The proposal changed the field. “Zubrod’s cooperative group model galvanized cancer medicine,” Robert Mayer (who would later become the chair of one of these groups) recalls. “For the first time,318 an academic oncologist felt as if he had a community. The cancer doctor was not the outcast anymore, not the man who prescribed poisons from some underground chamber in the hospital.” The first group meeting, chaired by Farber, was a resounding success. The researchers agreed to proceed with a series of common trials, called protocols, as soon as possible.
