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Just as it is the aim of experimental cancer research to investigate conditions favouring orinimical to the origin and growth of cancer in animals, it is the task of statistical cancer research to study conditions under which the incidence of human cancer will increase or decrease. This study will naturally include the evaluation of results of treatment which, so far, has formed the bulk of cancer statistics. For all the interest of experimental cancer research, it may be doubted if complete understanding of chemical or virus carcinogenesis would place us in a much better position at the bedside of cancer patients than we are now in cases of heart failure, with all our knowledge of respiratory enzymes, etc. But whereas experimental cancer research aims at therapy, cancer statistics are directed towards prevention, and already show results in this field with regard to some forms of occupational cancer. However, it is true that statistics cannot provide proofs. They can find out if correlations exist, and in this way point to some possibilities and exclude others. But proofs with a bearing on pathological subjects must be provided by pathological means. For instance, it was by means of statistical examinations that the connection between syphilis and general paralysis was first suggested, but the proof of this suggestion had to be provided by bacteriological and immunological methods.
J Clemmesen (Wed,) studied this question.