Kanematsu Sugiura

Kanematsu Sugiura (1890 – 1979) was a cancer researcher who spent his career at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He has been called "one of the true pioneers in cancer research", and completed over 250 papers before his death. He received a number of awards and prizes throughout his life, and retired from the center in 1962. Popularly, he is perhaps best known for his work on laetrile, a controversial alternative cancer treatment, which he was convinced had a palliative effect on certain mice tumors.cite journal |author=Hutchison DJ |title=Kanematsu Sugiura 1890-1979 |journal=Cancer Res. |volume=40 |issue=7 |pages=2625–6 |year=1980 |month=July |pmid=6992988 |doi= |url=http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=6992988]

Laetrile controversy

In 1972, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center board member Benno Schmidt convinced the hospital to test laetrile so that he could assure others of its ineffectiveness "with some conviction". However, the respected scientist put in charge of the testing, Kanematsu Sugiura, found that laetrile inhibited the secondary tumors in mice without destroying the primary tumors. He repeated the experiment three times with the same results, and then three more times. In a blinded test, however, he was unable to conclude that laetrile had anticancer activity. His first three experiments were not published because, in the words of Chester Stock, Sugiura's supervisor, "it would have caused all kind of havoc". Nevertheless the results were leaked in 1973, causing a stir. Subsequently laetrile was tested on 14 tumor systems, and a Sloan-Kettering press release concluded that "laetrile showed no beneficial effects". Three other researchers were unable to confirm Sugiura's results, although one of three did confirm Sugiara's results in one of his three studies. Mistakes in the Sloan-Kettering press release were highlighted by a group of laetrile proponents led by Ralph Moss, former public affairs official of Sloan-Kettering hospital, who was fired when he announced his membership in the group. These mistakes were considered inconsequential, but Nicholas Wade in "Science" noted that "even the appearance of a departure from strict objectivity is unfortunate."cite journal |author=Wade N |title=Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering: A Question of Ambiguity |journal=Science (journal) |volume=198 |issue=4323 |pages=1231–1234 |year=1977 |month=December |pmid=17741690 |doi=10.1126/science.198.4323.1231 |url=] The results from these studies were published all together. [Published in "Journal of Surgical Oncology 10(2). [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/112720432/issue Link] .]

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