February
16
The Forgotten Cure Chapters 1-4
- Describe the role that locusts, dysentery, and war had in the discovery of bacteriophage.
- D’ Herelle was a scientist that was tasked with working with sickened locusts. By chance, when he was making bacterial assays from the locusts, he noticed that some of the spots had been cleared out on the plate. D’ Herelle named them “taches vierges.” He repeated the same procedure of making plaque assays and kept getting the same, cleared out circles on his plaque assays. He couldn’t replicate it anywhere else and essentially just left it alone until World War I when commercial vaccines started blossoming. French troops came down with a massive case of dysentery, and D’Herelle was assigned to analyzing their stool samples. It was then that he saw the clear spots on the bacterial assays again. He had proof that the clear spots appeared in more than one strain of bacteria, and that the spots only appeared in patients that were getting better from their disease. This led him to the belief that the clear spots were indicative of bacterial death
- Discuss the characteristics of d’Herelle that led him to be a successful scientist. How did he compare to Georgi Eliava? What happened to the Eliava’s?
- D’Herelle was a successful scientist due to his perseverance and passion for his newly discovered “taches vierges” and devoted his studies to understanding what could come out of it, rather than becoming frustrated and disregarding the practice completely. D’Herelle also used his discoveries for good, doing his best to make sure the public could benefit from his early form of gene therapy. Like D’Herelle, Eliava carried the same demeanor and attitude regarding phage therapy. They both were in the same headspace, with similar goals for phage therapy development. The Eliava’s were targeted because of their high profile and pre-Revolution education. The family was put into camps and eventually suppressed in order to fulfill the Soviet Socialist agenda of the time.
- Discuss the influence war and politics had on the spread of phage therapy.
- Much like the previous response, a political revolution had broken out in Eastern Europe along with a Civil War in Spain, which thickened the plot for Stalin. Personal affairs and politics got in the way of Eliava’s work during the war and caused the relationship between D’Herelle and Eliava to fade. D’Herelle started getting older and was settling down in Paris, beginning to wean himself off of his advocacy for the spread of phage therapy. The combination of the deteriorating relationship and the end of D’Herelle’s career marked the deterioration of the phage therapy revolution.
- What are some of the reasons that the spread of phage therapy failed?
- Along with politics and war, there were many other reasons why the spread of phage therapy fell short. For example, much of the research done on phages was flawed and conducted in an inconclusive manner, meaning no meaningful conclusions could be drawn. There was also a lot of misunderstanding and ambiguity as to what a bacteriophage was, many people believed it was some sort of enzyme that broke bacteria down. Obviously, this wasn’t the case, but the misunderstanding definitely led to confusion. Lastly, synthetic drugs started to make a rise in the scientific community, leading to a drought in scientific articles regarding phage therapy.
- How did the physicists Delbruck and Luria end up as part of the Phage Group? What contributions did they make to phage biology? Why did phage biology die out in the 70’s?
- Delbruck, then a physicist, was interested in the way scientists observe organisms, and how technically an organism cannot be observed without modification. He collaborated with another group of scientists interested in genes and radioactive effects enacted on them by x-rays. They were published in an obscure journal but barely discovered by Schrodinger. Their bride between biology in physics took off from there, especially as Delbruck became more interested in biophysics as a result. In Rome, Luria decided his interest in physics was mostly “amateurish” and wished for something more, so he endeavored in biophysics, coming across Delbruck’s paper. He decided to try and test Delbruck’s ideas on genes and discovered bacteriophages. They both decided to devote their studies to bacteriophages and met at a convention. During their meetings, they established a loosely organized group called the Phage Group that was comprised of scientists of many different specialties. Their collaboration helped drive the spirit behind the group that eventually made progress in the bacteriophage world to the point where Luria, Delbruck, and Hershey won a joint Nobel Prize for their efforts and discoveries. Consequently, the Phage Groups discoveries raised doubts that bacteriophages could truly conquer bacteria. Due to this discovery, the research and new discoveries on phages hit a low and started slowing down. The scientists also started shifting their focus to other fields and more complex organisms.