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Happy birthday: 75 years of chemotherapy is worth celebrating
One in three of us will develop cancer during our lives. When it happens we expect to be treated with a combination of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Chemo is the “youngest” of these cancer treatments and is one of the reasons why the overall survival rates for cancer have doubled in the past 40 years.
This week, August 27th to be precise, marks the 75th anniversary of the first use of chemotherapy in a cancer patient. It’s an interesting story, juxtaposing military horror with medical advancement, and with an Irish angle of sorts.
Mustard gas, first produced during the first World War, was a deadly chemical that killed some 10,000 Allied troops at Ypres, Belgium, in 1917. But it took an accident during the second World War in the port of Bari, Italy, for the potential medical value of mustard gas to emerge from the mire of war.
Source: Irish TImes