Rhoads later said the claim was a joke subsequent investigations found no evidence that he carried out such “experiments”. There, he penned a hideously racist letter - unsent but discovered by his office staff - claiming to have transplanted cancer cells into healthy Puerto Ricans, whom he compared to animals. Before the war, Rhoads worked at Rockefeller University in New York City, and he travelled to Puerto Rico to study conditions such as anaemia and tropical sprue. Fiercely driven and passionate about curing cancer, Rhoads oversold preliminary research results and rushed into clinical trials. The book’s second protagonist is physician Cornelius ‘Dusty’ Rhoads. But Conant argues that Alexander’s report of his observations helped to convince researchers of the value and robustness of the approach. Yale University researchers in New Haven, Connecticut, first treated cancer with nitrogen mustard in 1942 the patient died of lymphosarcoma a year before the Germans attacked the Italian harbour. The inspiration for chemotherapy did not come from Bari. On this point, Conant has to labour to connect the dots. Alexander’s detailed report of his findings in Bari, initially classified but circulated among some military researchers, spurred efforts to find a chemical treatment for cancer. Flood the body with toxic substances, the theory went, and the disease could be snuffed out or at least beaten back. These had conjured up hopes that the chemicals could be used to rein in cancerous blood cells in leukaemia and lymphoma. (There are uncomfortable parallels with the flurry of uninterpretable observational studies and uncontrolled clinical trials during the first months of the COVID‑19 pandemic.)Īlexander had seen similar effects of such agents in animal studies before the war.
He scrambles to make sense of data from different treatments given in different hospitals, with different standards of care and no control groups. Alexander struggles to treat his ailing patients while battling military officials who are intent on keeping the incident quiet.Īlexander is struck by how the mustard–oil mixture obliterated his patients’ white blood cells. The Geneva Protocol had banned the use of chemical warfare in 1925, but the shipment was there in case of the need to retaliate if Hitler had resorted to chemical weapons. The deadly cargo in Bari’s harbour was a fiercely guarded secret. Could it have been chlorine or mustard, the causes of the chemical massacres of the First World War? Or was it lewisite, a blistering agent that quickly penetrated the skin? Or one of the new blends such as ‘Winterlost’, a combination of nitrogen mustard and lewisite that featured a low freezing point to ensure effectiveness at the frigid Russian front? Chemical secret The possibilities offer a harrowing tour through the chemical arms race of the early twentieth century. Stewart Alexander, an American expert on chemical weapons, is called in to explain the mysterious ailments plaguing the Bari survivors. That hard-working and brilliant physician is the first of the book’s two heroes. His efforts contributed to the development of chemotherapy, seeding the cancer-research juggernaut that dominates drug discovery to this day, argues writer Jennet Conant in her latest history of war-era science. The Great Secret brings that harrowing night to life, and then follows the military physician who fought to uncover the truth about the chemical weapons.
Stunned nurses found themselves with wards full of swollen, blistered patients, temporarily blinded. Many who made it to the local hospital were greeted with blankets to wrap around their poison-soaked clothing, sealing their fate as they awaited care.
The gas - which was actually in liquid form - mixed with oil from the sinking tankers to create a deadly slick that clung to sailors’ skin as they swam to safety. One was carrying 2,000 bombs loaded with deadly mustard gas.
The onslaught cost at least 1,000 lives and sunk 17 ships. On 2 December 1943, German forces attacked the Italian port town of Bari.
The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer Jennet Conant W. Rescuers work sift through the debris left by the explosion of a munitions ship in Bari harbour, Italy, in 1945.