Mouse Matching

Two famed breeders of mice are Professor Maud Slye of the University of Chicago and Dr. Clarence Cook Little of Jackson Memorial Laboratory at Bar Harbor, Me. Each has raised, killed and dissected more than 150,000 mice. Their purpose: to learn whether or not a tendency to cancer is inherited, and, if so, how. Dr. Slye has decided and firmly declared that cancer is genetically a recessive character which she can breed out of her mice and could, if given a stupendously free hand, breed out of human beings (TIME, Aug. 31). Dr. Little, less loudly, declares Dr. Slye's contentions pure poppycock.

Last week, inspired by current campaigns to collect money for cancer-prevention studies, Dr. Little blazed up: "It has always seemed to me a great pity that some neutral and properly qualified laboratory should not make a very simple test of the correctness of Miss Slye's hypothesis concerning the recessive Mendelian inheritance of all types of cancer. If the matter could not be tested easily there would be some excuse for continuing the publication of contradictory evidence. . . ."

Briefly, Dr. Little asked Dr. Slye to give, loan or sell to some neutral institution a herd of male mice which she would certify as having no tendency to cancer in their makeup. Then he would give 1,000 of his cancer-susceptible female mice for breeding at a neutral institution. Children of those matings would be bred, brother to sister.

"If cancer appears in any of the hybrid females " said Dr. Little, "Miss Slye's theory is incorrect, and the type of inheritance is not simply Mendelian, nor is cancer recessive. The test should take from two to three years, but is so direct and simple, involving only elementary principles of Mendelian inheritance and no permanent removal of any of Miss Slye's animals from her laboratory, that I cannot see why it should not be supported and begun at once. If Miss Slye's theory is correct, its importance as a practical matter to the human race is great. If it is incorrect, it is high time to recognize that fact generally and end the controversy."

In Chicago Dr. Slye tartly said she could not be bothered with Dr. Little's project simply because "the non-tumor strains with which this preliminary work was done, and which I expanded for this experiment, are now no longer in existence.

"Some five years ago, I offered to make this test. I drew up a contract for this experiment and submitted it to Dr. Little. To this offer I received no reply and the matter was dropped."

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