Nobel Prize Winning Discoveries in Infectious Diseases (eBook)

Geraldine Freeman, David Rifkind (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2005 | 1. Auflage
160 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-0-08-045957-8 (ISBN)

Infos

This book presents the 24 discoveries in infectious diseases that have merited Nobel Prize recognition since the inception of the awards in 1901. Grouped according to biological groups rather than chronology, each discovery includes a biographical sketch of the laureate(s), a description of the research, and a summary of the current status of the field. In addition, consideration is given to the relevance of the research on the general field of biology and medicine.

Inhalt

Cover 1
The Nobel Prize Winning Discoveries in Infectious Diseases 4
Contents 6
Preface 8
Acknowledgments 10
Introduction 12
Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Prizes 16
Part A: Immunity 22
1 Serotherapy 26
EMIL VON BEHRING 26
DIPHTHERIA 26
The 1925 diphtheria run 28
TETANUS 30
SUMMARY 32
2 Antimicrobial defenses 34
JULES BORDET 34
ANTIMICROBIAL DEFENSES 34
Antibody 35
Complement 37
PERTUSSIS 39
SUMMARY 39
3 MHC restriction 40
PETER DOHERTY AND ROLF ZINKERNAGEL 40
THE MAJOR HISTOCOMPATABILITY COMPLEX SYSTEM 41
SUMMARY 44
Part B: Antimicrobials 46
4 Prontosil and the sulfonamides 50
GERHARD DOMAGK 50
PRONTOSIL 51
THE SULFAS 52
SUMMARY 53
5 Penicillin 54
ALEXANDER FLEMING, ERNEST CHAIN AND HOWARD FLOREY 54
PENICILLIN 55
Resistance 57
6 Streptomycin 58
SELMAN WAKSMAN 58
STREPTOMYCIN 59
SUMMARY 61
7 Chemotherapeutic agents 62
GEORGE HITCHINGS, GERTRUDE ELION AND JAMES BLACK 62
CHEMOTHERAPEUTIC AGENTS 63
Pyrimethamine 63
Trimethoprim 64
Acyclovir 65
Part C: Bacteria 66
8 Tuberculosis 70
ROBERT KOCH 70
THE HISTORY OF TUBERCULOSIS 71
KOCH’S CONTRIBUTIONS 71
SPREAD OF TUBERCULOSIS 73
SYMPTOMS 74
TREATMENT 74
VACCINATION 76
OTHER MYCOBACTERIA 77
9 Typhus 78
CHARLES NICOLLE 78
HISTORY OF TYPHUS 79
EPIDEMIC TYPHUS 79
ENDEMIC TYPHUS 81
10 Syphilis therapy 82
JULIUS WAGNER-JAUREGG 82
MALARIOTHERAPY 83
Action 84
HISTORY OF SYPHILIS 84
CLINICAL SYPHILIS 85
TREATMENT 86
Part D: Viruses 88
11 Tobacco mosaic virus 92
WENDELL STANLEY 92
THE TOBACCO MOSAIC VIRUS 92
OTHER PLANT-INFECTING VIRUSES 94
STANLEY’S ACCOMPLISHMENT 94
12 Yellow fever 96
MAX THEILER 96
YELLOW FEVER 96
History 97
TREATMENT AND CONTROL 98
13 Poliomyelitis virus 100
JOHN ENDERS, THOMAS WELLER AND FREDERICK ROBBINS 100
POLIOMYELITIS 101
Symptoms and spread 101
Management 102
Vaccination 103
14 Hepatitis B virus 106
BARUCH BLUMBERG 106
HEPATITIS 106
Hepatitis B 108
Hepatitis A 109
Hepatitis C 110
Other forms of hepatitis 111
15 Bacteriophage 114
ALFRED HERSHEY 114
BACTERIOPHAGE 114
HERSHEY’S CONTRIBUTION 115
16 Bacteriophage lysogeny 118
ANDRÉ LWOFF 118
BACTERIOPHAGE INFECTION 119
17 Rous sarcoma virus 120
PEYTON ROUS 120
FOWL SARCOMA 121
18 Polyoma virus 122
RENATO DULBECCO 122
POLYOMA VIRUSES 123
19 Reverse transcriptase 126
HOWARD MARTIN TEMIN AND DAVID BALTIMORE 126
REVERSE TRANSCRIPTION 127
20 Viral oncogenes 130
MICHAEL BISHOP AND HAROLD VARMUS 130
VIRAL ONCOGENES 131
21 Kuru 134
CARLETON GAJDUSEK 134
KURU 134
KURU-LIKE DISEASES IN ANIMALS 135
Scrapie 135
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy 136
Chronic wasting disease of elk and deer 137
KURU-LIKE DISEASES IN MAN 137
SUMMARY 139
22 Prions 140
STANLEY PRUSINER 140
PRIONS 140
Part E: Parasites 144
23 Malaria 148
RONALD ROSS AND CHARLES LAVERAN 148
MALARIA 149
Control and treatment 151
24 Cancer parasite 156
JOHANNES FIBIGER 156
FIBIGER’S RESEARCH 156
THE RELATION BETWEEN INFECTION AND CANCER 158
25 DDT 162
PAUL MÜLLER 162
DDT 162
PROBLEMS WITH DDT 163
Counterpoint: HIV/AIDS 166
INTRODUCTION 166
THE WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC 167
ORIGIN OF THE HIV VIRUS 167
PREVENTION AND TREATMENT 168
A NOBEL PRIZE? 169
Index 172
A 172
B 172
C 173
D 173
E 173
F 173
G 173
H 174
I 174
J 174
K 174
L 174
M 175
N 175
O 175
P 175
Q 176
R 176
S 176
T 176
U 177
V 177
W 177
Y 177
Z 177

