The Prophets of Doom

DISTURBING NEWS ABOUT BREAST CANCER was the six-column headline in the New York Herald Tribune. Sent to almost 100 papers that take the Trib's news service, the story began: "There is dreadful news about breast cancer." Across the U.S., hospitals and doctors got agonized inquiries from women who had had operations for breast cancer, or were about to have them.

The Tribune had taken from the A.M.A. Journal the text of a talk given last June by Baltimore Surgeon Edward F. Lewison. And the talk was little more than quotes from a book Lewison had published eight years earlier, contending that despite improvements in detection and treatment, the death rate of women from breast cancer has stayed about the same for half a century.

A blunt rejoinder came promptly from Manhattan's prestigious Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "It should be re-emphasized," said Medical Director Henry T. Randall, "that breast cancer detected at an early stage and promptly and adequately treated is one of the most curable of human cancers."

No matter how advanced the cancer, provided it can be operated on at all, there is a 65% five-year survival rate. This is almost exactly twice as good as the survival rate 50 years ago.

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