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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Friday, January 8, 1982 15

Weizmann Professors Advancing Research Techniques on Cancer

REHOVOT — A new way
of strengthening immune
system recognition of
cancer cells — with possible
implications for the preven-
tion of the spread of malig-
nancy following surgery —

has been demonstrated by
researchers at the Weiz-
mann Institute of Science.
Still under laboratory
study, the new im-
munotherapeutic
technique, developed by

Emigration Down, Threats
Increase for Jews of Russia

NEW YORK (JTA) —
While the number of Jews
allowed to leave the Soviet
Union in 1981 was the low-
est in the past 10 years, the
assment and persecu-
of Russian Jews in-
sed and became more
brutal, it was reported at a
press conference at the
Roosevelt Hotel, sponsored
jointly by the Greater New
York Conference on Soviet
Jewry (GNYCSJ) and the
National Conference on
Soviet Jewry (NCSJ).
According to Dr. Seymour
Lachman, chairman of the
GNYCSJ, the number of
Jews allowed to leave the
USSR this year was 9,249
compared to a 10-year high
in 1979 when 51,320 Jews
left the Soviet Union, and
21,471 in 1980.
This year's figures,
Lachman noted, do not in-
clude numbers for the last
11 days of 1981. However,
no more than 175 Jews are
expected to receive permis-
sion to leave the Soviet
Union during this period.
To illustrate the stag-
gering decline of the
Jewish exodus from Rus-
sia, Lachman pointed out
that in August 1981 only
430 Jews emigrated — an
all-time low for a single
month. Each succeeding
month of 1981 was lower
still, with only 363 Jews
leaving the Soviet Union
November, a mere 10
percent of the 4,193 Jews
who arrived in Vienna in
November 1979, the peak
year for Jewish emigra-
tion, Lachman noted.

tit

were arrested in 1981 than
in any single year since
1970.
Sen. Alfonse D'Amato
(R-N.Y.) said that about a
half million Jews are esti-
mated to have applied for
exit visas and they are
"interned" in the Soviet
Union against their will. He
said the sanctions imposed
on the USSR by President
Reagan because of the situ-
ation in Poland should also
be applicable to the situa-
tion of Soviet Jewry.
D'Amato, who is a
member of the Congres-
sional Commission on
Security and Coopera-
tion in Europe which
monitors Soviet com-
pliance with the Helsinki
accords, said he is going
to increase its efforts in
the Senate and among
other Senators on behalf
of Soviet Jews.
Rep. Theodore Weiss
(D-N.Y.) announced that he
and 27 other Congressmen
from the greater New York
area have already signed a
petition to Soviet President
Leonid Brezhnev calling
upon him to permit the
emigration of Soviet Jews
and to "free all Jewish Pris-
oners of Conscience."

Meanwhile,
the
presidium of the Brussels
Conference on Soviet Jewry
will meet in Washington
soon to plan a campaign of
world-wide pressure on the
Soviet Union to increase the
number of Jews allowed to
emigrate, it was announced
by Leon Dulzin, chairman of
the World Zionist Organiza-
While the emigration tion and Jewish Agency
movement dwindled to a Executives. -
trickle-, the three million
Dulzin said the precipit-
Jews living in the USSR are ous decline in Soviet Jewish
gravely mistreated — their emigration was largely re-
human rights usurped and sponsible for the near record
anti-Semitism encouraged low of immigration to Israel
by the authorities.
in 1981. He blamed the
He charged_ that the Soviet closed-door policy on
Soviet Union has become the high rate of drop-outs.
the major source for anti- Of the 9,400 Jews allowed to
Semitic literature in recent leave Russia this year,
times. He also disclosed 7,580 chose to go to coun-
that more Jewish activists tries other than Israel.

Wildlife Found Harmed After
Return of S. Sinai to Egypt

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Av-
raham Yoffi, head of the
Nature Reserves Authority,
s that great harm has
'1,,een done to wildlife in
Sinai since the southern
part was handed back to
Egypt nearly two years ago.
In a weekend radio inter-
view, he said that the gazel-
les had been decimated by
Bedouin hunters, due to
lack of government supervi-
sion, and the coral reefs at
Ras Muhammed had been
ruined by Egyptian fisher-
men using dynamite to cap-
ture fish.

- Yoffi said that for the 14
years of Israeli occupation
of the region Israel had
sought to maintain strictly
Egyptian law on these mat-
ters.
Yoffi said he had dis-
cussed this with the
Egyptians and other
Arab officials even be-
fore the peace treaty, at
international forums.
Yoffi said much research
material on nature
preservation in Sinai had
been sent to Egypt, but the
Cairo authorities had done
nothing.

Prof. Meir Shinitzky and
Efrat Danciger at the insti-
tute's Department of Mem-
brane Research, and Dr.
Yehuda Skornick of Rokah
Hospital in Tel Aviv, has
successfully prevented the
development of several var-
ieties of experimental ani-
mal tumors in mice.
In their research, tumor
cells were treated with
cholesterol hemisuccinate,
a very efficient membrane
modifier, to expose other-
wise concealed tumor-
associated components.
Once visible, these
"foreign" antigens elicited a
much stronger immune re-
sponse in the organism than
that produced by untreated

tumor cells.
To test the immune sys-
tem response, the poten-
tiated tumor cells were
exposed to lethal doses
od gamma rays and in-
jected into animals to
immunize them against a
subsequent challenge
with live cancer cells.
This procedure is similar
to the administration of a
dead polio virus vaccine
to prime the immune sys-
tem to fight a later expo-
sure to the real disease.
A large proportion of the
mice that were pretreated
with the modified cells had
no detectable tumor growth
when later exposed to live
tumor cells. Untreated

animals or those injected
with dead tumor cells with-
out antigen enhancement
all developed tumors.
,Prof. Shinitzky warns
that there is no possibility
today of immunizing people
against cancer as one does
with laboratory animals.
What suggests itself, how-
ever, is the use of tissue
from a primary cancer that
is surgically removed from a
patient. If cells from that
tissue were isolated, treated
to strengthen their an-
tigenicity, irradiated, and
then returned to the pa-
tient, the immune system
would recognize and set up
defenses against them.
Hopefully this line of

defense would also be ef-
fective against live
cancer cells remaining in
the body, thereby retard-
ing or even preventing
the appearance of metas-
tatic or secondary
tumors — the real threat
of cancer.
The promising advance,
which has been well re-
ceived by cancer resear-
chers, was recently awarded
a special three-year grant of
$220,000 by the U.S. Na-
tional Institutes of Health
for studies with experimen-
tal animals. Preliminary
studies with cancer patients
are currently supported by a
grant from the Israel
Cancer Society.

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