Atoms & Cancer

Some doctors believe .that, of all the weapons against cancer now being forged, the most promising is atomic energy. A top-rank U.S. cancer specialist, Dr. Cornelius Packard Rhoads, director of Manhattan's Memorial Hospital, summed up the reasons why, in a report to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.

Experts agree that the best hope of a cancer cure rests on finding a medicinal substance to seek out and destroy cancer cells without harming normal body cells. All known drugs fail. But radioactive isotopes of elements normally used by the body have recently been found to be effective against two diseases helpful in studying cancer. The diseases: 1) hyperthyroidism (overactivity of the thyroid gland); 2) polycythemia (overactivity of tissues which manufacture red blood cells).

From a cancer researcher's standpoint, the thyroid gland is an ideal organ to work on: it is easily reached with a test material--iodine--since it takes up nearly all the iodine fed to the body. It is also sensitive to atomic radiation. Researchers have found that radioactive iodine inhibits overactive thyroids; carefully measured amounts of it usually cure hyperthyroidism.

Blood-forming tissues, similarly, have an affinity for phosphorus. Radioactive phosphorus alleviates polycythemia.

Blood-Stream Ferrets. If atomic radiation can inhibit a gland, why not a cancer cell? Dr. Rhoads reported that in some cases radioactive iodine does seem to control thyroid cancer. Exhibit A: at Manhattan's Montefiore Hospital a patient whose cancerous thyroid gland had been removed was discovered to have cancerous daughter cells from the thyroid scattered throughout his body. When he was given radioactive iodine, the radioactive atoms hunted down the cancer cells like ferrets.

Radioactive phosphorus has been tried against certain types of leukemia, a cancer of blood-forming tissues. But in most cases of leukemia and thyroid cancer, these treatments do no permanent good. (One reason: in thyroid cancer, the more malignant the cancer, the less prone it is to pick up iodine.) Dr. Rhoads believes that inorganic elements like iodine and phosphorus offer little real hope.

But radioactive organic compounds are another story. Investigators think that cancers may be vulnerable to certain radioactive amino acids (proteins). They also consider radioactive sex hormones a promising line of attack against the common cancers of the sex organs (breast, uterus, prostate gland). Said Dr. Rhoads: "I am very hopeful that startling discoveries will be made in ... five, ten or 15 years."

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