Crossover for Life

Rare indeed is the surgeon who would knowingly transplant a malignant cancer from one patient to another, and rarer still the patient who would willingly accept it. In Buffalo last week, two surgeons made two such transplants between patients who not only accepted but demanded the surgery. For both, it was the last slender hope for reprieve from a rapidly fatal disease.

Robert F. Allen, 29, a varsity football guard at Illinois in 1956-58 and now a Tucson insurance salesman, felt last fall as though he had pulled a muscle in his left leg. X rays showed something far worse: osteogenic sarcoma, an uncommon cancer of the bone. In September, Mayo Clinic surgeons amputated the leg. But the fast-spreading cancer soon colonized Allen's spine and lungs. He was given only a few months to live.

Allen had read about Dr. Sigmond H. Nadler, of Buffalo's Roswell Park Memorial Institute, and his bold technique of crossover transplants. Dr. Nadler's theory: although cancer cells are abnormal, they are still the patient's own cells, so his body does not develop antibodies to destroy them. Since one person develops antibodies against another's cells, why not, Nadler reasoned, transplant cancer tissue from Patient A to Patient B, let B develop the antibody, and then transfuse some of B's white blood cells (which carry antibodies) back to A, where they might kill the cancer cells? Since B would also be a cancer patient, he would get A's white cells after a two-way transplant.

Dr. Nadler told Allen he would do the operation if Allen could find a fellow sufferer with the same disease and blood type. Relentless telephoning put Allen in touch with Harry T. Griffith, 63, of Flourtown, Pa., sometime professional ball player, whose left collarbone had been removed in December because of osteogenic sarcoma. In Buffalo the men met and were bloodmatched.

Surgeons opened Allen's right chest wall and removed a 3/4in. cube of tumor tissue. Other surgeons implanted this just under the skin of Griffith's thigh and, using only local anesthetics, removed a piece of similar size from Griffith's collarbone region. The surgeons then implanted this in Allen's thigh. Both men are expected to develop antibody against each other's cancer cells within a week or two. Then small daily crossover transfusions of white blood cells will be made in hopes of checking their disease.

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