Word: hellman
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...Samuel Hellman, Fuller American Cancer Society Professor of Radiation Therapy and chairman of the radiation therapy department, explains that the field is oriented more towards research than towards purely clinical considerations of dosages. "There's a tremendous amount of work being done on basic biology of tumor cells to make treatment more specific," he says. Radiation's effects on the DNA, or chemical genetic messenger system, of both malignant and normal cells, for instance, is an important area of basic cancer research, Hellman adds...
...Hellman acknowledges the problems of performing clinical research on living cancer victims, noting that "perfectly ethical" experimentation is "difficult but possible." It depends, he says, on frank discussion with the patient of the malady and possible cures...
...Both Hellman and Frei emphasize the modern and increasingly effective nature of "modality" treatment, involving several clinicians and even basic scientists in experimental cures. However, as Frei said in his phone conversation with a colleague, basic scientists are new to such clinical experimentation. He said that the same experimentation that a hospital's human studies committee approves may face opposition from basic scientists. "The trouble comes from the basic scientists," he said, "from the people who have never been involved in the treatment of anything more risky that poison...
...Hellman says that the concern of basic scientists with the disease will persist because of the distinct nature of the cancer cell. Efforts to distinguish the malignant cell by what was presumed would be its faster rate of replication or by identification of foreign proteins on the cell have proved difficult, he says. Such studies involve virologists (studying viruses), pathologists, and molecular biologists. Other research in the last ten years has suggested that a cancer could be linked to a failure of the body's immune system; when asked about vogues in research, Hellman says, "My prejudice...
Kurt Isselbacher does not like the question, Will cancer be cured at Harvard? Cancer is many diseases and many scientists here are working on them. Certain methods that have been experimented with at Harvard, including Frei's protocol for osteogenic sarcom and Hellman's treatment for hematologic cancer, have been effective but apparently not conclusive...