Abstract

One of the most intriguing findings in the current investigations searching for the cause of cancer is the unquestioned presence of viruses in the leukemias and in certain tumors of lower animals. (Viruses have been identified in human patients as well.) Studies dealing with the role of viruses in malignancies of lower animals, where experimental factors can be controlled, may well lead to a key for the understanding of the etiologic factors in human cancer. Though viruses alone may not cause cancer, when considered in conjunction with genetic and other types of carcinogenic factors, they may represent a co-carcinogenetic course. Here is new and interesting material which challenges the clinician to observations which may be passed to the researcher in the laboratory, who needs more information about the clinical course of human cancer as regards possible causative factors.