Introduction
Modern medicine is founded upon methodical biologic research, careful clinical observation, and a regimen of logical pharmacologic therapy. However, in our plodding search for cancer's panacea the hope within Pandora's box is often less precise, merely a sorcerer's potion which sometimes casts its spurious spell over even the most discerning of our men of science.Those of us (EFL) who are constantly in close clinical contact with cancer sufferers are especially prone to be afflicted by a more benign but somewhat comparable "permanent thorn in the flesh"—an incurable zeal to penetrate the abysmal darkness of malignant disease. Thus, we are often tempted in our eagerness to try the "treasure hunt" technique in cancer research. In his fascinating presidential a d d r e s s entitled "The Nature of Discovery," Blalock2 mentions Newton as having said that "no great discovery was ever made without a bold guess." The