The Greatest Killer of Kids
Neuberger, Richard L.
The Greatest Killer of Kids by RICHARD L. NEUBERGER My wife and I have trudged up lofty mountains together, but the walk we shall never forget lasted for only a few paces. It was along the...
...My bill calls fqr $500 million for special projects in cancer research, to be spent under the direction of the National Cancer Institute at Be-thesda, Maryland...
...The rest has gone for treatment of agonizing cases of cancer in households lacking the ability to pay for proper medical care...
...The allotment for the Institute in fiscal 1955 was $21.7 million...
...Somewhere, perhaps just beyond the horizon of present medical knowledge, lurks a chemical or combination of chemicals which could mean a longer and happier life to 26 million Americans—to say nothing of even more millions in the other nations of the globe...
...It is the proximity to success which makes doctors like Ravdin and Farber feel that an all-out effort is imperative...
...Yet can any war compare in importance with the war against cancer...
...Mankind must mobilize all its resources of wealth and ingenuity to assist in the struggle...
...Nearly all of this traces back to the program begun by the National Cancer Institute...
...Science, thus far, had failed to find a lasting remedy...
...But I would rather vote half a billion dollars to the National Cancer Institute than for any other undertaking of which I know...
...Had I placed in the hands of medical researchers and other scientists all the tools with which to combat this awful disease...
...After all, no city ever would risk trying to maintain its municipal fire department with voluntary donations...
...Cancer, I believe, must be fought with the same unrestrained feeling of emergency and crisis...
...Advisory panels of the National Cancer Institute, consisting of the country's leading cancer specialists, would not have to disburse the total sum within a single year unless promising avenues of research seemed open...
...What if not 30,000 but 300,000 anti-cancer properties and compounds had been screened and tested annually...
...No partisan politics is involved in the proposal for half a billion dollars to be spent on cancer research, because this withering disease does not respect party lines, either...
...Why, I wondered, were we not likewise investing practically unlimited sums in an all-out, unrelenting war against the terrible disease that was about to claim the life of the winsome five-year-old girl with dark braids, whose face was puffy from the effects of injections she was receiving in a desperate effort to stem the lethal onslaught of leukemia...
...Although Dr...
...And he discussed an "untold number of compounds" that hold some promise of even greater discoveries in this realm...
...At present, funds appropriated by Congress must be allocated by the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30...
...We believe the perils of cancer involve such extraordinary circumstances that funds should always be on hand for its study and analysis...
...Many great doctors believe that the principal chance for conquering cancer lies in chemicals and compounds —in chemotherapy...
...Yet, which do you regard as the greater menace to you and your family—fire or cancer...
...Soon the breakdown of blood and bone marrow would snuff out her little life...
...Yet, of approximately $25,000,000 collected by the American Cancer Relief Society, only about 40 per cent of the total has been assigned to research and study...
...In addition, doctors like Ravdin and Farbet believe this is only a tiny fraction of the amount really needed to isolate some property which will successfully eliminate cancerous growths in human beings...
...Farber signed his personal note for $54,000 to found the Jimmy Fund section of Children's Hospital in 1947, children stricken with leukemia survived only from four weeks to two months after they came under treatment...
...We shake our heads dolefully that mass production of Dr...
...But on the day my wife and I spent at the Jimmy Fund Building, I was shocked to learn that more children die of cancer than of any other single cause except accidents...
...It has inaugurated, for example, a national cancer chemotherapy program, which seeks to discover compounds and drugs that may enable human cells to resist the depredations of cancer...
...But he looked at us with the characteristic courage of youth, and I remember that his shock of tawny hair stood up like a plume...
...Ravdin told Senator Hill's Committee that "we do need a large sum of money, which can be looked upon as venture money that can be used rapidly to implement contracts with industry when break-throughs are made...
...Cancer eventually strikes two out of three American families...
...Is this too faint a hope...
...Under the leadership of Senator Hill and Senator Smith, some of us have succeeded during recent years in nearly tripling the appropriations for the National Cancer Institute...
...As I stared at him I wondered if I, as a United States Senator, had done all that I could and should...
...Some of us in the Senate plan a special enabling act to authorize this procedure...
...Public Health Service...
...And, as these words are written, a letter arrives in the mail which confirms my feelings...
