Fighting cancer

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2019

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the 1960s doctors began ground-breaking work into using several toxic chemicals at once to treat cancer. Combination chemotherapy, as it was called, would revolutionise cancer survival rates, particularly for Hodgkin Lymphoma, until then a virtual death sentence. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to the doctor who played a key part in that breakthrough, clinical oncologist, Vincent DeVita who has spent his more than 50-year career trying to cure cancer.

Picture: Vincent DeVita (centre) and colleagues George Canellos and Bob Young circa 1971 (Credit: Joel Carl Freid)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC
0:35.4	Sounds.
0:38.4	Choosing what to watch.
0:39.4	Night after night.
0:41.1	The flicking through. The endless searching is a nightmare. We want to help you. On our
0:46.7	brand new podcast off the telly we share what we've been watching.
0:50.3	Cladie aider. Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming, lovely.
0:55.0	Off the telly with me Joanna Paige and me, Natalie Cassidy,
0:59.0	so your evenings can be a little less searching
1:02.0	and a lot more watching.
1:03.4	Listen on BBC Sounds.
1:05.6	Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast here on the BBC World Service.
1:17.0	I'm Louis Adaggo and today I'm taking you back to 1960s America and
1:22.0	groundbreaking work into combination chemotherapy to
1:25.9	treat cancer. The results would revolutionize cancer survival rates particularly
1:31.0	for Hodgkin's lymphoma until then a virtual death sentence.
1:35.0	I've been talking to the doctor behind that breakthrough.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.