The Fight Against Cancer • The award made by the
- International Congress on Cancer of a prize of 1850, and (what is more important) 50 milligrammes of radium, to Professors Kennaway and Cook, of the Royale Cancer Hospital in Fulham Road, for outstanding research work in the fight against cancer is a tribute equally to the two scientists themselves and to the invaluable institution where their work is carried on. The war on cancer is being waged in all countries, and opinions still differ widely not merely as regards cure (so far as the disease is curable) but as regards origin and cause. Dr. Kennaway and Dr. Cook Ihal reason to believe that cancer is due not to an organism, but to some biochemical process. Other researches have elsewhere, notably those of Barnard and Gye, of course, led to a precisely opposite conclusion, and the truth is very far from being established yet—as the recipients of the international prize are at pains to point out. All that can be said in this ;particular connexion is that it is satisfactory that the award for progress along a road the goal of which is alleviation of acute human suffering, should have gone, out of all the world, to two Englishmen. Such a distinction is better than victory in the Olympic Games—if we cannot have both.
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