So having now set up the laboratory and supplying people with the cell cultures they needed, and media that they wanted, I now had some free time to do some research. And one of things that I decided to do was based on this ferment of activity that was now occurring in the field of virology and cell culture, where viruses were now being discovered, new viruses that caused cancer in rodents and mice, and in rats, all this done principally by using cell culture technology.

So it occurred to me that because people were finding viruses that had some relationships and in some case actual cause of cancers in lower animals, that it would be an interesting project to look for viruses in human tumour tissue, cancer tissue. And so I pursued that goal. The... Thinking about how to approach it, it occurred to me that obviously I needed to get tumour tissue, cancer tissue from operating theatres, and discovered that was very easy to do because I was... the Wistar Institute was right across the street from the University of Pennsylvania hospital where cancer surgery is done routinely, and because of Hilary's contacts there, and some of my contacts there, we could easily arrange to get tumour tissue which is, or a small piece of which is usually used for pathology purposes, but a substantial proportion of that tissue is simply incinerated. And so we were able to get tissue easily from this cancer material.