31 July 1981
To: Emile Zuckerkandl, Ewan Cameron, Robert Paradowski
From: Linus Pauling
Subject: Manuscript on the nature and causes of cancer
On the train, traveling east in October 1946, I made some notes on my ideas about the nature and causes of cancer, and on 5 October 1946, while I was in Indianapolis visiting the Lilly Research Laboratory (as a consultant) I wrote an account of my ideas.  I then went on to New York, I think, and gave the manuscript to Peyton Rous.  He read it, and returned it to me without comment.  His failure to express any interest in it suggested to me that it was not worth publication.
If I were to write the paper now I think that I would add a sentence similar to one on page 16 of Cancer and Vitamin C to the effect that the changes that confer malignancy on a cell or group of cells are those that confer upon them the properties characteristic of cancer -- the capacity for proliferation, for infiltration, and for obtaining increased amounts of nutrients and oxidation.