LIBERAL FINANCING OF MEDICAL RESEARCH.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20514, 4 September 1936, Page 8

LIBERAL FINANCING OF MEDICAL RESEARCH.

Medical research will in the future, if a promise made recently by the Minister of Health (the Hon. P. Fraser) is put into effect, receive a larger Government grant; and few will gainsay the claim that extensive scientific investigation into human ailments is a worthy field for State assistance. The ignorance that in the past surrounded the practising of medicine and surgery has disappeared, and the civilised world is attentively expecting further epoch-making remedies that must still await discovery by diligent research. This Dominion already has to its credit far-reaching achievements in the prevention of infaht and maternal mortality and in the lowering of the genefal death rate. But inadequate finance must prevent much more from being done; there are for instance such serious problems as goitre and hydatids which have a special prominence in the causes of death. Throughout the world new steps are regularly being found for the prevention of disease, and the raising of human vitality, and there is even hope that the dreaded scourge known as cancer will some day be removed from the list of causes of human incapacity and suffering. The field of deep X-ray therapy has new achievements to its credit, and reports on the neuro-horomonal treatment of cancer lead doctors in Germany, France, Switzerland and Yugoslavia to believe that a cure will not be long in coming. There were 101 desperate cases in 114 treated, and all were beyond known cures; but even though fotlr died, many severe cases were able to walk again and some were even able to return to work. If that much progress has been made in the research war on canCer, and even if all other medical progress is excluded, every support should be offered to the New Zealand Government to Carry out its promise and finance medical research on a more liberal scale. This Country is fortunate in its climate, in its productivity, even in its remarkably low death rate; and with extensive investigations into complaints more or less peculiar to the country, medical research must mean that all our advantages will in time be used for the promotion of the fuller enjoyment, vitality and capacity of the population. ELECTION ACTIVITY IN MANUKAU. Notwithstanding the fact that the Labour Member for Manukau, who has been elevated to the exalted position of High Commisiouer for New Zealand in Loudon, tendered his resignation as a member of Parliament only a few days ago, considerable electioneering activity is already in evidence. Some sort of surprise was created by the appearance in the field of a representative of the British Labour Party, who announced that he carried a message of good wishes to the Labour cause in New Zealand. He said the City of London would watch the cont. 'it with the closest interest. This is most intriguing, becai se it can be said that the whole of New Zealand will await the verdict with equal interest, while, of course the Government will be somewhat anxious to discover how the country is responding to the first doses of Socialism, and just hoW far the critics are right who say the Party has lost ground since the general election.