Cancer, a Virus

On page 322 we discussed Ellen White’s instruction regarding dietary factors that may cause cancer. At the time she wrote, eminent men and women of science emphatically declared that cancer was not infectious, that there was no cancer germ.MOL 328.9

Decades later, in 1956, Wendell Stanley, a Ph.D. virologist and Nobel Prize winner at the University of California, asserted his belief that “viruses cause most or all human cancers.” He described viruses as “midget germs” that “lurk in the human body for years, even a lifetime; some cause trouble, some do not.... In some cases, the cancer viruses might become active by aging, dietary indiscretions, hormonal imbalance, chemicals, radiation, or a combination of these stresses, and malignancies may follow.” ^{146Third National Cancer Conference, as reported by World Wide Medical News Service, Chicago, 1956. See also The Review and Herald, May 2, 1957, p. 12.} Much cancer research has been done since, lending support to Ellen White’s reference to “cancerous germs,” ^{147The Ministry of Healing, 313. “Proof that viruses cause various forms of malignant diseases in a variety of animals has been obtained by direct experimentation; thus, purified viruses inoculated into susceptible animals can induce malignant cells, and the cells of the malignancy can be shown to contain virus or virus-induced products.... Similar investigations cannot be carried out in man ... due to the ethical constraints.... The viruses now thought to be possibly aetiologically associated with human cancers are shown in Table 11-5. In all cases association is based on circumstantial evidence, but the weight of evidence in some cases is now heavy.”} but currently it is believed that there are other, more common, causes of cancer as well.MOL 328.10

Dr. Robert J. Huebner, chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Maryland, reported in 1961 that “there isn’t the slightest doubt in our minds that human cancers are caused by viruses. To this extent, they are simply infectious diseases.” ^{148Newsweek, March 27, 1961.}MOL 329.1