(10 of 10)
Though NCI was set up in 1937, it never really got rolling until after World War II. Meanwhile, Dr. Heller had become chief of the PHS's VD division, set up rapid-treatment centers around the country. Thanks to these and penicillin, says Heller, "I worked myself out of a job." In 1948 he got the top spot at NCI, but not until 1956 did cancer become a personal matter to him. Then a small growth (basal cell carcinoma) developed at the base of his left nostril. It was removed surgically, and Cancer Fighter Heller rates himself a cured cancer victim.
His relaxed style enables Heller to handle a hodgepodge of administrative duties, keep a balance between jealous scientific factions, attend countless cancer congresses (he was in Lima and Bogotá last month, is in Denver this week), and handle touchy appropriations questions with congressional committees. Dr. Heller is opposed to a "crash program," often advocated by laymen with the Manhattan Project in mind. There is, he says, not enough fundamental information available to base it on. But he insists: "With an accelerated and orderly effort to find the answers to cancer, we are going to get them. You can't use all the resources of this country—all the things that have conquered worlds—without something giving. If we could find just one cause of one cancer, and show how it operates, we would have our foot in the door of mankind's most terrible killer. I am confident that we will have some success in the next few years."
*Named for no greensward, but for Surgeon Roswell Park (1852-1914), who announced in 1897 that cancer was probably caused by "infective particles," decided that in two years they could be pinpointed, and that a cure could be found if he had an appropriation of $10,000. He found the money but no cure.