Light on Leukemia

Blood, for the most part, is a mixture of white cells, red cells and fluid serum. Leukemia, an invariably fatal form of cancer, is a disease in which the patient's blood becomes overloaded with certain types of white cells. For 100 years or more, doctors have accepted the theory that leukemia is caused by an unknown factor which goads the body into riotous overproduction of white cells. Last week, researchers at the University of California offered a new explanation.

Like all cellular life, the white cells of the blood are constantly "being born" and "dying." Some body mechanism, still unidentified, must constantly dispose of the normal accumulation of white cells. The California scientists concluded that one such mechanism is located in the lungs. Its breakdown may prove an added and important cause of the excess of young white cells in leukemia.

To check their theory, they injected huge quantities of white leukemic cells into a vein of each of five non-leukemic patients. Blood counts taken from an artery after the blood had passed through the lungs showed an immediate drop in the white cell count.

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