Theorized Role in Human Disease
The hypothesis that SV40 might cause cancer in humans has been a particularly controversial area of research. Several different methods have been used to detect SV40 in a variety of human cancers, although how reliable these detection methods are, and whether SV40 has any role in causing these tumors, remains unclear. As a result of these uncertainties, academic opinion remains divided, with some arguing that this hypothesis is not supported by the data, and others arguing that some cancers may involve SV40. However, the United States National Cancer Institute announced in 2004 that although SV40 does cause cancer in some animal models, "substantial epidemiological evidence has accumulated to indicate that SV40 likely does not cause cancer in humans". This announcement is based on two recent studies.
Read more about this topic: SV40
Famous quotes containing the words role, human and/or disease:
“Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents’ verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself....We don’t speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)