EXHIBIT 3 Senator ELBERT D. THOMAS, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, July 1, 1946. United States Senate, Washington, D. C.: Urgently solicit your assistance to amend S. 1875 (Pepper) as follows: (1) Appropriation should be made available until expended; (2) provision should be made for construction of facilities and purchase of equipment; (3) appropriations should be made available through Public Health Service and National Cancer Institute as grants-in-aid to State health department, these agencies now administering cancer programs. WM. M. MCKAY, State Health Commissioner. EXHIBIT 4 STATE OF MONTANA, STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR MR. MURRAY: It has been called to our attention that a bill has been introduced in the House (H. R. 4502) and a companion bill in the Senate (S. 1875) for cancer research and control. We believe that if certain amendments were made the bills would be more applicable to the State of Montana. The following suggestions are offered in the way of amendments: 1. The size of the appropriation is such that it is questionable whether it can be expended to the best advantage in the 5-year time limit designated in the bill, and it is suggested that the bill be amended to make the appropriation available until it is expended rather than limited to the 5-year period. 2. That the size of the appropriation is such that we believe that it should carry a provision to allow construction of diagnostic centers and purchase of equipment where needed. 3. We also feel, and recommend, that rather than have this fund administered entirely by a special board, that the funds should be made available through grants-in-aid to States and administered on the Federal level by the United States Public Health Service and on the State level by the State health department. Unless this is done, the allotment will probably be made without any relation or supervision by the official State health agency. We hope that these or similar suggestions may be included before final passage of the bill. DEAR SIR: I am invited by Mr. Perlmutter to testify on behalf of the immediate passage of the Pepper-Neely bill; however, illness prevents my appearance to testify personally. I am therefore submitting to you the following statement in support of this bill. My conviction of the importance of the Pepper-Neely bill is that such an important and vital problem as cancer should be supported by Federal funds and not by charitable contributions. Research on the cancer problem embraces almost all branches of medical research, such as, physiology, biology, chemistry, immunology, pathology, etc., because the problem of cancer is the problem of growth, differentiation, organization of living cells, which is the greatest mystery of nature. The scientific contributions made in the investigations on the cancer problem are of equal importance to the medical sciences as a whole. Since the problem of cancerous growth is a complex phenomenon, the investigations must be made over a long period of time and the investigator should not be limited to 1- or 2-year grants. Since no security is available either for the investigators or the investigations, only a few good scientists are working on the cancer problem. The investigations on the cancer problem conducted hitherto were made mostly by individuals who regarded cancer research secondary to their specialty; for example, pathologist, chemists, biologists, and clinicians, who had to seek income from other Sources, since no funds for cancer research are available. It is my opinion that special training should be provided for those who want to devote their life and work to cancer research. Such individuals should be placed in institutions specially welly organized for cancer research. I will give an example from my own experience. Although I was brought to this country by invitation on the basis of my recognized work on the cancer problem, 15 years ago, I faced and am still facing tremendous difficulties in maintaining my investigations on the vital problem of cancer, although I am proud to say that my work has been continuously praised for its high standard. I am certain that had I had better facilities and sufficient help my work would have been far more advanced. I, myself, have devoted over 22 years to the cancer problem, and, in spite of the recognition given to my contributions to the cancer problem by the greatest authorities in this field, I have no financial security whatsoever. The cancer problem is a national problem and therefore should be supported by Federal funds. Therefore, in conclusion I am stating: 1. That I favor the appropriation of $100,000,000 as a minimum fund for cancer research. 2. That I favor enactment of the bill in its present simple form without complicating amendments. 3. That the intent of the bill be clear in its authorization to the President of the United States to appoint a new and independent cancer commission representative of all interested persons and groups. When such a method of research is adopted we are certain to make more progress in a few years than we can now make in 20 or even 50 years. MY DEAR SENATOR PEPPER: As I stated in an exchange of telegrams, it will be impossible for me to attend in person to testify in favor of S. 1875 at the Senate Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearings, July 1-3. I am, however, enclosing a copy of a statement which I should be very glad to have incorporated in the record. It is substantially the same as my statement to the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on H. R. 4502 (Neely bill) on May 9, 1946. I am most regretful at being unable to attend the Senate hearings, because I am heart and soul behind your bill, and wish to do everything possible to encourage its passage. My confrere here, Dr. Harry B. Friedgood, president of the Cancer Research Foundation of California, will, however, be present to testify, representing the views of our foundation. May I call attention to the inadvertence in your office having addressed me as "Dr." in our exchange of wires. I am not a doctor but a businessman, tremendously interested in