Capsules

¶ "New and fundamental evidence" about the formation of cancer cells has been discovered in the last two years, said a biennial report issued on the tenth anniversary of Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Institute, one of the nation's top cancer-research organizations. Outstanding discovery: definite proof of what had only been suspected--that cancer cells take up the body's basic chemicals at different rates from normal cells, suggesting the possibility of tailored chemical treatments for certain types of cancer. This principle, already put to work in leukemia with the use of 6-mercaptopurine, will be extended as fast as other effective chemicals can be developed.

¶ The height, weight and breadth of 18-year-olds can be predicted with "a high degree of probability" when they are only a few years old, reported New York City's Dr. Irving Kowaloff in the New York State Journal of Medicine. Examples, based on statistical studies of large numbers of children: when a boy is two years old, his height and pelvic breadth should be multiplied by two, his weight by five, to predict what his measurements will be when he is 18. The same formula applies to girls' dimensions, except that weight and height should be calculated at the age of 18 months instead of two years. ¶ U.S. children will continue to get Salk polio vaccine in three doses, 33 experts (among them: Dr. Jonas Salk. Surgeon General Leonard A. Scheele) decided unanimously in Washington. Reason: shots one and two supply immunization for undetermined periods, and "we want to take advantage of the protection provided by the third dose." The representatives also decided that the supply of Salk vaccine is sufficient to make the three-dose scheme practical in 1956. ¶ "The manufacture of [Salk polio] vaccine is the greatest problem the biological industry was ever faced with," said Kenneth F. Valentine, president of Pitman-Moore Co., Indianapolis vaccine manufacturer. "We never had a tougher product to make . . . The line between making a vaccine that is effective and making one that is unsafe is very thin." ¶ Patients who appear to be fully anesthetized may still be "capable of feeling, hearing and remembering things that happen in operating rooms," Harvard University's Dr. Philip Solomon told the New York State Society of Anesthesiologists in Manhattan. As a result of such improper anesthesia, he said, psychiatrists and other mental-health workers sometimes have to treat people who suffer from operating-room memories.

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