Viruses & Cancer (Cont'd.)

When hundreds of cancer experts and thousands of researchers in assorted biological sciences swarmed into Atlantic City last week, one of the most persistent questions was: Can viruses be convicted of causing human cancer? When the highly technical discussions were over, virus guilt had not yet been proved. But from several laboratories came new-forged links in a damning chain of evidence. Most significantly, after a half-century of working with such lowly creatures as fowl and rodents, the researchers have begun to report suggestive findings in monkeys and men. Examples:

>>A virus which occurs naturally in primates (rhesus and related monkeys) has been shown capable of causing cancer. Both Merck & Co. virologists and Dr. Bernice Eddy of the National Institutes of Health, who reported similar results, had to go back to hamsters to start their cancers growing, but there was no doubt that they got their effects with a virus, known variously as the vacuolating agent and SV (for simian virus) 40. It is the first primate virus shown to cause cancer in any animal.

>> A near-final step in the same direction was reported by Baylor University's Dr. John J. Trentin, who grew highly malignant tumors in hamsters injected with adenovirus 12, which hitherto had been known to cause disease (a feverish cold, or "grippe" ) only in humans. Doubters suggested that Dr. Trentin's adenovirus might have been contaminated with SV 40. To make sure, other laboratories will repeat the Baylor experiments.

>> Dr. Helene W. Toolan of Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Institute reported that two viruses which had previously been found in human cancer have now been found in human embryos (from spontaneous abortions, or "miscarriages"). To rule out contamination in the Sloan-Kettering lab, parts of the same embryos were examined in London, where British workers isolated one of the two viruses.

The other, said Sloan-Kettering's Dr.

Alice E. Moore, seems to be virtually the same as one previously found in rats.

And both occur in human cancers trans planted into rats.

While no researcher could yet prove that any cancer in monkey or man is caused by a virus, each virological cross link between the higher and lower ani mals held out a promise of more knowledge to come.

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