Messenger of the Lord

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.” ¹⁴⁶ Much cancer research has been done since, lending support to Ellen White’s reference to “cancerous germs,” ¹⁴⁷ 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.” ¹⁴⁸ MOL 329.1