Journal of Cancer Education: the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education

Meeting the Challenge of Cancer: A Supplement to The Challenge of Cancer, 1955, by the Cancer Reports Section of the National Cancer Institute (Download PDF)

The Challenge of Cancer, a Research Story That Involves the Secret of Life Itself, 1950, by Lester Grant. Bethesda, MD, National Cancer Institute An introduction to the state of cancer research in 1950 (Download PDF)

Teaching Guide to Challenge of Cancer, 1950 (Download PDF)

The Reward of Courage, 1921 (Medicine on Screen)

This silent film was the first cancer educational film commissioned by the American Society for the Control of Cancer (now the American Cancer Society). It urges viewers to avoid quack treatments and to seek the help of recognized physicians at the first sign of what might be cancer.  The film embeds these messages in a melodrama that warns against a nefarious “quack,” invites audiences to sympathize with a vulnerable woman endangered and a young couple thwarted in love, and tells the story of a hard-headed businessman converted to the idea that an industrial clinic could improve worker health and productivity, reduce company costs, and detect cancers.

Choose to Live, 1940

Choose to Live is a conversion story in which Mary Brown is persuaded to seek early diagnosis and treatment from a recognized physician.  It explores the anxieties that Mary feels about the possibility that she might have breast cancer; how such anxieties prompt her to delay seeking help; and how they conflict with her sense of responsibility toward her husband and children. Her eventual decision to seek assistance is portrayed as providing her with great comfort. Even before she knows the diagnosis of her condition, she finds that her decision to see her physician has lifted an immense emotional burden: “It’s been such a relief to tell someone what I was afraid of,” she tells her family physician.

The Traitor Within (animated), 1946

Until the 1940s most cancer educationals were targeted at women. The Traitor Within was one of the first to try to persuade men to seek early detection and treatment. The enemy in this cartoon is a factory worker gone bad, a transformed cell (akin to a Jean Miro or Alexander Calder figure) that kills its coworker cells and disrupts the production line. Such a portrayal harkened back to wartime scares about fifth columnists; touched on post-war concerns about the “threat” posed by labor unions in an age of full employment; and suggested emergent Cold War anxieties about communist disruption of American industry.

Man Alive!, 1952 (animated, Medicine on Screen)

Like The Traitor Within, Man Alive! was among the first cancer educational films to target men. Where the focus of The Traitor Within is industrial disruption, in Man Alive! it is disruptions to life in middle class suburbia. It tells the story of Ed Parmalee who fears he may have cancer and avoids going to the doctor, just as he fears going to a reputable mechanic when his car’s engine makes a strange noise. In the case of the car, the result is disastrous: Clyde, a crooked car mechanic, destroys the engine. Ed narrowly avoids a similar disaster with his body when he is dissuaded from going to a quack (Clyde’s identical twin) and seeks medical attention from a regular physician. As the narrator explains to him, his body is like a car engine—a metaphor never deployed in cancer education films aimed at women at this time—in that it gives warning signs of impending trouble.

Carcinoma of the Esophagus, 1953 (animated, fluoroscopic)

Using cinefluorography and animation, this medical training film shows the location of the esophagus and surrounding organs, various irregularities of the esophageal wall created by carcinomas, and the appearance of the area after radiation treatment.

HeLa Cell Strain: Cervical Carcinoma, 1956

Describes and demonstrates, through time-lapse photography at various speeds, the characteristics of cultured cells taken originally from patient Henrietta Lacks, who had cervical carcinoma and was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s. Released before the current controversies around the use of cells from an African American patient without her knowledge or consent, the focus of this film is on the value of such cells as experimental material in the study of cancer and the field of general cytology.

The Search for Cancer Viruses, 1966

This film was produced at a time of growing research into the possibility of a viral cause for some cancers including leukemia, and when growing numbers of children treated with new chemotherapeutic interventions survived leukemia, previously a disease that almost always killed. It explores the possibility that one or more viruses may contribute to the development of cancerous cells, profiles early research in that area, and follows the story of a young girl being treated for leukemia.

Radiation Therapy in the Management of Cancer, 1970

Demonstrates the use of radiation therapy to treat cancer, including two illustrative case studies.

The Care of the Patient with Non-Palpable Cancer of the Breast, 1977

Presents recommended standard of care of the time for patients with a breast lesion that cannot be felt (palpated), sometimes also called by health teams a “minimal” cancer.

The Fight and The Outlaw Within, at the National Film Board of Canada

Challenge was a co-production of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Medical Film Institute of the American Association of Medical Colleges. An agency of the Canadian government founded in 1939, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. It maintains a website where viewers can access many of its productions, both current and historical, including The Fight and The Outlaw Within, the English-language version of Cancer, available from the NLM. Both The Fight and The Outlaw Within are modified versions of Challenge.

These shorter versions of the film were targeted at the general public, while Challenge focused on an audience of high school and university science students. The Fight, a 20-minute version, was aimed at a theatrical audience; The Outlaw Within and Cancer, 10-minute versions in English and French respectively, were targeted at Canadian film circuits.