Medicine: Cancer Crusade (Cont'd.)

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Murphy's Agent. At the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, Dr. James Bumgardner Murphy and three associates have found what they call an inhibiting agent in a particular kind of chicken tumor. They filtered some tumor material. Such filtrate generally creates a new tumor in a definite period of time. When Dr. Murphy washed the filtrate in several changes of water he found that the residue was much more active than the original filtrate. Plainly the wash water had carried away some cancer dampener, which might be used to cure the disease. What its exact nature is, or the mechanism of its production, or the biochemistry of its reaction, Dr. Murphy does not know exactly. Until he does, he will not experiment on humans.

Glutathione. At the National Institute of Health, Pharmacologist Director Carl Voegtlin & associates observed that an organic sulphur compound, glutathione, present in all living body cells, is concerned with the body's defense against the toxic action of arsenic and certain other poisons. Glutathione occurs in large quantities in cancer cells. It occurred to Professor Voegtlin and Dr. Harold W. Chalkley, an associate, that glutathione might be a contributing cause of cancer. Forthwith they immersed amoebae (single- celled animalcules) in a glutathione solu-tion.* The amoebae reproduced themselves by subdivision (as all cells do) with extraordinary ease, confirming the Voegt-lin-Chalkley suspicion that perhaps the rampant growth of cancer cells is attributable to glutathione, and suggesting that glutathione in the body might be Cancer's nemesis.