The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (95 page)

110
“I am opposed to heart attacks and cancer”:
J. Michael Bishop, “Mary Lasker and Her Prizes: An Appreciation,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
294, no. 11 (2005): 1418–19.

111
“If a toothpaste”:
Mary Lasker Oral History Project, Part 1, Session 7.

111
“the fairy godmother of medical research”:
“The Fairy Godmother of Medical Research,”
BusinessWeek
, July 14, 1986.

111
In April 1943, Mary Lasker visited:
Mary Lasker Oral History Project, Part 1, Session 5, p. 136, and Session 16, pp. 477–79.

111
The visit left her cold:
Ibid., Session 16, pp. 477–79.

111
Of its small annual budget of:
Ibid. Also see Mary Lasker interview, October 23, 1984, in Walter Ross,
Crusade, the Official History of the American Cancer Society
(Westminster, MD: Arbor House, 1987), 33.

111
“Doctors,” she wrote, “are not administrators”:
Mary Lasker Oral History Project, Part 1, Session 7, p. 183.

112
In October 1943, Lasker persuaded a friend:
Reader’s Digest
, October 1945.

112
“My mother died from cancer”:
Letter from a soldier to Mary Lasker, 1949.

112
Over the next months:
Richard A. Rettig,
Cancer Crusade: The Story of the National Cancer Act of 1971
(Lincoln, NE: Author’s Choice Press, 1977), 21.

112
“A two-pronged attack”:
Letter from Cornelius A. Wood to Mary Lasker, January 6, 1949, Mary Lasker Papers, Box 210.

112
Albert Lasker . . . recruited Emerson Foote:
Ibid.

112
The “Lay Group”:
Letter from Mary Lasker to Jim Adams, May 13, 1945, Mary Lasker Papers.

112
In a single year, it printed 9 million:
these numbers are culled from letters and receipts found in the Mary Lasker Papers.

113
“Ladies’ Garden Club”:
Charles Cameron,
Cancer Control
, vol. 3, 1972.

113
“unjustified, troublesome and aggressive”:
James T. Patterson,
The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 173. Also see Rettig,
Cancer Crusade
, 22.

113
The society’s bylaws and constitution were rewritten:
Letter from Frank Adair to ACS members, October 23, 1945.

113
“The Committee should not include”:
Telegram from Jim Adams to Mary Lasker, 1947, Mary Lasker Papers.

113
“You were probably the first person”:
Letter from Rose Kushner to Mary Lasker, July 22, 1988, Rose Kushner Papers, Harvard University.

114
“a penicillin for cancer”:
“Doctor Foresees Cancer Penicillin,”
New York Times
, October 3, 1953.

114
By the early 1950s, she was regularly:
See, for instance, letter from John R. Heller to Mary Lasker, October 15, 1948, Mary Lasker Papers, Box 119; and Memorandum on Conversation with Dr. Farber, February 24, 1952, Mary Lasker Papers, Box 76.

114
“scientific treatises”:
Letter from Sidney Farber to Mary Lasker, August 19, 1955, Mary Lasker Papers, Box 170.

114
“An organizational pattern is developing”:
Ibid.

115
a “regular on the Hill”:
Robert Mayer, interview with author, July 2008.

115
“Put a tambourine in [his] hands”:
Rettig,
Cancer Crusade
, 26.

115
“I have written to you so many times”:
Letter from Sidney Farber to Mary Lasker, September 5, 1958.

“These new friends of chemotherapy”

116
The death of a man:
Czeslaw Milosz,
New and Collected Poems: 1931–2001
(New York: Ecco, 2001), 431.

116
I had recently begun to notice:
K. E. Studer and Daryl E. Chubin,
The Cancer Mission: Social Contexts of Biomedical Research
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1980).

116
By February 1952, Albert was confined:
Mary Lasker Oral History Project, Part 1, Session 9, p. 260.

116
“It seems a little unfair”:
Letter from Lowel Cogeshall to Mary Lasker, March 11, 1952, Mary Lasker Papers, Box 76.

