Historical Perspective: Allen, 1991

 
In 1991, Allen, in a tribute that memorialized his late wife, Sophie Spitz, recalled her/their work on melanomas in children in an article captioned, "Classics in oncology: Introduction to melanomas of childhood by Spitz.46 This is part of what he wrote:
 
"The prevailing point of view at that time was summarized by Dr. George T. Pack in a 1948 editorial, in which he urged that these pre-pubertal or juvenile melanomas be removed prior to or soon after puberty to avoid the possibility of later, biologically cancerous transformation. In contrast, Sophie's article on melanomas of childhood, published the same year, was the culmination of a series of articles on which we built the thesis that these juvenile or pre-pubertal melanomas were of as much concern as ordinary compound nevi--that is, of equal (no greater, no less) concern. Moreover, because of the relative precision and hence applicability of Sophie's histologic criteria, we were able, after a few years of further histologic refinement, to distinguish juvenile or pre-pubertal melanomas from the adult type in almost 100 percent of cases. Finally, as another dividend of the diagnostic use of the histologic pattern (in contrast to the more recent suggested use of the gross, imprecise circumferential pattern or 'silhouette'), we were able to determine that these nevi of Spitz occurred also occasionally in adults. Surgeons and pathologists were cautioned, therefore, to avoid misdiagnoses that were skewed preponderantly by the age of the patient."
 
As he had done consistently for more than 50 years, Allen continued to take liberties with facts, in this case not only with what Pack had written and affirmed, but what Spitz and he had written and affirmed. For one, Spitz's article on "melanomas of childhood" was not "the culmination of a series of articles" by them; it was her first article about the subject.7 For another, it was Pack who, sooner than Spitz (and surely before Allen), had realized that "pre-pubertal melanoma of the skin" was benign biologically, but Allen never mentioned that fact in his paean to Spitz (and to himself). For a third, Allen gave no hint that in 1948, Spitz asserted, without equivocation, that juvenile melanoma was a malignant melanoma.On the contrary, he declared wrongly that Spitz and he understood from the outset that juvenile melanoma was of no more or less concern than any other nevus. Would that this performance of Allen could be attributed to dotage, but it was characteristic of him for his entire professional life.**
** In the early 1960s, Allen was asked to leave the University of Miami School of Medicine because in a medical-legal case, in which he was a defendant, he had been caught substituting sections of tissue from a benign neoplasm of the breast for a carcinoma that he had diagnosed as benign. This is but one of many examples of Allen's disregard of accepted norms of behavior.