Mustard gas was father of ‘chemo’
SECRET documents have revealed how a plot by Winston Churchill and Eisenhower to stockpile mustard gas led to the invention of chemotherapy.
The Allied leaders were scared Hitler would resort to chemical warfare as he began to lose the war in Europe. So the American Liberty ship John Harvey was dispatched to Italy with a secret cargo of 2,000 US mustard gas bombs, also known as sulfur mustard, to be used if the conflict did turn chemical.
On the night of December 2, 1943, the John Harvey was one of 17 ships sunk in a surprise Luftwaffe raid that killed more than 1,000 British and US servicemen, as well as hundreds of civilians.
Many were killed not by the bombs dropped by the Junkers Ju-88s but in the aftermath, when the raid dubbed “Little Pearl Harbour” unleashed a poison cloud over the Allied port of Bari on the Adriatic coast.
Documents found in the National Archive reveal how the disaster led not only to the cover up by Eisenhower and Churchill – but also to the discovery of a new cancer treatment.
Because of fears Hitler would launch all-out chemical warfare, medics were not alerted to risks of the liquid mustard spilling over the harbour and mixing with leaking fuel from ships. Hundreds of survivors who had swum ashore were given morphine and left to sit overnight in uniforms drenched in oil and liquid gas.
Many began dying the next day, but in a grim silver lining, US chemical warfare expert Lt Col Stewart Alexander was able to harvest an unprecedented amount of data from a morgue full of mustard gas victims.
His final report was immediately stamped Top Secret, but not before his startling discovery of the toxic effects on white blood cells had caught the eye of his superior, Col Cornelius Rhoads.
Of 617 of those exposed, 83 died, showing mustard’s suppressive effect on cell division. Rhoads realised something similar could be used to inhibit the fast-multiplying malignant white cells and become a chemical weapon in the fight against cancer. The Bari report prompted a top-secret Yale University clinical trial that proved nitrogen mustard (a more stable cousin of sulfur mustard) could shrink tumours.a laboratory and team of wartime scientists was put together to manufacture new mustard derivatives and develop the first cancer medicine – now known as chemotherapy.