From Fowl to Woman?

When the American Cancer Society gathered a number of the nation's big-name researchers in Palm Beach Shores last week, the most provocative report came from a hitherto-unknown scientist who is not even a specialist in human cancer. Dr. Olive Stull Davis has cancer, and if her theory is right about how she developed the disease, her own case may provide valuable insight into how some cancers are caused.

Professor Davis teaches veterinary anatomy at Indiana's Purdue University. She began working about 20 years ago with a virus that causes what farmers call "big-liver disease" in chickens. Ten years ago, Dr. Davis developed cancer in her lymphatic system, and had heavy radiation treatment. She compared cells from her own tumors with those from chickens. Said Dr. Davis, with scientific detachment: "They were very closely comparable microscopically to the lymphoid chicken tumors with which I had been working."

The grey-haired researcher continued: "Since at that time few scientists believed in the possibility of transmission of virus-caused avian tumors to any mammal, including man, I had worked for years without any special protection against the fowl-tumor virus, with my bare hands in contact with the blood and tumors of infected chickens and chick embryos almost daily. This could have amounted to a repeated inoculation with the virus, since there were usually cuts and scratches on my hands."

Since Dr. Davis developed cancer, other researchers have crossed the bird-mammal barrier and induced cancer in mice and monkeys with avian viruses. Dr. Davis may be the first identified human victim of a similar transfer. But it is not yet certain, because many tumor tissues look alike under the microscope. And Dr. Davis herself concedes: "Maybe it was just coincidence that I got this kind of cancer."

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