[troels]

I'm confused:

    Some subjects, which included prison inmates, developed tumors from the injected cells. 

and later

    When I asked, “What if they had?” he calmly replied, “If they did, we’d just cut it out.”

So did they or didn't they?

[ghkbrew]

Wild ass guess: Some patients developed localized tumors at the injection site, which were eradicated by the host immune system. Thus some could have tumors without really developing a disease we would call cancer

Edit: I've actually seen this exact reaction with subcutaneous injections of tumor cells in mice.

[troels]

Makes sense. Thanks for clarifying the difference.

[cperciva]

The first sentence is talking about tumors while the second is talking about cancer.