Medicine: Cancer Spores?

Experimental evidence discounts the possibility that germs cause cancer. Nonetheless, ever since the 1880’s soon after microbes were first recognized as agents of disease, investigators have tried to connect germs with cancer. Most discussed recent proponent of the germ theory has been Dr. William Ewart Gye of London, who indicated a virus. Last year Dr. Edward Watts Saunders of Cornell suggested a streptococcus.

Last week Drs. Thomas James Glover of New York and Jacob Lenhert Engle of Philadelphia, after ten years’ research, proposed a spore-bearing organism. They find the spore-bearing germ in human breast cancer, can grow the material like any germ, and with cultures produce secondary cancers in guinea pigs, animals notoriously difficult to render cancerous. The National Institute of Health thinks so well of Drs. Glover and Engle’s work that it let their last week’s announcement bear the Institute’s cachet.