Viral induced cancer query

[bhjelle at unm.edu]

In article <Pine.ULT.3.91a.950208130037.17373B-100000 at hardy.u.washington.edu>,
Clay Malinak  <malinak at u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>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 

I believe this honor should be given
to Peyton Rous, who showed that a filterable
agent (ie virus) could transmit sarcomas
among chickens in 1911! (Believe he can
be forgiven for not having EM and PCR
etc, in 1911). It took quite a bit longer
to find oncogenic viruses of mammals.

Brian