Phosphorus for Cancer

Deep-seated cancers can sometimes be treated by Xray, but the treatment sometimes proves dangerous, because the X-ray may injure normal tissue. Doctors have tried to find an X-ray substitute which would hit only the diseased target and not ricochet. Last week Dr. John Meredith Kenney of Manhattan's famed Memorial

Hospital told some colleagues in Cleveland that Memorial's doctors thought they had the answer. Their weapon, made by California Atom-Smasher Ernest Orlando Lawrence: radioactive phosphorus.

Radioactive phosphorus, which Professor Lawrence puts up in liquid form, can be swallowed, in minute quantities, without danger. At Memorial. Drs. Kenney, Helen Quincy Woodard and Leonidas Marinelli gave small quantities of the stuff to patients who were to be operated on--and to a few about to die. When the tumors were removed, or the patients autopsied, the doctors calculated the amount of phosphorus absorbed by the cancerous tissue. They found that the chemical settled in the tumors, barely affected normal cells. Once in the tumors, the phosphorus acts like radium, burning out the rebel cells.

For bone cancers especially, said Dr. Kenney last week, radioactive phosphorus "offers a real hope."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.