| Show BROADWAY AND MAIN STREET Plan Given to Beat Inroads of Dread Disease-Makes All Doctor's Offices Cancer Finding Labs By BILLY ROSE Alfred S. Black Mississippi Dear A couple of months ago you dropped in to sec and as the result of our meeting I wrote a column asking for suggestions on how to best spend the left by your brother to the Black-Stevenson foundation to provide and remedial treatment for cancer And I was plenty happy when phoned a week after the piece appeared and told me you had received many from outstanding medical men and research this is letter and your patience eyes can take It I'd like to outline a startlingly pm 1 nasi unspectacular plan which may save the lives of cancer victims a year at a cost of less than per t J jP The idea it's A a simple one was passed on to me by Harold T. Hy- man of New Billy Rose the well known physician whose four-volume Practice of has been called practitioner's by Time But before I ease into Hyman's let me give you some of the reasons behind IN THIS WEALTHIEST of where we have more doctors per capita than anywhere millions of people get periodic medical check-ups but seldom are they checked for cancer until something begins to The according to is that these examinations seldom include a for even though this involves little more than a few and As I gel it from a person bas a 50 per cent chance of licking cancer if it is spotted in its incipient stages and treated by a competent But once the malignancy is far enough along to cause pain and the associated the odds against killing the man-killer drop to 20 per in my simple means that 30 out of every cancer deaths can be prevented if we find a way to make every doctor's office in the country a cancer detection Here's where Hyman's notion and your brother's money come Why wouldn't it be a good idea for the Black-Stevenson foundation to compile all the latest knowledge on cancer diagnosis in one hefty volume and working through the various local medical see to it that a copy of this free of reaches the desk of every family doctor in the And why wouldn't it be a logical extension of this idea to follow up the book with supplements whenever the research labs come up with a worth-while advance in test or IF THIS PROGRAM were backed up by an educational campaign to alert both doctors and public to the importance of nipping cancer before it it is Hyman's estimate that each of our general practitioners would spot at least one incipient case each And since there's a chance of curing cancer in its baby it figures that some lives could be saved annually either by local or Dy specialists ana hospitals equipped to deal with the I know this Is an promising no miracles and requiring no glass-and-chromium I also know it isn't new clinics in New York and a few other cities have worked along these lines for A campaign on a national is something and it ought to appeal to you because it would give the fellow on RFD 1 the same chance to live out his three-score-anti-ten as the chap on Central Park I'm not of that you tear up the letters and put your entire into this one The plan which Hyman has outlined could be carried out for a tenth of that leaving the bulk of your endowment for well-administered agencies and projects such as the Damon Run-yon And by putting a couple of hundred thousand on the sure-shot of diagnosis rather than on the long-shot of you would be rendering the average Joe and his missus a service hardly anybody else is bothering I Billy Rose |
