Hodgkin's disease: challenges for the future

Clinical investigators of Hodgkin's disease of the recent past have reason to be proud. Tens of thousands of individuals, many of them young, fertile, and productive, have been cured of their life-threatening disease. There are few better examples of the success and rewards of clinical oncology than in the control of Hodgkin's disease by improved diagnostic methods and the appropriate use of radiation and chemotherapy. Yet the clinical investigator of today cannot be satisfied with these successes. The treatment required for high cure rates remains empirical, difficult, and costly. The goal must be to prevent or reverse this fascinating disease, utilizing specific therapy designed from a knowledge of the cause and pathogenesis of the disease. There are sufficient biological clues and methodologies to predict that this will be possible, and in the decade of the 1990s!