117
Albert Lasker died at eight o’clock:
“A. D. Lasker Dies; Philanthropist, 72,”
New York Times
, May 31, 1952.

117
“We are at war with an insidious”:
Senator Lister Hill, “A Strong Independent Cancer Agency,” October 5, 1971, Mary Lasker Papers, Columbia University.

119
“University professors who are opposed”:
“Science and the Bomb,”
New York Times
, August 7, 1945.

120
Science the Endless Frontier:
Vannevar Bush,
Science the Endless Frontier: A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945
(Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1945).

121
The National Science Foundation (NSF), founded in 1950:
Daniel S. Greenberg,
Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 167.

121
“long term, basic scientific research”:
Ibid., 419.

121
“so great a co-ordination of medical scientific labor”:
Stephen Parks Strickland,
Politics, Science, and the Dread Disease: A Short History of the United States Medical Research Policy
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 16.

121
“Should I refuse my dinner”:
Ernest E. Sellers, “Early Pragmatists,”
Science
154, no. 3757 (1996): 1604.

121
The outspoken Philadelphia pathologist Stanley Reimann:
Stanley Reimann, “The
Cancer Problem as It Stands Today,”
Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
13 (1945): 21.

122
the Cancer Chemotherapy National Service Center:
C. G. Zubrod et al., “The Chemotherapy Program of the National Cancer Center Institute: History, Analysis, and Plans,”
Cancer Chemotherapy Reports
50 (1966): 349–540; V. T. DeVita, “The Evolution of Therapeutic Research in Cancer,”
New England Journal of Medicine
298 (1978): 907–10.

122
Farber was ecstatic, but impatient:
Letter from Sidney Farber to Mary Lasker, August 19, 1955, Mary Lasker Papers, Box 170.

122
One such antibiotic came from a rod-shaped microbe:
Selman Waksman and H. B. Woodruff, “Bacteriostatic and Bacteriocidal Substances Produced by a Soil Actinomyces,”
Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine
45 (1940): 609.

122
Farber and actinomycin D: Sidney Farber, Giulio D’Angio, Audrey Evans, and Anna Mitus, “Clinical Studies of Actinomycin D with Special Reference to Wilms’ Tumor in Children,”
Annals of the New York Academy of Science
89 (1960): 421–25.

123
“In about three weeks lungs previously riddled with”:
Giulio D’Angio, “Pediatric Oncology Refracted through the Prism of Wilms’ Tumor: A Discourse,”
Journal of Urology
164 (2000): 2073–77.

124
Sonja Goldstein’s recollections: Jeremiah Goldstein, “Preface to My Mother’s Diary,”
Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology
30, no. 7 (2008): 481–504.

“The butcher shop”

128
Randomised screening trials are bothersome:
H. J. de Koning, “Mammographic Screening: Evidence from Randomised Controlled Trials,”
Annals of Oncology
14 (2003): 1185–89.

128
The best [doctors] seem to have a sixth sense:
Michael LaCombe, “What Is Internal Medicine?”
Annals of Internal Medicine
118, no. 5 (1993): 384–88.

128
Emil Freireich and Emil Frei: John Laszlo,
The Cure of Childhood Leukemia: Into the Age of Miracles
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 118–20.

129
“I have never seen Freireich in a moderate mood”:
Emil Frei III, “Confrontation, Passion, and Personalization,”
Clinical Cancer Research
3 (1999): 2558.

129
Gordon Zubrod, the new director:
Emil Frei III, “Gordon Zubrod, MD,”
Journal of Clinical Oncology
17 (1999): 1331. Also see Taylor,
Pioneers in Pediatric Oncology
, 117.

130
Freireich came just a few weeks later:
Grant Taylor,
Pioneers in Pediatric Oncology
(Houston: University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, 1990), 117.

130
“Frei’s job,” one researcher recalled:
Edward Shorter,
The Health Century
(New York: Doubleday, 1987), 192.

130
To avert conflicts:
Andrew M. Kelahan, Robert Catalano, and Donna Marinucci, “The History, Structure, and Achievements of the Cancer Cooperative Groups,” (May/June 2000): 28–33.

131
“For the first time”:
Robert Mayer, interview with author, July 2008. Also see Frei, “Gordon Zubrod,” 1331; and Taylor,
Pioneers in Pediatric Oncology
, 117.

