Why I Believe in Mrs. E. G. White

Comments on Cancer

So far as we have been able to discover, Mrs. White’s first references to cancer were in the early 1860’s. To be precise, in 1864 she declared that cancer was transmissible, which clearly implied that it was germ-borne (see Spiritual Gifts, volume 4, page 146). In 1905 she spoke specifically of “cancerous germs” (The Ministry of Healing, 313). WBEGW 50.3

Now, in 1905, much less 1864, did any learned doctor think that cancer was a germ-borne disease? Emphatically No. Quite a while after 1905 some researchers began to advocate what was known as the germ theory in regard to cancer, but they received a rather stony stare from almost all their colleagues. Finally, a whole new world of research opened up in the field of viruses. A virus might be described in nontechnical language as an infinitely small germ; at least no better description can currently be offered, for as yet we really know little about viruses. They are beyond the range of all except the electronic microscope. But this much we do know now, that these “midget germs,” to borrow Virologist Stanley’s phrase, seem most certainly to be the cause of a variety of afflictions. An editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, December 1, 1956, declared: WBEGW 50.4

“During the past decade the concept of viral etiology [virus cause] of cancer and allied diseases has gained considerable momentum.... It is entirely possible that most, if not all, malignant tumors, not only in animals but also in humans, are caused by filterable viruses. Many of these viruses may be transmitted from generation to generation, remaining in a latent form harmless for their carrier hosts. Now and then, however, prompted by some obscure activating factors (some of them physiological, such as metabolic or hormonal, others extrinsic, such as chemical poisons or ionizing radiation), these hitherto dormant viruses may change into tumor-producing pathogens.” WBEGW 51.1

Yet not so many years ago—decades after Mrs. White’s explicit statement in 1905—of the few things that scientists were sure they “knew” about cancer, one of them was this, that it was not germ-borne. WBEGW 51.2