...Unless some new cures or preventive measures are discovered through research, 26 million people now alive in the United States are doomed to die from cancer...
...I looked at the little boy in fear and awe and some sense of shame...
...Ravdin is, himself, a skilled surgeon, he candidly told Senator Hill's Committee on Health Appropriations last May that surgery had reached its ceiling in the treatment of cancer...
...In one year cancer claimed nearly ten times the number of Americans who perished in three years of the fighting in Korea...
...Eminent doctors do not think so...
...In another room, small boys were fascinated by a miniature electric train with signals and bridges...
...The voluntary agencies perform magnificently in this field...
...Suddenly, all that I could think of was the $44 billion which our government invests annually in various weapons of war...
...But for fiscal 1958 it will total $56.4 million, and not one dissenting voice was raised when this sum gained Senate approval...
...Yet tests of the marrow in his chestbone indicate that he still has leukemia...
...I always had thought of cancer as a disease of the elderly...
...Such tests, of course, require immense sums of money...
...When Dr...
...Today, 50 per cent of the children are alive after 14 months and 10 per cent are alive after two years...
...So near and yet so far"—the fearful malady has been repulsed, but it will strike again and this time probably with lethal consequences...
...The reason this episode will endure forever in our memories can be explained with terrible terseness...
...It would have about it the same urgency which characterized the prodigious Manhattan Project during World War II, after Dr...
...Its National Cancer Institute is attacking the problem of cancer on many fronts...
...Unless some cure is found, 16 people in every 100 born are destined to perish of cancer...
...We look back now with pity upon the era when people perished in huge numbers from smallpox, scarlet fever, and diphtheria...
...Furthermore, it is essential to emphasize that a major share of the allotments for research made by the National Cancer Institute go to private organizations of one kind or another, such as medical schools, clinics, hospitals, and the laboratories operated by the drug manufacturers...
...The injections had produced some remission, but only temporarily...
...Off the hall, in little cubicles, adults with grim faces sat in comfortable leather chairs and watched the children at play...
...But this cannot be left to legerdemain or magic...
...This did not make its ravages any less frightful, but at least its victims—so I thought—had experienced a fair share of life's bounty and enjoyments...
...Isidor S. Ravdin, chairman of the board of regents of th"-American College of Surgeons and a member of the team which operated on President Eisenhower for ileitis in June of 1956...
...But what if the program during the past decade had been multiplied many times in dimensions and in scope...
...Comparatively few of them had long to live...
...out on him early in life...
...Albert Einstein had told President Roosevelt that vast experimentation with the ore known as pitchblende might produce a chain reaction resulting in a mighty new source of explosive energy...
...And then this surgeon who is one of the President's doctors went on to emphasize that the money should not be budgeted for a year, but should be "available for these purposes until it is expended...
...Senator Smith has often emphasized America's large expenditures for frivolities and amusements, as contrasted with the relatively puny sums spent for probing into the causes of cancer and other grim maladies...
...The outcome, of course, was the first atomic bomb—developed through initial expenditures of $2 billion...
...He confessed to skepticism over "any further appreciable gain which may be expected from surgery or X-ray alone...
...Yet the destructive fury of cancer dwarfs even such plagues...
...The adults in the waiting room were their fathers and mothers, braced for the news which would confirm the dreaded diagnosis...
...Children played in the corridor — some with blocks and scooters, some with dolls...
...One of these men is Dr...
...Was it possible that then the conquest of the sinister cancer of the blood called leukemia might be not fleetingly transient, but perhaps enduring enough to enable the five-year-old girl at the Jimmy Fund Building to live out her normal span...
...Two of the most active advocates of more generous federal disbursements for medical research are Senator Lister Hill, Alabama Democrat, and Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Maine Republican...
...Sidney Farber has said that "there are many, many people with advanced cancer who have had better lives, relief of pain, and prolongation of life, in some cases up to seven or eight years, because of discoveries in the last decade in the chemotherapy of cancer...
...It was along the corridor of a modern brick building in Boston...
...Ravdin spoke hopefully of "a wide variety of chemical agents, now available, which retard the growth of malignant tumors in animals, and in certain instances lead to the complete disappearance of these tumors...
...Edward Jenner's serum came too late to save these unfortunates...
...But such agents as nitrogen mustard and anti-metabolites like Amethopterin have produced temporary retreat of the disease...