seeing more and better cancer research made possible. Very truly yours, CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION OF CALIFORNIA, Director, Secretary-Treasurer. STATEMENT TO SENATE FOREIGN AFFAIRS SUBCOMMITTEE ON S. 1875 (By Louis H. Seagrave, director and secretary-treasurer, Cancer Research Foundation of California; Chairman of Board of National Machine Engineers; Director, Standard Power & Light Corp.) I. INTRODUCTION My first reason for submitting this statement is to support the purposes of the Pepper bill (S. No. 4502) which proposes the establishment of a hundred million dollar fund for an all-out fight against cancer. My second reason for being here is the hope that a statement of certain observations and conclusions from my investigation during the past 6 or 7 months may help to insure the passage of this legislation. I wish to make these points: 1. I sincerely believe that cancer will be conquered when adequate funds are available to bring to bear on it the full force of American scientific and medical knowledge. There must be enough money to build and equip laboratories and to pay the workers well to stay on the job. 2. But cancer will not be beaten until men of science and medicine can be assured that there will be continuity in the attack, and that if they start to work on the problem, they will be kept on the job until their responsibility is discharged. They must have the sure knowledge that the necessary money will be available and that the program, once adopted, will not be sidetracked, terminated, interrupted, or interfered with. 3. Cancer has frustrated man's empirical attacks for thousands of years, and his scientific assaults for a hundred years, but it can and will be beaten if these bills in Congress are passed and become law, and the Government of the United States goes into full action against it. II. THE CANCER PROBLEM IS MORE SERIOUS THAN GENERALLY REALIZED DOES CANCER RANK FIRST AS CAUSE OF DEATH Though statistics still list heart disease as the chief cause of death, there may be reason to believe that cancer ranks first. The varied causes of death usually listed as "heart disease" include a great many kinds of trouble with the heart. As stated aptly by Dr. Anthony Sampolinski, F. A. C. S., chairman of Tumor Clinics at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital, Chicago, Ill., "every 'heart failure' is necessarily a cause of death, but not every heart failure is due to heart disease." Dr. Sampolinski evidently thinks that if those doctors who put the blame for death on the heart would give more correct causes of death, cancer would occupy first place as a cause of death. Cancer has climbed from ninth place on the list of causes of death in 1900 to second (or first) place in 1945. And this has happened while death from most other known diseases have gone down sharply. Even if the statistics are, as some believe, slightly distorted, because causes of death are more accurately reported now than in earlier years, certainly it is nevertheless true that the figures have gone up almost steadily since 1900. The total deaths are now about 175,000 a year. Tuberculosis and smallpox, scarlet fever and diphtheria and many other diseases show gratifying declines. More people are being saved by vaccines, serums, X-ray, plasma, sulfa drugs, penicillin, and streptomycin. But statistics now indicate that 1 in 8 American persons alive today will fall victims to cancer. CANCER DEATHS STILL MOUNTING Between 1930 and 1940 the death rate from cancer climbed from fourth place on the list of killers, jumping over both tuberculosis and pneumonia, into second place (second to all heart failures), an increase of 33.7 percent. INCREASED DEATHS ALONE GREATER THAN TOTAL DEATHS FROM MANY CAUSES In the 5 years between 1940 and 1945 annual deaths from cancer increased about 17,000. In that brief period this increase in the number of cancer deaths alone was greater than the total deaths in 1943 (most recent available) from any of the following causes of death: Diseases of the blood, diarrhea, enteritis, ulcers of the intestines, cirrhosis of the liver, senility, homicide, conflagration, syphilis, congenital malformations, influenza, burns, drowning, railroad accidents, firearms, falls, poisons or poison gas. KILLS TWO FOR WAR'S ONE Between Pearl Harbor and VJ-day cancer killed 607,000 Americans, or more than twice the Americans killed or missing during World War II. This is a staggering fact, truly appalling, and it warrants far more attention than it has yet gotten. Perhaps some other comparisons not often referred to will help to make this ghastly total even more personal and disturbing. The World Almanac and Book of Facts for 1946 cites the United States health figures for 1943, apparently the most recent year for which they are complete, but these will do very well for comparative purposes and show how justly cancer deserves the grim and opprobrious epithet of "Our Number One' Enemy." I would go further and call it public enemy No. 1, for only afflictions of the heart of all kinds, loosely called heart diseases, which kill over 400,000 a year, are responsible for more deaths each year. So far as can be determined from available statistics, primary heart disease does not cause as many deaths as cancer. COMPARISON OF CANCER WITH OTHER CAUSES OF DEATH The 175,000 deaths from cancer each year, compare with other recognized causes of death in 1943 cited in 1943 in the 1946 World Almanac, as follows: Tuberculosis killed 57,005, or less than one-third as many. Diabetes mellitus took only 36,314, or less than one-fourth what cancer killed. Only 72,896 died of pneumonia, less than half the cancer toll. There were only 13,725 suicides; 12,527 died of cirrhosis of the liver. Diseases peculiar to the first year of life accounted for only 55,506 deaths, less than one-third as many. One may well think of the money spent to prevent, detect, arrest, try, and convict for homicide in the United States, and then consider the 6,690 homicides as compared with 175,000 cancer deaths-nearly 27 times as many. Conflagration resulted in the death of only 2,775—while cancer was accounting for nearly 63 times as many Americans. The dread influenza killed only 17,219, syphilis 16,263, and cerebral hemorrhage, excluding birth injuries, only 111,472. And consider the toll from accidents, and the constant publicity given to it by press, radio, and insurance companies, and believe it or not, the total was only 99,038-only about five-eighths the deaths from cancer. Note, too, how accidental deaths are divided-falls, 24,179; burns, 5,591; drowning, 6,095; railroad, 3,783; firearms, 2,318; poison gas, 2,028. But now for the surprise package-automobile accidents in 1943 accounted for only 23,823 deaths, and in the previous decade the greatest number in 1 year was in 1941, when motor vehicle deaths were 39,969-one-fourth what cancer takes. Millions are spent on propaganda for the prevention of accidents, but what about cancer? These figures leave one wondering over the little we are doing to get this hideous disease under control. Everyone has read in the press from time to time some of the mortality figures I've cited, and thought how dreadful it was that so many should die of burns, drowning, accidents in the home, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and the other diseases, but how can we rest-how can we sleep at nights when we see the dreadful totals that cruel cancer rolls up-that killer whose toll mounts each year-which will reach 200,000 by 1951 unless we arrest its courseand which will kill on the average one out of every eight persons in this roomone out of eight members of each of our families, one out of eight of our friends and loved ones. CANCER, THE GREAT PLAGUE Cancer deserves the title of "The Great Plague." In a few paragraphs its unassailable right to that opprobrious designation can be established. That great cycle of epidemics in the fourteenth century known as the Black Death, Hecker calculates accounted for a quarter of the then population of Europe, or 25,000,000 persons. According to mortality statistics, the Great Plague of London killed only 68,686 in the year 1665, though the figure may be low. Cholera killed about 4,000,000 in all India in the decade from 1896 to 1906. In Vienna in 1679 plague took 76,000 and in 1881 Prague lost 83,000 by plague. None of the plagues of history compare with the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, with its estimated 25,000,000 deaths in all Europe. But that total doesn't compare with cancer. Plagues and pestilences come and go. But cancer goes right on killing year in and year out. It killed 607,000 Americans during the period of our participation in the World War II, but it was killing during the peace years, too. In the 24 years intervening between World War I and World War II it is estimated, statistically, after making reasonable allowance for inferior reporting, that about 3,600,000 Americans died of cancer. Since the dawn of the century cancer has accounted for the deaths of about 5,500,000 Americans. WORLD'S FIGURES ABOUT 16 TIMES GREATER But these figures are for America only. While statistical inquiries have shown that the deaths from cancer vary considerably, it is common to all peoples and habitats. No complete statistics appear to be available. But to do a little arithmetic with the figures available for this country-available statistics indicate that the population of the world is about 16 times that of continental United States. Assuming that deaths in the rest of the world are in the same ratio, 88,000,000 have died of cancer since 1900. Perhaps we might make a few more calculations based upon these somewhat hypothetical figures. Applying to the world, the estimates that 175,000 Americans will die of cancer this year, and that 17,000,000 living Americans will die of cancer, it would mean, first, that 2,800,000 persons in the world will die of cancer this year, and that 272,000,000 persons now living will die of cancer. The actual statistical data will probably never be known, but discount them as liberally as one pleases, and there still remains an enormous and horrible total to contemplate, besides which the puny figures of the great plagues of history, and even of the fourteenth century deaths in Europe from the Black Plague pale into insignificance. Not even the estimates of the deaths to follow all-out use of the atomic bombs, if they are ever again to be used in war, dim the grim grisly totals of cancer. WORLD'S CANCER DEATHS FIVE A MINUTE Based on yearly known deaths, Americans actually die at the rate of one every 3 minutes. But based upon my computations of the world's cancer deaths, every time the clock ticks off 12 seconds another living person is to die of cancer-5 a minute, 300 an hour, 7,600 a day. CANCER'S PLACE ON THE HORROR LIST IN NEW YORK One of the most shocking, accusing tabulations on cancer deaths I remember seeing was that published in the quarterly bulletin of the Department of Health of New York City, and quoted by Dr. M. Bemmoché in his book, A Surgeon Explains to the Layman (1940). It covers the months of October, November, and December, 1939: 3,006 people died of cancer, 264 people committed suicide, 120 people died from benign tumors, 66 people were murdered, 3 people died peacefully of old age. Larger figures were also given for heart disease, but since such figures include all of the many cases of secondary heart failure, I have omitted them as misleading and more or less meaningless for comparative purposes. III. THE SITUATION IN RESEARCH HISTORY OF RESEARCH For decades now we have been doing a little more for cancer victims nearly every year. Modern experimental methods were adopted early in this century and within a few years research men were at work at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Christie Hospital, the Middlesex Hospital, the Cancer Hospital, and the Royal Cancer Hospital in England; Sameriterhaus, Heidelberg, Germany; and at the Crocker Foundation, Memorial Hospital, and Rockefeller Institute in New York; the Gratwick Foundation in Boston. There is a large institute for cancer research in Buenos Aires. Many associations for cancer study, with varying aims, are functioning in the field, among which are the Cancer Subcom |