The Conquest of Cancer—a Long-Ignored Breakthrough

About the Book

Important findings and decisive breakthroughs in medicine have nearly always encountered fierce opposition, and it took a long time before they were finally recognized as major discoveries. This book describes the circumstances of a revelatory experience made by Dr Karel Fortýn in 1957 and its fundamental scientific significance in the struggle against cancer. It is also an attempt to explain why an important breakthrough can be ignored in the light of so much evidence.

About the Author

The author’s career as biotechnologist is marked by surprising coincidences as if in preparation for the unexpected involvement in a medical issue of importance. Born in Prague, his school years started in Paris when in 1940 war events brought him to Britain. Enticed by his teachers at King’s College School in London he found early interest in the medical sciences. At that time he was intrigued by the advent of antibiotics and the penicillin adventure in which Sir Ernst Chain became one of the Nobel Prize laureates. Surprisingly, in 1950 the author made his acquaintance in Czechoslovakia when Prof. Chain was there as consultant for the government. They met again in Switzerland under similar circumstances. Later, when the author was defending a thesis in bioengineering at Dijon University he was honoured having Sir Ernst as President of the jury. The critical coincidence relating to later work is that shortly after Dr Fortyn’s revelatory biological finding in 1957 the author had in mind a project based on the same principle. Becoming acquainted by chance in 1999 both realized they passed their matriculation in the same school. What followed is the result of their mutual understanding of the cancer challenge.