Original version

BBC World Service South Asia

Witness History

Podcasts

Factual: Life Stories

Factual: History

History as told by the people who were there

History as told by the people who were there.

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

Witness History: Fighting cancer

Documentaries

Vincent-Devita-and-colleagu.jpg

23/12/2019 GMT

Fighting cancer

BBC World Service - Witness History, Fighting cancer

Pioneering work in the 60s into combination chemotherapy to try to find a cure for cancer

In the 1960s, doctors in the US developed a radical new approach to treating cancer, using several toxic chemicals at once, and revolutionising survival rates.

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)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Witness History

Fighting cancer

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service South Asia

About BBC World Service