Faced with yet another discrepancy between theory and data, Temin proposed another bold conjecture—again, standing on the thinnest foundation of evidence. Spiegelman and the retrovirus hunters, Temin argued, had conflated analogy with fact, confused messenger with message. Rous sarcoma virus could cause cancer by inserting a viral gene into cells. This proved that genetic alterations could cause cancer. But the genetic alteration, Temin proposed, need not originate in a virus. The virus had merely brought a message into a cell. To understand the genesis of cancer, it was that culprit
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