What About Cancer?

The influence of heredity on cancer was a topic for 40 experts in Bar Harbor, Me. last week. They concluded that they knew very little about it. The meeting was called by Dr. (of Science) Clarence Cook Little, head of the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory where, since its founding in 1929, the devious ways of mouse cancer have been studied. Some things the experts did not know:

P: How to define the word cancer (they finally agreed that, for the present, a cancer is whatever a qualified pathologist thinks it is).

P: Why some mice develop cancers when suckled by mice of a cancerous strain.

P: Whether identical twins are more likely to get identical cancers than ordinary brothers & sisters.

P: Whether susceptibility to cancer depends chiefly on inherited factors, body chemicals or external environment.

Though the experts emphasized their own ignorance, the meeting brought hope to many cancer researchers: it passed a 14-point resolution outlining a program for coordinated cancer research--the first time in the U.S. that a concerted attack on the disease has been organized.

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