Radium and the Origins of the National Cancer Institute

R a d i u m a n d t h e N CI105The burgeoning numbers of cancer clinics and services challengedopposition to the federal purchase of radium. With their budgets strainedby hard economic times, many hospitals and state health departmentsfound it very difficult to find the money for radium for such clinics, andso found themselves unable to compete in the frenetic market for thesubstance. Yet demand for radium continued to rise, fed by variouseducation campaigns that informed the public that the only cure forcancer was early treatment by radium, X-rays, and surgery undertaken bya recognized physician. 38 In these circumstances it was often unclearwhat hospitals or state health departments should do to obtain radium.Occasionally, they began anti-cancer programs even in the absence ofradium, perhaps in part to create political pressure for the substance. 39But such strategies were risky. The pressure might not work, and patientswould be left with nowhere to go, except perhaps to inexperienced physiciansand quacks. Thus physicians were often reluctant to undertakecampaigns until radium was available. 40 It was a double-bind: the absenceof radium created pressure for campaigns to boost supplies, but thecampaign could backfire and create demands that cancer programscould not meet.Against this backdrop of growing anxieties about radium, and withthe Belgian war-debt repayment scheme seemingly dead, Congressrevisited plans for a cancer bill to authorize federal support for researchand treatment. The Public Health Service had supported a smallresearch program on cancer since August 1922, when the SurgeonGeneral had assigned Joseph W. Schereschewsky to study the disease ina rented laboratory in the Department of Preventive Medicine at HarvardMedical School. But efforts to expand PHS support for research hadfaltered, and bills introduced into Congress in 1927, 1928, 1929 and1930, did not pass into law. 41 Part of the reason for this failure was a lackof enthusiasm on the part of the PHS. This attitude changed with theappointment in 1936 of Thomas Parran as Surgeon General. As JamesPatterson notes, Parran had a particular interest in cancer: his wifehad died of the disease, he had served on the ASCC, and he had a liberal,activist view of the government’s role in public health. 42 The followingyear, Senator Homer Bone of Washington and Representatives MauryMaverick of Texas and Warren G. Magnuson of Washington, all