The Concept of Virus The Third Marjory Stephenson Memorial Lecture (original) (raw)
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This essay is designed to investigate the mystery of the virus: the smallest form of organic material that is able to replicate itself by following a parasitic approach that needs an external, living cell. As it is quite unable to metabolize nutrients, it is not considered to be alive. This essay will share some little known facts about viruses and help to dispel some dangerous myths that evolved about them and the vaccines used against them. Since 1892 when scientists started to investigate these objects, they have been confronted with the primary mystery: what are viruses? How do they survive on their endless quest from host to host? This essay will concentrate on the virulent viruses: those that cause a major threat to humanity; we will focus on the Big Three: smallpox, polio and influenza. The influenza story becomes central because it illustrates the false assumptions that have been made in the past with earlier false alarms, such as the Swine Flu panic of 1976 and the even larger false assumptions about the 'Great Spanish Flu Pandemic' of 1918-1920, where most deaths were due to deadly bacteria. The present covid panic seems to be a reflection of the 1976 Swine Flu panic. Several other viruses are examined (like Hepatitis B and the Herpes family: Herpes Simplex and Epstein-Barr) as they illustrate the successful vaccines used to defeat them; interestingly, this has NOT been used here in the current Covid Panic. This study of viruses has increased my respect for the variety of nature, no matter what its scale but a better understanding of how they function will help us react to their ongoing threats. Knowing their structure, is only the first step in understanding what is going on: processes are more significant than structure (relationships are key to knowledge; not just identifying-and naming-objects). Although written for an educated audience (but not virologists) there is much here of interest to non-scientists to show HOW real virology is done (slowly: one discovery at a time). I hope this great story will appeal to many.
Understanding Viruses: Philosophical Investigations Editorial introduction
- Even though it has been neglected, the study of viruses raises important philosophical questions. - Questions about viruses (definition, classification, etc.) can be related to classic issues in philosophy of biology and general philosophy. - The contributions gathered in this special issue address these questions in different and sometimes conflicting ways.
Constructing Scientific Knowledge: The Understanding of the Slow Virus, 1898-1976
2018
Because of my earlier affiliation with USC, that service has borne the brunt of my requests. They have been unfailingly helpful and always successful, even to the point of obtaining deteriorating copies of books from the United Kingdom. Frankly, I was frequently worried, fortunately in vain, that someone would tell me 'no more'-that I had already used up more than my quota of requests; thankfully that never happened. Ms. Lorna Cahill of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in London arranged for me to visit her archive. Fortuitously, she was in the process of collating and preparing letters and notes that were useful to my research. She was indefatigable and continually surprised me with new finds during my visit. Likewise, the staff members of the library service at the Royal Society of Medicine and those of the Wellcome Library also provided materials and advice during my visit to London. Thanks also go to the librarians and staff of the Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Science Library of Oxford University for their efforts on my behalf. It goes without saying, of course, that I could not have even begun, let alone actually carried out, the research and writing without the expert instruction and guidance of Professors Joseph November, Allison Marsh, Ann Johnson, and Colin Wilder at the University of South Carolina. They mentored me through every step, guiding my thinking iv and writing and always keeping me focused on the task at hand when my reading and writing began to wander, which was all too frequent. My understanding of the philosophical issues involved in studying the historical development of scientific knowledge has also benefited immensely from the coursework and informal discussions of philosophers, Heike Sefrin-Weis, Tarja Knuuttila, and George Khushf, also at the University of South Carolina. Further afield, Jeremy Greene of the Johns Hopkins Institute for the History of Medicine also provided advice and encouragement. Even so, I suspect they all believe, though too polite to admit it, that my education was, and likely remains, severely compromised by having practiced medicine far too long and having become far too scientifically biased for even their valiant efforts to overcome. Finally I am, as always, indebted and grateful to my long-suffering wife, Mary T, who never failed to provide needed prodding, praise, and persuasion as well as expert proofreading and editing skills throughout the process.
Understanding viruses: Philosophical investigations
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2016
• Even though it has been neglected, the study of viruses raises important philosophical questions. • Questions about viruses (definition, classification, etc.) can be related to classic issues in philosophy of biology and general philosophy. • The contributions gathered in this special issue address these questions in different and sometimes conflicting ways.
