Medicine: Cancer Crusade (Cont'd.)

"But for Heaven's sake! Are you going to build a Chinese wall around new methods?"

Herbert Livingston Satterlee, lawyer brother-in-law of J. P. Morgan, last week flung aside his usual self-restraint and snapped the exclamatory question at Dr. John Augustus Hartwell, president of the New York Academy of Medicine. Mr. Satterlee as lawyer was asking the New York State Department of Social Welfare's permission for San Francisco's Drs. Walter Bernard Coffey and John Davis Humber to operate a cancer research laboratory and clinic at Huntington, L. I. Arguing against the permit were Dr. Hartwell, Dr. Francis Carter Wood, director of Columbia University's Institute of Cancer Research, Dr. William Hallock Park, immunologist, and other chiefs of New York medicine.

Drs. Coffey & Humber, who work for the Southern Pacific Co. in San Francisco, last year cautiously announced that they were alleviating hopeless cases of cancer by means of adrenal cortex extract derived from sheep. The Hearst press recognized the kernel of news in this announcement and puffed it so that thousands of cancer victims abandoned the orthodox treatment of surgery, X-rays and radium, rushed for the sure-cure.

The two doctors were amazed, but nonetheless swam with the tide of publicity and patients. They opened auxiliary clinics at Los Angeles and Long Beach. They went before a Senate committee to argue for Government aid for cancer research. They gained a patent for their extract.* Mrs. Grace Hammond Conners, widow of the Buffalo ship owner, newspaper publisher and political boss, William James ("Fingy") Conners, gave Drs. Coffey & Humber her $1,000,000 estate, "The Monastery," at Huntington, L. I. (TIME, Nov. 3).

Although Dr. Hartwell & friends who last week opposed opening "The Monastery" as a clinic "do not for a minute question the sincerity of Drs. Coffey and Humber in believing they have something of value," the critics "do question the way they have handled their work." The New York men are certain that their San Francisco colleagues have had no training to qualify for research in "the most complex field that exists" in medicine. They do not believe that adrenal cortex extract will cure cancer or that it has value in cancer treatment, yet are willing to experiment with it on animals. They fear that the Californians will experiment on New York humans, hence want them (or at least their methods; excluded, to remain in California where patients are ''abundantly available."

This was obviously a campaign to ostracize Drs. Coffey & Humber from Manhattan's vicinity. It was conducted—as Lawyer Satterlee diligently pointed out—"by persons who had their own methods, hospitals and funds." It was a "Chinese Wall," against which he protested to Heaven.

To Lawyer Satterlee's cry, Dr. Hartwell tartly replied: "We are doing everything we can do on the advice of men who have been trained throughout their lives in this particular field. . . ."

The State Department of Social Welfare withheld decision on the Coffey-Humber permit.

Unperturbed by such dispute, patient, industrious men continued to pry at Cancer's secrets.