Progress Report

The generals in medicine's research war on cancer met last week in Chicago and claimed tentative gains along two strategically important roads:

A Hint from Hormones. Drs. Konrad Dobriner and Cornelius P. Rhoads of Manhattan's Memorial Hospital reported progress on Memorial's pet project--the search for the long-suspected link between hormones and cancer. After five years of extracting and peering, the doctors recently isolated a new hormonelike substance, called "Compound 18," that appears in the urine of almost all cancer patients, and almost never in normal urine. "18" may some day prove helpful in the detection of hidden internal cancer. One trouble is that 18 sometimes turns up in connection with various noncancerous conditions, such as high blood pressure. But Dobriner & Rhoads found that in at least one case, 18 appeared some months before cancer developed. This suggested that the strange endocrine substance might have something to do with the very root of the mystery: cancer's cause.

A Hint from Medicine Men. Meanwhile, the chemical war against cancer took a strange turn. Scientists are now experimenting with an ancient remedy well known to patent-medicine makers: the mandrake, or Mayapple root. For centuries, men have regarded the mandrake with awe. Old Testament writers mentioned it with respect as a fertility symbol (Rachel purchased some from Leah at the price of Jacob's spending the night in Leah's tent). Medieval men, certain that there was something odd about mandrake, believed that it would shriek in Gothic agony when pulled out of the ground.

Manhattan's Memorial had podophyllin (an extract of mandrake root) on its research list; but through a laboratory accident some of the stuff prematurely got into test-tube cultures of cancerous and normal cells. It stopped the growth of the cancer cells, had no effect on the normal cells. Meanwhile, National Cancer Institute researchers tried podophyllin on mouse cancers, got comparable results.

But, reported Drs. Richard Ormsbee and Ivor Cornman, podophyllin cannot be used on cancer patients until someone isolates its cancer-killing element and separates that from the rest. In any sizable quantity, the root is poisonous.

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