WONDERFUL WORK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22964, 20 August 1936, Page 18

WONDERFUL WORK

"FIGHT AGAINST CANCER MAUD SLYE AND HER MICE Cancer is annually responsible for more deaths in New Zealand than can •be assigned to any cause other than diseases of the heart. In 1934 there were 1699 deaths from cancer in the Dominion, a death-rate of 10,6 per 10,000 of the population, and the figures are not improving. The lowest cancer death rate is shown in Ceylon with .9 per 10,000 of population; then comes Greece with 2.4, Chile 4.8. Italy 6.7, Canada 9.4, Australia 10.1, Germany 11.6, and Austria and Scotland giving the highest rate of 14.8 and 14.9 respectively. Science must admit that with all the advance in her laboratories the conquest of cancer is still to be written. Mankind may have to wait generations and millions more die before it is. But, through the darkness, there is to-day some light coming. It is kindled by a wpman, Maud Slye, who, 25 years ago, consecrated her life to the solution of the cancer problem (states an exchange). The interim report of her findings aroused considerable interest lately. Maud Slye entered the University of Chicago in 1895, and by working in the University offices financed unaided three years of undergraduate study. Later, as a teacher of psychology in the Rhode Island State Normal School, she became absorbed in the problems of human heredity, and, returning to Chicago with a small fellowship barely paying her room and board, she purchased a pair of Japanese dancing mice for her heredity experiments. This strain exhibited a peculiar waltzing motion, which was attributed to some nervous disturbance. She also obtained some albino mice and set to work crossing them in an effort to determine the factors in the inheritance of nervous abnormalities. NO ASSISTANCE AND LITTLE MONEY Her laboratory was a corner of the basement in the Zoology Department. Her animals were prolific—soon there were more than 100 of them—and, with no assistant and little money, she spent 18 hours and more daily working, sterilising cages and apparatus. Then, one day in 1910, she noticed that one of her mice had developed a breast cancer. She had been hearing of some research being done at that time among cancer-infected cattle in the Chicago stockyards. Other investigators, also, were noticing the inheritance of cancer in mice, Medical literature also contained vague references to the occurrence of cancer in certain human families. But thus far no carefully controlled breeding experiments had been carried through to establish the inheritability or non-inheritability I of cancer. Recognising the importance of such an investigation.. Maud Slye | determined to make it. She would try to find out by appropriate breeding experiments what happens when large numbers of cancerous and non-cancerous mice are crossed. She realised that it meant a lifetime | of work, for her conclusions must be j based on thousands of matings. More- | over she needed funds. She nad often i to go hungry to feed her mice, which every four days consumed their own weight of cow's milk, fresh wheat bread, timothy hay, and bird seed. Then Otho S. A. Sprague died, leaving millions of dollars for medical research. The Otho Sprague Memorial Institute was founded, and Maud Slye was made a staff member, with the eminent pathologist, H. Gideon Wells, as director of the institute. For the first time she received a salary and a laboratory large enough to work in in i comfort. COLOSSAL, NEVER-ENDING JOB The primitive little mouse-breeding place was moved to a two-storey building, and Dr Wells agreed to collaborate

with Miss Slye in microscopic analyses so that no professional questions could be raised concerning the accuracy of her diagnoses. Her mice, splendidly cared for, were strong, prolific, superb. She kept adding scrupulously sterilised cages row upon row until they reached the ceiling. Every mouse was carefully examined once a week for nodules. When anything new happened to a mouse it was inscribed on its cage door and entered m a record book. As soon after death as possible, the mouse was autopsied and its tissues examined under the microscope. These findings were checked and a complete history covering date of birth, matings, cause of death, and pedigree entered in the record. It was a colossal, never-ending job. Later, larger quarters were found, which .are to-day tenanted by more than 10.000 living mice, all descendants of that handful of forbears bought 25 years ago. On the first floor are the offspring of cancerous mice. On the second is the hospital, where all mice showing cancers are transferred. On the top floor are the cancer-free stock, and in the university's pathology department is a huge museum of tissue slides and autopsied mice, every one of which has passed through Maud Slye's hands. EPOCH-MAKING RESULTS Out of this singular kingdom of mice have come her epoch-making results. In May, 1913, she read her first paper before the American Society for Cancer Research, showing how, in the first three years of her work, she had performed autopsies on 5000 mice, 298 of which showed cancer. Her results pointed to heredity rather than contagion as the cause of large numbers of cancerous individuals in a family. "I have eliminated contagion," Maud Slye wrote in this report, "as a factor in the transmission of cancer; cancerous and non-cancerous mice were kept in the same cage. When a cancerous mouse died non-tumorous mice were given the soiled cage with all, debris soiled by the dead mouse. Yet noncancerous mice mated with non-can-cerous mice in these cages produced non-cancerous offspring." This was a telling blow to the theory of the infectivity of cancer—a theory hundreds of years old and still persisting. In 1926 Maud Slye announced her belief in the possibility of the control and prevention of human cancer upon the basis of the knowledge she had built up on the genetics of mouse cancer. In mice, she has actually succeeded in eliminating cancers by persistently mating through successive generations pure non-cancer strains with hybrid susceptible cancer carriers. What is needed now in attacking the human cancer problem is more exact statistical data on family histories and a more general inclination to allow human autopsies. In that way valuable preventive knowledge could be gathered. Then, by selective methods, it might prove possible to eliminate cancer in men, as Miss Slye has consistently and completely eliminated it from hundreds of mouse families. Maud Slye is still at work; her routine of a generation has not stopped for a day. The years have rolled by. years of patient, almost superhuman effort, during which she has worked like one possessed until she has grown grey, older, and more tired-looking. She still lives across the street from her Chicago laboratory, where she moved because one blizzardy .light she feared for the safety of her precious strains and rushed through the storm to them, and never after dared live far away. No zealot ever led a more consecrated life than this woman dedicated to a single purpose—to rid mankind of the curse of cancer.