Viral induced cancer query

[Clay Malinak]

In your posting, you asked about the first suggestion that viruses caused 
cancer. Although the idea had been discussed before then, Charlotte 
Friend in 1957 published the first peer-reviewed work which gave evidence 
for viral etiology of a specific cancer. She was initially dismissed as a 
heretic for this work, but it is now seen as a seminal paper in the 
development of modern viral oncology.  The paper is "Cell-free 
transmission in adult swiss mice of a disease having the character of a 
leukemia" (J. Experimental Med. 105:307-318; 1957). Try to get your hands 
on a copy of "Viral Oncogenesis and Cell Differentiation: the 
contributions of Charlotte Friend", published by the New York Academy of 
Sciences in 1989. (vol 567 in the annals of the New York Academy of 
Sciences).  It is a collection of papers presented at a conference held 
in her honor in  1988. Interestingly, it contains a paper by Peter 
Duesberg in which he claims that all cellular oncogenes are derived from 
acutely transforming retroviruses (it is now known that just the opposite 
is usually the case).

Hope this helps...

Clay Malinak (MALINAK at U.WASHINGTON.EDU)