Recorded: 22 Feb 2011
RD: Well, it's a complicated thing, and not simple. Simple word. Cancers never a simple word . To study, it's very, very different. No, I mean cancer is a tough problem. It is very complex, very-- many aspects, many points of view, so it does require what has been doing recently to attack it from many possible angles, and try to really understand all the details. The details are and the consequences, so it's lots and lots of work.
RD: I will not decide how many years, and the details, but I generally think-- the important thing, obviously, is does it, really we understand cancer as a disease more and more. And that's the base. Because finally once we're in full understanding of the disease, then it becomes possible to control the disease. Until we have that there's no hope, but there is now, I mean, there is hope this will happen.
Renato Dulbecco was born in Catanzaro,Italy, in 1914. He studied medicine in Turin before joining the Italian Resistance movement against Benito Mussolini during theSecond Wold War.
After the war Dulbecco emigrated to the United States and worked with Salvador Luria at the University of Indiana before moving on to the University of California.
Won the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1964.
Won the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology with David Baltimore and Howard Temin "for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell".