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Dr. Hammer offers $1 million for Ca cure WASHINGTON--It didn't take in- dustrial/st Armand Hammer long to put his personal stamp on his new job as chairman of the Presi- dent's Cancer Panel. He offered $1 million from his own pocket to the scientist who comes up with a mag- ic bullet against cancer. Physicians and scientists in the forefront against cancer--wl~'o h~ve long preached that the disease isn't vulnerable to magic bullets-- didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Many of them did the next best . thing=, they kept very quiet. No one wanted to offend Dr. Hammer. Dr. Hammer, the 83-year-old chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp., is a 1921 graduate of Colum- bia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, though he dropped medl- cine immediately for business. Re- cently, he has become extremely enthusiastic about the prospects for h~bridoma technology in the fight against cancer, and it's here he expects his $1-million incentive to yield a major breakthrough. Like polio vaccine. So, he told a stunned meeting o[ the three-man cancer panel set up to oversee the nation's effort against malignant disease, he is offering "a prize of $1 million to the scientist who achieves a cure similar to that dis- covered by Dr. Jonas Salk with polio vaccine." He will also give $100,000 a year for the next 10 years to the scientist who has done the most each year "to advance medicine toward a cancer cure." Harvard microbiologist Harold Amos and University of Pittsburgh surgeon Bernard Fisher, Dr. Ham- reef's two colleagues on the cancer panel, were among several leading figures in the field who chose to remain silent on Dr. Hammer's. iarges¢ Among others who de- clined MWl~s invitation to comment Dr. Hammer's bounty astounds the cancer-research community. were Dr. Paul A. Marks, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Can- cer Center in New York City; Dr. Gerald P. Murphy, director of Ros- well Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo; Dr. Emil Frei III, director of Sidney Farber Cancer Institute in Boston; and Dr. James F. Hol- land, chief of neoplaatic diseases at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. National Cancer Institute dir'ec- tot Vincent T. DeVita Jr., who was at the panel session when Dr. Hammer announced his $1-million prize, says that although he hopes it may one day be awarded, the cancer community is more accus- tomed to advances in small incre: ments rather than major steps such as the polio vaccine. But pointing to advances emerging from basic biology, such as hybri- doma and recombinant-DNA tech- nology, Dr. DeVita added, "You never know what might happen." Dr. Frank J. Rauscher, senior vice president for research of the American Cancer Society, says he's ambivalent. "I applaud the intent of what he is doing," says Dr. Rauscher. "But even with good things there are pitfalls. He may wish to rethink it." Dr. Rauscher says it isn't clear whether Dr. Hammer is looking toward preventlon-similar to the polio vaccine--or cure. Even hybri- doma technology, says Dr. Rausch- er, is more likely to lend itself to therapy than prevention. All cancers? Dr. Rauscher is also bewildered about whether Dr. Hammer means one form of cancer or all cancers. He says if Dr. Ham- mer were thinking about Hpdgkin's disease, he would have to award the $1 million to Drs. DeVita and Henry S. Kaplan of Stanford for chemotherapy and radiotherapy protocols achieving a 90% cure rate for stages I and II. Finally, says Dr. Rauscher, a hazard of a $1-million prize for a cancer cure or vaccine is that "any- thing that contributes to secrecy in the laboratory is of great concern." He points to reports of proprietary secrecy in recombinant-DNA re- search. "It would be counterpro- ductive if it were also done in quest of a prize." Dr. Lee Clark, president emeri- tus of M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute in Houston, applauded Dr. Hammer's "con- structive beginning" in his new job. But Dr. Clark feels the Salk-vac- cine approach is "probably not applicable" to cancer research. If it were his money, says Dr. Clark, he would offer half for a reliable sys- temic-cancer-detection test, and the other half for finding a way of controlling metastasis. • a, /I ' zszs MEDICAL WORLD HEWS/~ 4, 1982 ~" TI05391594