131
Hill and randomized trials: Austin Bradford Hill,
Principles of Medical Statistics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966); A. Bradford Hill, “The Clinical Trial,”
British Medical Bulletin
7, no. 4 (1951): 278–82.

132
“The analogy of drug resistance”:
Emil Freireich, interview with author, September 2009.

132
The first protocol was launched:
Emil Frei III et al., “A Comparative Study of Two Regimens of Combination Chemotherapy in Acute Leukemia,”
Blood
13, no. 12 (1958): 1126–48; Richard Schilsky et al., “A Concise History of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B,”
Clinical Cancer Research
12, no. 11, pt. 2 (2006): 3553s–55s.

133
“This work is one of the first comparative studies”:
Frei et al., “Comparative Study of Two Regimens.”

134
“The resistance would be fierce”:
Emil Freireich, personal interview.

134
a “butcher shop”:
Vincent T DeVita, Jr. and Edward Chu, “A History of Cancer Chemotherapy,”
Cancer Research
68, no. 21 (2008): 8643.

An Early Victory

135
But I do subscribe to the view:
Brian Vastag, “Samuel Broder, MD, Reflects on the 30
^th
Anniversary of the National Cancer Act,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
286 (2001): 2929–31.

135
Min Chiu Li: Emil J. Freireich, “Min Chiu Li: A Perspective in Cancer Therapy,”
Clinical Cancer Research
8 (2002): 2764–65.

136
Li and Ethel Longoria: Mickey Goulian, interview with author, September 2007.

136
“She was bleeding so rapidly”:
Ibid.

137
Li and Hertz rushed to publish:
M. C. Li, R. Hertz, and D. M. Bergenstal, “Therapy of Choriocarcinoma and Related Trophoblastic Tumors with Folic Acid and Purine Antagonists,”
New England Journal of Medicine
259, no. 2 (1958): 66–74.

137
Li’s use of hcg level in chemotherapy: John Laszlo,
The Cure of Childhood Leukemia: Into the Age of Miracles
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 145–47.

137
In mid-July, the board summoned:
Ibid.

137
“Li was accused of experimenting on people”:
Emil Freireich, interview with author, September 2009.

138
When Freireich heard about Li’s dismissal:
Laszlo,
Cure of Childhood Leukemia
, 145.

Mice and Men

139
A model is a lie that helps:
Margie Patlak, “Targeting Leukemia: From Bench to Bedside,”
FASEB Journal
16 (2002): 273E.

139
“Clinical research is a matter of urgency”:
John Laszlo,
The Cure of Childhood Leukemia: Into the Age of Miracles
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

139
To test three drugs, the group insisted:
Ibid., 142.

139
“The wards were filling up with these terribly sick children”:
Emil Freireich, interview, September 2009.

139
Vincristine had been discovered in 1958:
Norman R. Farnsworth, “Screening Plants for New Medicines,” in
Biodiversity
, ed. E. O. Wilson (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1988), 94; Normal R. Farnsworth, “Rational Approaches Applicable to the Search for and Discovery of New Drugs From Plants,” in
Memorias del 1er Symposium Latinoamericano y del Caribe de Farmacos Naturales, La Habana, Cuba, 21 al 28 de Junio, 1980, 27–59
(Montevideo, Uruguay: UNESCO Regional Office
Academia de Ciencias de Cuba y Comisión Nacional de Cuba ante la UNESCO).

140
“Frei and Freireich were simply taking drugs”:
David Nathan,
The Cancer Treatment Revolution
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007), 59.

140
A scientist from Alabama, Howard Skipper:
Laszlo,
Cure of Childhood Leukemia
, 199–209.

141
Skipper emerged with two pivotal findings:
See, for example, Howard E. Skipper, “Cellular Kinetics Associated with ‘Curability’ of Experimental Leukemias,” in William Dameshek and Ray M. Dutcher, eds.,
Perspectives in Leukemia
(New York: Grune & Stratton, 1968), 187–94.

141
“Maximal, intermittent, intensive, up-front”:
Emil Frei, “Curative Cancer Chemotherapy,”
Cancer Research
45 (1985): 6523–37.