Answer to Cancer?

Cancer research twice made sensational news last week:

Penicillin seems to have done it again. A few cells of a certain kind of mouse cancer growing in a test tube have succumbed to the fabulous drug. The penicillin damaged or killed cancer cells, left normal cells unharmed. It took three times the cancer-killing dose of penicillin to hurt the normal cells. When penicillin-treated cancer cells were transplanted to cancer-susceptible rats, none got cancer. Untreated cells gave cancer to all of them.

These remarkable results were obtained by a man who is not a doctor. He is Corporal Ivor Cornman, 28, who was studying at the University of Michigan for a Ph.D. when he joined the Army in 1942. His experiment was done on a 45-day furlough at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia. Says Corporal Cornman in this week's Science: "'[These studies] have revealed a selective lethal effect of penicillin upon rat and mouse sarcoma cells, of which a full account will be published later."

Lest his report make cancer sufferers prematurely hopeful, Drs. Margaret Reed Lewis and Warren Harmon Lewis (husband & wife), who used to supervise Corporal Cornman's experiments at the Institute, said last week that much work must still be done before anyone can be sure whether or not penicillin can fight cancers growing in animals or people. Dr. Francis Carter Wood, retired head of the cancer research at Columbia University, added the warning that Cornman's experiment applies only to a special type of mouse tumor, may not apply to any other.

H II. In London Sir George Gibson Mitcheson, M.P. told the Daily Mail that he thought the charity-run Hosa Laboratories which he founded had discovered a good treatment for cancer. Treatment consists of daily subcutaneous injections of an extract of parathyroid glands (small glands close to the thyroid). Name of the extract: H11.

The announcement said that the laboratory work was done by James Henry Thompson and 30 assistants, with the collaboration of 200 hospitals and 1,200 physicians. So far, the injections have been used only on hopeless cases. Said Sir George: "We are anxious not to raise any false hopes, but the results of our extract . . . have been encouraging."

The British Medical Research Union was optimistic about the new treatment. But doctors at Manhattan's Memorial Hospital who had never heard of Hosa Laboratories or Researcher Thompson, were skeptical. Said one doctor: "Pure bunk." But he admitted a bare possibility that there might be something to H 11. Even specialists have little idea where the eventual answer to cancer will be found.

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