Retrovirus and Oncogene musings..the plot thickens.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/specials/baltimore-scandal.html

Gallo: The Special Virus Cancer Program was actually not headed by Huebner and Todaro, but was first administered by [Dr. Frank] Rauscher and then by [Dr.] John Moloney. But Dr. Huebner and Dr. Todaro were the two most obvious, visible, and famous virologists that were funded by the program and also, in turn, funded other people by a contract program that was controversial at the time. That led to the Zinder Committee's evaluation of it....


Now, Bob Huebner and George Todaro had a famous theory called the virogene/oncogene theory. It is true that I did not believe in the literal aspects of that theory, and it is true that that theory was not correct. However, the catchy word "oncogene" certainly produced some thoughts about going after a particular gene, or genes. Huebner and Todaro thought it would be one gene originally, or maybe a couple, and it turned out to be a very large number. Their knowledge and ideas that cancer had to involve something in the gene, something in the DNA, were already there, so that was not novel. But when you started to speak about it as a specific gene, or a few genes, I think that, in itself, helped to crystallize peoples' ideas on looking for such genes. But I could not imagine that the theory they were proposing, that virtually all of cancer, if not all cancers, was simply an activation of a set of endogenous retroviruses which included within them an oncogene, was the way cancer developed for many reasons. One reason was that all kinds of activation of endogenous retroviruses in animals were not associated with anything, except publication of papers. You would have it, you did not know what it meant, and there it was.

Also, I was impressed by the lack of evidence,