Fingerprints from the Virus

The evidence that L-asparaginase seems effective against only some forms of leukemia again emphasizes the fact that "cancer" is not just one disease but many. The search for a "cure," therefore, is a search for many cures; researchers must pursue clues in every conceivable direction. Last week's news of the pursuit involved viruses--plus additional confirmation that oral contraceptive pills have not only been acquitted of causing cancer but actually help prevent one form in certain cases.

Viruses have long been known to produce cancers in animals, and are suspected of doing the same in man. Yet virus particles have never been found in human cancers. St. Louis University's Dr. Maurice Green now believes that even though the guilty viruses escape, he can get the evidence to convict them because they leave biochemical fingerprints. In hamster tumors that he provoked with a known virus, Dr. Green told an American Cancer Society seminar, he found large amounts of an abnormal, new form of RNA, one of the two principal nucleic acids. Now he is looking for similar fingerprints in human cancers.

Where birth-control pills are concerned, Harvard's Dr. Robert W. Kistner last week reported that he had prescribed oral contraceptives containing the synthetic equivalent of the female hormone progesterone to 66 women with signs of precancerous change of the endometrium (lining of the womb). The endometrium is a fairly common cancer site, with at least 3,700 fatal cases expected in the U.S. this year, mainly among women who fail to ovulate and therefore do not secrete progesterone. But among Dr. Kistner's 66 patients, some treated as long as nine years ago, the precancerous condition was corrected, and cancer itself never developed.

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