Evaluation of the normal-lymphocyte-transfer test.

The normal-lymphocyte-transfer test has been advocated as a method of assessing the immuno-competence of lymphocytes from patients with breast and large-bowel cancer. Evidence is presented in this paper that the methodology is subject to many uncontrollable errors, that the reaction is the result of multiple factors, and that the size of the reaction is related to the age of the patient and not to the extent of the malignancy.