Textauszug

Foreword: On history and historians

History is not the study of origins; rather it is the analysis of all the mediations by which the past was turned into our present.

H. Butterfield

The working scientist who entertains the notion of writing a history of his discipline must do so with diffidence and no little trepidation. While he may know more of the facts and scientific interrelationships within his specialty than does the professional historian, nothing in his training or experience has prepared him to deal in the special currencies so familiar to the historian in general, and to the historian of science in particular. If he is to write more than a mere encyclopedia of names, dates, places, and facts – an unappealing venture – then he must deal with such unfamiliar concepts as the sociology and epistemology of science, cultural relativism, etc. Such recondite ideas rarely enter into the formal training of the biomedical scientist, and never into his scientific practice. Indeed, if he considers such concepts at all, it is probably with suspicion and perhaps disdain, relegating them to that special limbo which he maintains for the “impure” social sciences, firm in the conviction that his is a dependably precise “pure” science.

But this is not the most serious challenge to the practicing scientist-turned-historian. Assuming that he has overcome the typical scientist's feeling that Santayana's maxim “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” applies only to politicians, diplomats, and economists, he has a yet more difficult preparatory task before him. This involves nothing less than a re-examination and perhaps rejection of some of his most cherished beliefs – beliefs rarely stated explicitly, but so implicit in all of the scientist's training and education and so permeating his environment as to have become almost the unwritten rules of the game.

The first of the beliefs to be re-examined is that of the continuity of scientific development. By this I mean that most mature scientists, and all students and members of the novitiate, tend to suppose that all that has gone before in a field was somehow aimed logically at providing the base for current work in that field. Thus, there is a general view that the history of a discipline involves an almost inexorable progression of facts and theories leading in a straight and unbroken line to our own present view of the workings of nature. (Historians refer to this as “Whig history,”1 and condemn its practice.) Put in other terms, the scientist is tempted to regard the development of his science in much the same way that most of us seem to regard the origin of species – as a sort of melioristic evolution, following a preordained path toward the acme of perfection and logical unity: in the one case man, and in the other our present science.

But this is not really surprising, when we consider how most science is practiced and reported, and especially how scientists are trained. In the first instance, the scientist chooses a problem to work on that could scarcely be justified as other than the next logical step in the progress of his discipline – i.e., the next obvious question to be asked and problem to be solved. Then, having successfully seen the research to its conclusion, he submits the work to the scientific literature (the unsuccessful excursions generally going unreported). Now, for a variety of reasons, including ego, space limitations, and the implicit cultural view of how science ought to function, our author prepares his manuscript so that not only is the work presented as internally logical and the result of an ordered sequence from start to finish, but the background introduction and its supporting references from past literature are also carefully chosen to demonstrate that this work was eminently justified in its choice, and in fact was the next obvious step forward in a well-ordered history. Each communication in the scientific literature thus contributes modestly and subtly, but cumulatively, to a revision of the reader's understanding of the history of his discipline.2

