Sarah Stewart Revealed the Missing Link Between Viruses and Cancer | Hacker News Reader

Sarah Stewart Revealed the Missing Link Between Viruses and Cancer

smithsonianmag.com

76 pointskungfudoi14 comments

Colon cancer linked to viruses in beef, Nobel-winning scientist contends

Harald zur Hausen, who first linked HPV with cervical cancer, is now trying to prove a link between a cow virus and colon cancer

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health/article/1695757/colon-...

> "At this moment there is no clear-cut data available," zur Hausen said in an interview from Singapore two weeks ago

I see Hindus in India don't eat cow/beef, do they've lower occurrence of these disease? Why would they make such religious rule had it not have any effect on humans?

no more medium rare for me then

Might as well not eat beef if you’re going to cook it past where it tastes good.

That's a very subjective thing. De gustibus et coloribus...

It is subjective... and right in my case.

>> “I attempted to confirm his work and instead of getting leukemias, I got tumors of the parotid gland,”

A nice example of how informal use of language can look very misleading when transcribed in written form (and taken out of context, of course, as I did here).

To clarify: the passage above makes it sound as if the researcher got tumors of the parotid gland himself. Reading the sentence in context makes it clear that it was the test mice that got the cancer, poor things.

I think that's a very common way of talking about the research- its gonna use a model organism of some sort in general anyway, and I think even out of context in your quite its fairly obvious from when it says "I attempted to confirm his work" that we're talking about replicating research in animals

There's something I don't understand.

Why are only young people innoculated against HPV?

Why isn't it added to everybody's list of innoculations?

Do old people already have it?

This will probably answer your question: https://www.livescience.com/63790-hpv-vaccine-adults.html

Misleading title because Dr. Stewart built on a significant body of research. Payton Rous conducted the studies that led to the discover of the Rous Sarcoma Virus (RSV) in 1909. Shope described the papilloma viruses. Admittedly, there was also some embarrassment around the 1926 Nobel prize for a researcher who made a similar claim that was later discredited.

All that said, Stewart did demonstrate the cancer-causing effects of HPV, which is important and remains a significant problem even in the developed world.

Suggestion for better title: append "Sarah Stewart revealed missing link between viruses and cancer in humans".

Every scientist ever built on a significant body of research.

“”” Stewart’s search for a viral basis for cancer wasn’t unprecedented. In 1911, virologist Peyton Rous discovered the Rous sarcoma virus, which he concluded could transmit cancer in chickens. In 1933, Richard Shope, a physician and virologist, discovered the Shope papilloma virus, which caused keratinous carcinomas in rabbits, and three years later, biologist John Bittner demonstrated that the mouse mammary tumor virus could be transmitted from a mother mouse to her young through her milk. But it was Ludwig Gross’s work on leukemia in mice in the 1950s that would lead to the first major breakthrough in the virus-cancer link—and it was that work that Stewart took up when she moved to the NCI in 1951. “””

Reply on news.ycombinator.com