Albert Lasker
Basic Medical Research Award

Acceptance Remarks by J. Michael Bishop

One person out of every four here will develop cancer. One in every five will die of the disease. These are tragic dimensions, but they are no larger than the intellectual challenge cancer presents. Every minute, ten million cells divide in our bodies. The divisions usually occur in the right place, at the right time, in the right way—governed by mechanisms to which we cannot yet even give names. When the governance fails, cancer arises. Why does the governance fail? And how does it fail? These questions have consumed many lifetimes—those of Raymond Erikson, Robert Gallo, Hidesaburo Hanafusa, Harold Varmus and myself, to name a few. The answers have seemed very distant indeed.

On an early morning in 1925, Robin Fahraeus became the first person to witness a biological molecule sediment in a gravitational field. You might find this an abstruse event, but Fahraeus felt otherwise. He roused his colleague, The Svedberg, from sleep with a phone call and a memorable message: "The, I have seen a dawn." As Fahraeus watched through a tiny glass window, the blood protein he had chosen for his experiments was moving down a centrifuge tube, leaving behind a yellow glow. Fahraeus knew from the glow that his experiment had worked. But he knew far more, as well. He knew that soon the structure of living matter would be laid out in fine detail, for all to see and understand. Molecular biology—the crowning glory of twentieth century life sciences—had been borne.

We are here today to note the coming of another dawn. After centuries of bewilderment, the human intellect has finally laid hold of cancer with a grip that may eventually extract the deadly secrets of the disease. The grip has been forged by many hands. My colleagues here today and I are fortunate beyond words to have been recognized for our contributions to the forging: There have been many others. We owe the strength of our newfound grip to the study of tumor viruses. The debt embodies a marvelous irony.

For decades, two schools of thought have battled over tumor viruses. One school argued that we should search for viruses in human cancer—that viruses must cause the disease. The other school held that the many causes of cancer matter less than the mechanisms by which the disease arises: tumor viruses should be used in laboratory experiments to ferret out the genetic and chemical processes that cause the cancer cell to run amok. Against all reasonable odds, both views have now been vindicated. The diversity and sweep of that vindication is reflected among the five scientists the Lasker Foundation honors today. Tumor viruses have been found in human cancer. None but the foolish—from whatever school—would dispute the provocation and advance this finding represents. And tumor viruses have revealed to us a set of human genes whose activities may lie at the heart of every cancer, no matter what its cause. The enemy has been found—it is part of us—and we have begun to understand the lines of its attack.

Robert Gallo has been at the forefront of the search for human tumor viruses. It has sometimes been a lonely search. His diligence and conviction have at last been fulfilled. Hidesaburo Hanafusa and Harold Varmus gave substance to the idea that we must all have cancer genes—that cancer is part of the genetic dowry of every living cell. Raymond Erikson uncovered how one of these cancer genes may wreak its havoc. And I—I composed this homily.

Will we be able to parlay these revelations into a strategy for the control of cancer? The issue remains in deep doubt. The road ahead seems long and daunting. And the outcome is not solely in the hands of scientists. Cancer research is a public endeavor—indeed, one of the boldest endeavors our society has attempted. No one understands this better than our hostess today, Mrs. Albert Lasker, to whose generosity and hospitality we are all indebted. I take this, my first opportunity, to thank her for her remarkable and untiring efforts in the quest for human welfare.

We need a thousand giants like her. Those of us who labor in cancer research look to our fellow citizens for mandate and support. And these are anxious times for biomedical research. The dollar now dictates what we can and cannot do to an extent that is damaging and demoralizing. We have no product to sell, now or for the foreseeable future. What we have is the hope that all of us together will enable humankind by seeing this great and hopeful adventure through to its end. We began this adventure together as a nation—in an act of altruism unprecedented in the annals of government. Let us finish it together as citizens rather than mercantalists.

Mrs. Lasker, Senator Hatfield, Dr. DeBakey and your jury, friends, and strangers—my colleagues and I thank you all—we are deeply honored to be here.