CANCER RESEARCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13277, 8 September 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

CANCER RESEARCH.

QUESTION OF HEREDITY MAY SOON

BE SOLVED. THERE is a happy possibility of tho mystery of the terrible disease of cancer being solved at no very remote date. This was hinted at when the results of the experiments made during the year by the Imperial Cancer Research Fund were described at the animal meeting by Dr. Bashford, the general superintendent of the fund's laboratory. He dealt chiefly with the results of the inoculation of .100,000' mice. The scientists, he said, are now able to reproduce at will in mice all the features of spontaneous cancer, and to protect healthy mice from all the consequences of inoculating them with experimental cancer. "This having been achieved it is not too much to hope that the further development of the experimental study of cancer will yield results having a direct bearing on the nature and treatment of the disease," added Dr. Bashford. After repeated failures duriug thirty years the fund have been, able to obtain offspring from mice suffering naturally from the disease, and in the near future it may in consequence 'be possible to conclude whether cancer in man is or is not hereditary. Sixty per cent, of the " spontaneous" cancers which Dr. Bashford referred to had been got to glow in mice previously healthy", and in the view of the scientists this points to the conclusion that all malignant growths are transplantable. The " protection" experiments were so successful that, whereas of 100 ordinary mice ninety developed tumors after inoculation, none of the protected animals developed the disease. At the same time Dr. Bashford added.a note of warning in case the results might give rise to exaggerated expectations. It was not yet possible, he said, to arrest the progress of experimntal tumors, much less to effect the cure of the disease occurring'naturally. Sir William Church, in moving the adoption of the report, said that radium had not given satisfactory results. Lord Strathcona presided at the meeting, and the Prince of Wales, the president of the fund, was represented by Sir Arthur Bigge. •