There is, however, a far greater force in science which operates to impose an order and continuity on its history, manifested not only by an influence on the types of problems deemed worthy of pursuit, but more importantly in the way in which young scientists are educated. There is in any scientific discipline, and there ought to be, a priesthood of the elite. These are the guardians of the scientific temple in which resides the current set of received wisdoms. These are the trend-setters and the arbiters of contemporary scientific values. They are also, not coincidently, the principal writers of textbooks and the most sought-after lecturers, as well as the principal researchers in whose laboratories young people serve their scientific apprenticeships. They are, in brief, the strongest and most vocal adherents of what Thomas Kuhn, in his provocative book The Structure of Scientific Revolution,3 has called “the current paradigm.” In Kuhn's usage, a paradigm in any field is the current model system and the accepted body of theories, rules, and technics that guide the thinking and determine the problems within that field. Kuhn points out that when a change in paradigm occurs within a discipline (he insists that this is inevitably the result of an abrupt revolution), the textbooks must be rewritten to reflect the new wisdom. This invariably involves a revision in the interpretation of what went before, so that the new paradigm can be shown to be fully justified as a step forward in scientific progress, and worthy in all respects to command the attention of the current community of scholars. Since the object of a text is pedagogy, the facts many and the concepts complex, what went before must necessarily be winnowed, abstracted, and digested, in order to provide the student with what is required to follow in the illustrious footsteps of the current priests. Therefore, the modest history that is included in most texts, and the routine appeals to the idols and heroes of earlier times, are more often than not subconsciously slanted to help justify the current paradigm and its proponents; they serve to reinforce the impression of a uniform continuity of scientific development. Assuming that one is a reputable member of a current scientific community, and thus a subscriber to the current paradigm, the scientist-turned-historian must be especially on guard not to contribute also to a revisionist history of the field. One might then be rightly accused of presentism,4 the interpretation of yesterday's events in today's more modern terms and context.

The second of the beliefs that require re-examination – one also nurtured by our traditional system of scientific pedagogy – is that of the logic of scientific development. We have already seen that the investigator justifies the choice of a research problem (not only to scientific peers but also to the sources of financial support) by demonstrating its logic within the context of the accepted paradigm. This is, of course, eminently reasonable, since a paradigm lacking in inner logic (i.e., unable to define the nature of the problems to be asked within its context or to assimilate the results obtained) would scarcely merit support. But the existence of a logical order of development during the limited lifetime of a paradigm is often extended to imply an overall logical development of the entire scientific discipline. Moreover, the concept examined above of a smoothly continuous maturation of a science implies also that its progression has been logical – the step-by-step movement of fact and theory from A to B to C, as the Secrets of Nature are unfolded and Ultimate Truth is approached. Indeed, to accuse science of illogic in its development would, to many, imply the absence of a coherent unity underlying the object of science's quest – the description and understanding of the physical world.

And yet, there is so much that is discontinuous and illogical in the development of any science. On the level of the individual research activity, much attention is paid to the beauty and strength of that eminently logical process, the Inductive Scientific Method. The working scientist, however, who thinks about the course of his own research must wonder sometimes whether the description is apt. One of the few biologists who reflected aloud on this problem was Sir Peter Medawar, in his Jayne Lectures before the American Philosophical Society. Following the lead of philosopher Karl Popper,5 Medawar6 challenges the popular notion:

…Deductivism in mathematical literature and inductivism in scientific papers are simply the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up and the public sees us. The theatrical illusion is shattered if we ask what goes on behind the scenes. In real life discovery and justification are almost always different processes… [and later] Methodologists who have no personal experience of scientific research have been gravely handicapped by their failure to realize that nearly all scientific research leads nowhere – or if it does lead somewhere, then not in the direction it started off with. In retrospect, we tend to forget the errors, so that “The Scientific Method” appears very much more powerful than it really is, particularly when it is presented to the public in the terminology of breakthroughs, and to fellow scientists with the studied hypocrisy expected...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.5.2005
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete
• Themenwelt: Studium ► 1. Studienabschnitt (Vorklinik) ► Biochemie / Molekularbiologie
• Themenwelt: Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Infektiologie / Immunologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Genetik / Molekularbiologie
• Themenwelt: Technik
• ISBN-10: 0-08-045957-9 / 0080459579
• ISBN-13: 978-0-08-045957-8 / 9780080459578