A third group, inmates of the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, volunteered for the tests, knowing that the injections consisted of cancer cells.

The research, under the direction of Dr. Chester M. Southam of Sloan‐Kettering, has been going on for 10 years. It is aimed at studying the nature of the body's defense mechanisms—the immune reactions—in healthy persons, cancer patients and persons suffering from chronic diseases other than cancer.

The important outcome of the study so far is that a cancer patient's immune mechanisms are deficient. compared with those of the two other groups. The nature of the deficiency is now being studied.

Possible fruits of the work include the knowledge of how to help cancer patients fight their own tumors with immune reactions, how to manipulate the reaction so that grafts of foreign tissues would be practicable, and how to transfer immunity to disease from one person to another.

Thus, there has never been any‐ question of the potential value of the research.

Neither has there been much doubt about the safety of experiments. Sufficient experience with the injection of cancer celIs in animals and in humans—many of them scientists, or volunteers who were told what they were getting—has shown that the risk of, say, causing cancer by the injections was considered to be very low.

Nor has there been any question of the competence and high standards of Dr. Southam, who is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities in this field.

Two supporters of the manner in which the work was done, in fact, declared that if the same procedure had been followed by almost any scientist other than Dr. Southam they would have thought it unethical, their regard for him was so high.