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Show BROADWAY AND MAIN STREET Plan Given to Beat Inroads of Dread Disease-Makes Disease-Makes All Doctor's Offices Cancer Finding Labs By BILLY ROSE I Mr. Alfred S. Black Hattiesburg, Mississippi Dear Mr. Black: A couple of months ago you dropped in to see me, and as the result of our meeting I wrote a column asking for suggestions on how to best spend the $2,000,000 left by your brother to the Black-Stevenson Black-Stevenson foundation to provide "preventive and remedial treatment treat-ment for cancer sufferers." And I was plenty happy when you phoned a week after the piece appeared and told me you had received 4,000 letters, many from outstanding out-standing medical men and research organizations. Well, this is letter No. 4001, and if your patience and eyes can take it I'd like to out- line a startlingly unspectacular plan which may save the lives of 50,000 cancer victims a year at a cost of less than $5 per life. The idea and it's a simple one was passed on to me by Dr. Harold T. Hy- IF THIS PROGRAM were backed up by an educational campaign to alert both doctors and public to the importance of nipping cancer before be-fore it buds, it is Dr. Hyman's estimate esti-mate that each of our 100,000 general gen-eral practitioners would spot at least one incipient case each year. And since there's a 50-50 chance of curing cancer In its baby stages, it figures that some 50,000 lives could be saved annually either by local medicos or by specialists and hospitals equipped to deal with the malady. I know this is an undramatic notion, no-tion, promising no miracles and requiring no glass-and-chromium skyscrapers. I also know it isn't new clinics in New York and a few other cities have worked along these lines for years. A campaign on a national scale, however, is something new, and it ought to appeal to you he-cause he-cause it would give the fellow on RFD 1 the same chance to live out his three-score-and-ten as the chap on Central Park West. I'm not suggesting, of course, that you tear up the 4,000 letters and put your entire $2,000,000 into this one venture. The plan which Dr. Hyman has outlined could be carried car-ried out for a tenth of that sum, leaving the bulk of your endowment for well-administered agencies and projects such as the Damon Run-yon Run-yon fund. And by putting a couple of hundred hun-dred thousand on the sure-shot of diagnosis rather than on the long-shot long-shot of research, you would be rendering ren-dering the average Joe and his missus mis-sus a service hardly anybody else Is bothering about. Sincerely, Billy Rose As 1 get it from Dr. Hyman, a person has a 50 per cent chance of licking cancer if it is spotted in its incipient stages and treated by a competent physician. But once the malignancy is far enough along to cause pain and the associated asso-ciated symptoms, the odds against killing the man-killer drop to 20 per cent. Which, in my simple arithmetic, means that 30 out of every 100 cancer deaths can be prevented if we find a way to make every doctor's office in the country a cancer can-cer detection center. Here's where Dr. Hyman's notion and your brother's money come in. 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 then, working through the various local medical societies, see to it that a copy of this volume, free of charge, reaches the desk of every family doctor in the country? And why wouldn't It be a logical extension of this idea to follow up the book with supplements whenever when-ever the research labs come up with a worth-while advance in test or technique? man of New York, Billy Rose the well - known physician whose four-volume "Integrated "In-tegrated Practice of Medicine" has been called "the practitioner's bible" by Time magazine. But before be-fore I ease into Dr. Hyman's notion, no-tion, let me give you some of the reasons behind it. IN THIS WEALTHIEST of nations, na-tions, where we have more doctors per capita than anywhere else, millions mil-lions of people get periodic medical check-ups but seldom are they checked for cancer until something begins to hurt. The reason, according accord-ing to Dr. Hyman, is that these examinations ex-aminations seldom Include a "survey" "sur-vey" for cancer, even though this involves little more than a few probings and scrapings. |