When did virology start?, ASM News 62 (March) (1996), 142-5
1996
The discovery of an infectious agent which passes through a filter that blocks bacterial agents and causes tobacco mosaic disease is generally recognized as the earliest distinct piece of virus research. These initial observations date to a report in 1892 by Ivanovski and, independently, another report 6 years later by Beijerinck, who described tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) as a “contagium vivum fluidum.” Beijerinck, in recognizing this infectious agent as living but noncorpuscular, distinguished it from bacteria, which were considered to be more complex in their organization. These moments in the history of virus research, and especially Beijerinck’s work, are widely considered the start of virology. However, a curious paradox exists here. In 1953, the Australian microbiologist and immunologist Macfarlane Burnet claimed that virology did not become an independent science until the 1950s. Scholarly activities during the 1950s certainly make it tempting to designate these years as the dawning period of virology. For instance, several journals dedicated to virology, including Virology (1955), Advances in Virus Research (1953), Voprosy Virusologii (1956), Acta Virologica (1957), Progress in Medical Virology (1958), and Perspectives in Virology (1959), were started during that period. Moreover, the original edition of Salvador Luria’s seminal textbook, General Virology, was published early during that decade. Critical to these conceptual developments was the widely accepted realization that viruses replicate within host cells during a non-infectious phase, since then known as the “eclipse” period. On the other hand, a quarter century earlier, there had been a similar burst of scholarly activity, including publication in 1928 of the collection of essays Filterable Viruses, edited by Thomas Rivers; introduction in 1939 of the journal Archiv für die gesamte Virusforschung by Springer Verlag in Vienna (continued as Archives of Virology); and publication of more than a dozen scholarly monographs on plant and animal viruses. During this earlier period, viruses were viewed as replicating in the same way as bacteria and other microorganisms by binary fission but differed from them by being “filterable.”
The history of virology is debated by scientists and historians of science.Debates rest on distinct understandings of notions such as “disciplines” and “discovery”.The historiography of virology has shifted its focus from concepts to scientific practice.Scholars have departed from a “big picture” approach to concentrate on case studies.History of virology in the twentieth century will require greater attention to institutions and social contexts.Concerned with the study of viruses and the diseases they cause, virology is now a well-established scientific discipline. Whereas aspects of its history from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century have often been recounted through a number of detailed case studies, few general discussions of the historiography of virology have been offered. Looking at the ways in which the history of virology has been told, this article examines a number of debates among scientists and historians of biology and show how they are based on a different understanding of notions such as “discipline”, of processes such as “scientific discovery” as well as on distinct views about what the history of science is and how it should be written (the opposition between “longue durée” and “micro-history” or between history of “concepts” versus “experimental methods”). The analysis provided here also suggests that a richer historiography of virology will require looking at the variations over time of the relations between conceptual, technological, and institutional factors that fostered its development at the intersection of several other scientific fields in the life sciences.
VIROLOGY AS AN INDEPENDENT SCIENCE In the 1950s and 1960s the biomedical sciences saw a revolution which was characterized by one historian as The eighth day of creation. To a large extent this breakthrough took place as a result of the elucidation of the role of nucleic acid as the carrier of hereditary information and of the process by which this information is 'translated' in the synthesis of proteins. Institutionally, this led to the establishment of a new domain within science, viz. molecular biology. This branch of science was a hybrid of elements from different disciplines such as genetics, biochemistry, crystallography, bacteriology and virus research, and it soon gained great popularity. In turn these events were to be the prelude for the development of recombinant DNA techniques with which organisms could be genetically modified. Besides the molecular biologists-to-be, there was in the 1950s another group of researchers who claimed an independent domain for themselves: the virologists. While molecular biology was in fact a hybrid between many disciplines, virology in a certain sense occupied a scientific domain which can be seen to have a predecessor. In the 1930s many textbooks were published which addressed viruses and virus diseases but, for most investigators, the study of such diseases was only a part of their normal duties. In the 1930s and 1940s viruses were studied from the point of view of pathology, bacteriology, immunology, serology, biochemistry, hygiene and epidemiology. Around the middle of the 20th century important theoretical and social changes took place in virus research. These were reflected in the publication of books and the launching of several new periodicals which specifically centered upon virus research. The establishment of virology as an independent discipline was based upon a new definition of viruses which was formulated in the 1950s. This 'modern concept of virus' rested on two assumptions. In the first place, that hereditary information of living organisms is encoded in nucleic acid, i.e. in the sequence of the building blocks of nucleic acid, the nucleotides. Secondly, the claim that viruses reproduce in such a way that this can be used as a criterion to distinguish them from other micro-organisms. Whereas micro-organisms (and cells in general) multiply by binary fission, it became accepted in the 1950s that viruses cannot grow but exclusively reproduce through their genetic material. It was assumed that, instead of undergoing a process of multiplication by growth and division, the virus particle passes through a so-called eclipse, that is to say, it temporarily disappears as an infectious entity. The concept of virus which was formulated in the 1950s was in essence a definition in chemical terms. In 1957 Andre Lwoff, a member of the Institut Pasteur in Paris, proposed the following definition: "viruses are infectious, potentially pathogenic, nucleoproteinic entities possessing only one type of nucleic acid, which are reproduced from their genetic material, are unable to grow and to undergo binary fission, and are devoid of a Lipmann system." Because a virus could, on the basis of its infectivity, be distinguished from other genetic material, Lwoff concluded that "viruses should be considered as viruses because viruses are viruses."