Heroes and villains.

Breast cancer in the 1950s was treated by radical surgery; both the disease and its treatment inspired fear and silence. Only after much opposition from the medical establishment did the less radical alternative of lumpectomy gradually become available. For testicular cancer, too, prospects improved with the 1960s discovery of a platinum compound treatment. By 1976 Hodgkins disease and childhood leukaemia were also treatable. The unorthodox treatment of Laotil, available at a cancer clinic in Mexico, attracted many patients for whom conventional methods had failed. In the U.S. and Britain there was growing suspicion of industry as a cause of cancer, particularly asbestos and steel production, and legislation was brought in causing many factories to close. In 1981 Professors Richard Peto and Richard Doll drew attention to the relation of diet and smoking to cancer. The programme concludes with an account of the hopes raised by the drug Interferon. This, however, proved to have very limited use in cancer treatment.