Medicine: Cancer Test

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Physicians have long sought a test which would warn them of the presence of invisible, embryonic cancers. Last week cancer specialists found new hope in a simple cancer test reported in Science by Drs. Theodore Herman Elsasser and George Barclay Wallace of New York University's Medical School.

Two years ago, said the scientists, they examined a young man who had "a large embryonic cancer of the right testicle."

They injected his urine into the veins of a pregnant rabbit. The rabbit aborted.

The urine of other patients with similar tumors, as well as their blood serum, produced the same result in pregnant rabbits.

The scientists then tested "the urines [and serums] of a large number of patients with other types of malignant tumors . . . and in all instances abortion occurred."

"We have not had an opportunity for intensive study of the substance responsible for the [rabbits' abortions] . . . "concluded Drs. Elsasser and Wallace cautiously. "Work is being continued."