PROF. J. B. S. HALDANE ANSWERS THE QUESTION:

Can yeu inherit cancer ?

I AM CONSTANTLY asked
Such questions as this: “My fa-
ther and a sister died of tancer.
Am T likely to develop it, and
ought I to have children?” No
doubt most doctors are asked the
Same question.

The first point to make is that
the question is wrongly put.

If someone asked the question, |

“My wife has a fever, am I likely
to get it?” I should naturally
ask what sort of fever she had.

If she had pneumonia, the risk
is negligible; if typhoid, she
Should be taken to an isolation
hospital at once.

Cancer is the name for a group
of diseases due to different, causes.
For example, chimney sweeps are
liable to skin cancer from_ soot.

And in a sense, it is hereditaryy
because the sons of sweeps often
become sweeps, but for no other
reason.

A few rare hereditary diseases,
including one disease of the in-
testine, often end up with can-
cer, However, they do not ac-
count for one case of cancer in
a thousand.

* * *

PROFESSOR PENROSE, of
University College, London, and
his colleagues,, Miss Mackenzie
and Miss Karn, have just investi-
Zated the inheritance of breast
cancer. ‘

The question to be answered is
Whether the daughters, grand-
daughters and nieces of women
with this disease are more likely
to get it than other women.

In fact, this question cannot be
answered directly. One would

“have to wait for 50 years or more
before one could answer it for a
group of women. So , Penrose
Made the following inquiry.

He started off with 510 patients
of University College and London

Hospitals and collected their fa-
mily histories.

For example, patient 264 deve-
loped breast cancer at the age of
57, was operated on and was alive
at 64, Her father died at 58 of
an unknown cause; her mother
died of cancer, not of the breast,
at 62; her daughter had been
operated on for breast cancer
and*was alive.

If this were a typical pedigree
we should have to say that cancer
was strongly inherited. And
various doctors have collected
enough pedigrees of this kind to
convince themselves and others
that this is the case.

But actually it is not typical.
Penrose and his colleagues com-
pared the number of various re-
latives who died of cancer with
the numbers which would have
been found in a sample from the
general population of the coun-
try, who died at the same ages
and dates. :

Naturally a number would have
died of cancer in any case. No
less than one woman in 30 of all
ages dies of breast cancer, and
round the age of fifty the fraction
is more like one in 18.

When the comparison was ‘made
in this way the following re-
sults were found. The relatives
of patient are certainly no more
likely to die of cancer of organs’
other than the breast than the
general population. i

They may even be a little less

_ likely to do so. -

The father’s sisters and moth-
ers are probably no more likely

to die of cancer of the breast than

other people. But the mothers,
sisters and perhaps maternal
grandmothers are more likely to
do so.

The mothers are about twice

SSS aS aS SSS SSS SS SS SSeS

ONE WEEK ONLY -- NOVEMBER 21-26

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as likely, and the sisters three
times.

This means that if your mother
died of breast cancer your chance
of doing so is raised from about
one in thirty to one in fifteen. But
not if you are intelligent.

Breast cancer is curable in the
large majority of cases.

But the disease is apt to recur
unless it is treated while it is still
a mere lump and before it be-
comes painful.

A woman with a history of
breast cancer in relatives on her
mother’s side ought to be on the
lookout for early symptoms.

If she is, her chance of dying
of the disease, is no greater than
the average and may be less,

* * *

PENROSE concludes that there
is no evidence that heredity plays
any important part in the cause
of cancer in other sites.

_ Why is the liability to breast
cancer inherited in the female
line only, and not to any appre-
ciable extent through the father?

We do not know the answer in
human beings, but we do know
it in mice. ag

Some breeds of mice»are very
likely to develop breast cancer.

Bittner, in America, discovered
that this was mainly due to some-
thing in the milk. If baby mice
of a cancerous line are taken away
at birth and suckled by foster-
mothers from a normal line, only
a few of them get the disease.

And if mice from a healthy line
are suckled by foster-mothers

‘from a line with high breast can-

cer they are likely to develop it.

British workers at Leeds took
the story ‘further. Bosner dis-
covered that the substance in the
milk causes overgrowth of some
parts of the udder long before
cancer develops.

cure for cance.

from the abnormal growth of

it out with x-rays.

on the cancer in living bodies.

first class, for his werk. id

rs

Cancer cure possible

THE UKRAINIAN scientist, O. D. Timofeyevsky, has made
an important discovery which opens the way for the long-sought

Cancer, one of the greates scourges of humanity, results

Hitherto it has been considered that the only treatment
for cancer is to cut it out with the surgeon’s knife or burn

The Ukrainian scientist, cultivating abnormal cells out-
side of the human body, has discovered that they can be
returned to their normal cell state.

Experiments are now being conducted on duplicating this

Professor Timofeyevsky has been awarded the Stalin Prize,.

cells in the human body.

And Passey actually found the
substance in mousé milk, and
showed that it consists of par-»
ticles which can be photographed
with an electron microscope.

This is a fact of great biologi-
cal interest. Here is a substance
in an organ which makes it grow
in a special way, and which can
be transferred to the correspond-
ing organ in. another animal,
where it produces the same ef-
fects. :

This at once reminds one of
the claims of Michurin in the
Soviet Union and Daniel in
France, to have produced changes
in plants by grafting, which give
rise to similar changes in later
generations.

It is much harder to graft ani-
mals than plants. But at least
in this case it is possible to “hand
a character on” by means of the
milk,

zs * Kite

I don’t like writing of the in-
heritance of a character, or pas-
sing it on from one generation to
another, because’ this’ suggests
that a character is something in-
dependent of the environment,
and that, for example, a mouse
which has got the milk factor is
bound to get cancer, which is not
the case.

But if I had the opportunity,
I would certainly try whether
calves from a breed with low

milk yield can be improved by
giving them milk from a breed
with high yield.

Certainly the father plays an
important part in determining of
milk yield in cows, though accord-
ing to some of the Soviet animal
breeders who described their work
at this conference, the mother is
more important than the father
in determining some characters,
in sheep at least.

It would at least be worth try-
ing whether desirable characters
in the mamary gland can be “in-
herited” in this way in cows, as
bad ones certainly can in mice.

Of course, however, some peo-
ple would say that an experiment
inspired by Michurin’s ideas was
bound to fail. :
, ‘Penrose was unable to get any
evidence as to whether milk trans-
mission plays a part in human
breast cancer.

If it does so, it may be possible
to prevent this disease to a very
large extent.

At any rate his work shows
that we have got to take broader
views on questions of heredity.

This does not mean that we
have to swallow Michurin whole.

It does mean that we have to
start thinking along lines sug-
gested by him and other workers
in the Soviet Union.

—J. B.S. HALDANE.

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