.0. had invited Dr W. H. Moi’gan, of Sydney, the noted authority, to come to New Zealand and lecture. The report concludes by stating that the Australian representatives had spoken approvingly of the organisation of the cancer campaign in New Zealand and of the results so far achieved in this Dominion. “While we in New Zealand have much to learn in certain phases of Australian progress in the cancer campaign, we have the melancholy satisfaction that the Australian cancer clinics treated 3081 new cases from ,1928 to 1933, and the New Zealand cancer clinics treated 2800 new cancer cases in the shorter period, of 1930 to 1933. The fifth Australian conference revealed little that was new in the nature and cause of cancer, a subject in which hope is still deferred, but as regards treatment the conference brought forwart much that shows substantial improvement in results, and that augurs well for future ■progress.”