...Other children read books in a little library, and we could see through the doorway that Mickey Mouse and Paul Bunyan of the north woods had been painted decoratively on the walls...
...This is the scene of the National Institutes of Health, which form the stronghold of the U.S...
...And the letter from Professor Fred M. Shideler, head of the department of journalism, closes with this plea: "Anything less than the maximum effort to stamp out cancer, as the great killer it is, should be considered as inexcusable...
...In the Western state where I was born and raised, smallpox once ravaged Indians and whites alike on the old frontier...
...Some of the children were gaunt and pale, while others had cheeks which seemed abnormally swollen...
...Although I am a Democratic Senator, it comes from a prominent Republican on the campus of Oregon State College, who describes the agony of standing by helplessly while his 18-year-old son died of cancer...
...One boy is playing softball after eight years of care for leukemia and does not know the true nature of his affliction...
...This was the Jimmy Fund Building of Boston's famous Children's Hospital, where more youngsters are under treatment for cancer than at any other place in the world...
...When Maurine and I were at the Jimmy Fund Building, we saw a little boy of about eight being led into one of the small surgeries where his bone marrow would be tapped under anesthesia for suspected leukemia...
...The instrument for achieving prog-gress in medical research is a stately red-brick building of modern design in the green Maryland countryside, surrounded by clusters of smaller structures...
...It originally was dedicated to a little boy named "Jimmy," whose luck ran RICHARD L. NEUBERGER is a United States Senator from Oregon...
...This is why I am sponsoring in the United States Senate a bill to provide for a "crash" program in cancer research...
...It has meant only relief so far, and not a permanent cure...
...If medical history repeats itself, a chemical may suddenly show up that will, for no explainable reason, be a 'magic bullet' that destroys cancer...
...At that time streptococcus blood-poisoning was often fatal...
...Senator Hill frequently has warned that ample federal funds must constantly be available so that the most skilled medical researchers will not be lured away into private practice...
...Yet, I thought, what if there had been spent during past years as much on the compound being thrust into her veins as on aircraft carriers or jet fighter planes...
...It is toward such a goal that I believe the National Cancer Institute should have an opportunity to spend practically unrestricted sums of money...
...There were virtually no exceptions to this...
...This is half a billion dollars, which means it amounts to one-fourth of what the country spent to manufacture the original atomic bomb and only one-eighty-eighth of what the Treasury will spend in the present fiscal year for armaments and military projects of all kinds...
...All the children had some form of cancer...
...As a member of the Senate, I help to vote billions of dollars in appropriations for all kinds of purposes— for armaments, for support of six "basic" farm crops, for public works projects, for courts and prisons, for roads and highways...
...The legislation I have introduced is no reckless "give-away" scheme...
...Cancer kills one man, woman, or child every two minutes in the United States...
...Dr...
...Eventually it may kill him...
...I had a streptococcus infection in that year and almost died when my best friend was on his way back from England with the first sulfonilamide in his pocket...
...G. P. Rhoads, director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute of Cancer Research in New York City, has declared: "We have far more information now about how to restrict selectively the growth of cancer by drugs than we had in 1936 about restraint of bacteria...
...Had my timidity and penu-riousness, and that of my colleagues, perhaps cost this eight-year-old his faint chance for life...
...After all, the rampant growth of human cells commonly described as cancer never waits for the end of either fiscal or calendar years...
...Almost two and one-half times as many Americans died of cancer during World War II as were killed in action on all our world-wide battle-fronts...
...Farber showed us statistics revealing that, while 579 American children died of polio in the last year before development of the Salk vaccine, more than six times this number had succumbed to cancer: 3,761...
...And if such a possibility could be even remotely within grasp, dare we deny any resource or any dollar to its attainment...
...Probably none was destined to grow to manhood or womanhood...
...Now there are many bedrooms donated by parents or grandparents and which bear bronze plaques perpetuating remembrance of some adored boy or girl whose career was cut short by cancer...
...Sidney Farber, the gentle and soft-spoken director of the Children's Cancer Research Foundation, had observed that cancer as exclusively an affliction of old age was a misconception...
...This is the practical application of chemotherapy...
...Some may wonder why private contributions cannot accomplish the job...
...And then Dr...
Vol. 22 • February 1958 • No. 2
