The American Cancer Society unveiled a promising new weapon in the war against cancer yesterday, a 1.2-megaton anti-cancer missile. The powerful missile, a converted nuclear warhead fitted with special cancer-eradicating plutonium, has been tested vigorously on cancer patients on a top-secret military atoll near Guam, with a 100 percent cure rate. Pending FDA and Pentagon approval, the weapon could be used on U.S. cancer patients as soon as May.
“This is our boldest and most effective strike yet against this life-taking disease,” ACS chairman and former McDonnell Douglas CEO William McNair said. “Our island tests indicate that when the missile is fired at a cancer patient, the disease is instantly eradicated.”
The treatment will work not unlike a medium-range ballistic nuclear missile. It will be computer-locked on its target and launched from an underground silo in Nevada. The missile’s curative powers trigger on impact, exploding with a force 400 times more powerful than that of the 1945 Hiroshima bomb and destroying all cancer cells within a 35-square-mile radius.
The missile is said to have some side-effects, including nausea, headaches and the eradication of all other forms of life within a 35-square mile radius.
Through March, when testing stopped due to seismic disturbances in the Pacific rim, the $40 million surface-to-patient missile had a 100% success rate, besting such commonly used treatments as chemotherapy (36%), radiation (41%), surgical removal (27%), homeopathy (11%), and prayer (61%).
“In every case, save one or two, the treatment has worked,” McNair said. “And, in the cases when the treatment failed, it was only because the patients were not in the designated strike area when the missiles hit.”
Cancer patients expressed hope at the prospect of a new treatment with such a high success rate.
“Though my skin cancer is in remission, I am excited to try this new treatment,” cancer patient Judith Miles said. “Why wait the few more months when I can now eliminate it in one fell swoop?”
Added Derrick Thorner, who suffers from lung cancer: “My cancer is very serious, so I will probably encourage them to use higher mega-tonnage.”
Skeptics of the treatment have expressed concern with the side-effects of the new technology, particularly its tendency to destroy all life and property in the vicinity of the patient.
“Our initial reports indicate that if a patient was treated in, say, New York, where over 14 million people are concentrated in a small area, many if not all of the 14 million could be destroyed along with the cancer cells,” New England Journal of Medicine editor Dr. Daphne Lehman said. “Whether that is too large a price to pay to defeat this deadly disease remains to be seen.”
Added American Medical Association chair Dr. Fran Stern: “Look at Jonas Salk. He is a legend in the medical community. But when he introduced the notion of killing every first-born child to reduce polio, people said he was a genocidal maniac.”
