CANCER RESEARCH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22964, 20 August 1936, Page 12

CANCER RESEARCH

METHODS CONDEMNED MANY "NONSENSICAL" EXPERIMENTS A vigorous attack upon the methods adopted by many workers in cancer research is made by the Medical World (London), which claims that the dis-, ease should be studied on clinical lines and not " artificially " as at present. "Are the moneys subscribed by the public to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund really being frittered away in research which many of the workers realise to be useless? h asks the Medical World, which then goes on to say: "Cancer research, as at present conducted, is causing untold suffering to myriads of animals. We must insist on a halt being called to laboratory work on experimental animals. If it resulted in the cure of cancer there would be some excuse for it, but this is not the case. It is unnecessary and immoral. , A , " Cancer research, conducted over a long period and at enormous expense, has entirely failed to bring about a reduction in the death rate from this terrible disease." , . Research, it is further declared, is being conducted on entirely wrong lines, and "utterly absurd" methods are used by research workers. "Painting the ears of mice with tar may produce cancer, but this is certainly not the manner in which cancer is produced in the human sub- " Then why all these nonsensical experiments on rats, mice and other animals, most of which are bred in these days by commercial firms for the sole purpose of such absurd and totally misleading experiments? ' . The paper concludes by demanding a searching inquiry into the whole of the circumstances.