linzhou , a tiny mountain province in China, has seen a lot of action lately. Here, in a nondescript red-brick health centre, next to a metalworking shop that could be perfectly at home in the Middle Ages, us and Chinese doctors operated recently on Chinese peasants with high-tech medical equipment to treat cancer of the oesophagus.

"The swallowing disease', as the Chinese have called cancer for centuries, accounts for a shocking 20 per cent of deaths in this rugged region. Millions die every year from this form of cancer alone.

American doctors say the procedures being tried here