Prevention, not cure, is still the watchword of most cancer researchers. No cure has been found, but practically all types of cancer, if detected in time, can be checked. Proud of its prevention progress was the Third International Cancer Congress, which met last week in Atlantic City, discussed a number of remarkable suggestions for nipping young cancer growths in the bud.
Bow Ties. One cold winter day 14 years ago, while young Dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer was pondering cancer problems in Basle, Switzerland, he noticed a cup of steaming hot coffee and one of tea resting side by side on a window sill. The steam from both cups condensed on the window pane, but the crystals of the frost patterns were very different. Dr. Pfeiffer had a hunch that the blood of cancer victims and the blood of healthy persons might perhaps form crystals as different as those of coffee and tea. After trying some 23 substances, he hit on copper chloride as blood's best crystallizing agent. Last week Dr. Pfeiffer and his colleague, Dr. George Miley of Philadelphia's Hahnemann Medical College, described their new test for the presence of early cancer.
A drop of blood is taken from the finger tip of a cancer suspect. The blood is dissolved in a small amount of lukewarm sterile water, mixed with copper chloride and spread on a glass microscope slide to crystallize. Healthy blood forms a green crystal pattern which, under a microscope, looks like a delicate, fan-shaped palm leaf. But in cancerous blood some unknown chemical forms a pattern of scattered, double-wing bow ties. In 1,000 trials on known cancer victims, said Drs. Pfeiffer and Miley, the copper test was 80% accurate.
Greatest value of the test is that it can detect the presence of cancer cells long before any growth appears on the body.
"Bold Step." Ten years ago, 59-year-old Dr. John Ralston Davidson, former associate professor of medicine at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, set up a small laboratory in his cellar, to continue his experiments on mouse cancer.
He believed that somehow the growth of cancer was related to vitamin deficiency. According to standard laboratory methods, he produced cancers in young mice by coating them with tar for several weeks. The offspring of these mice were fed a diet rich in vitamins A, B, C, D and E. One day, Dr. Davidson found to his surprise that they were no longer susceptible to cancer when tarred. From the tissues of "newly dropped young" of these resistant mice, Dr. Davidson made a boiled filtrate. Injections of this filtrate, plus a high vitamin diet, produced strong cancer resistance in ordinary mice who had been tarred.