February
17
The Forgotten Cure Discussion Questions Chapters 1-4
- Describe the role that locusts, dysentery and war had in the discovery of bacteriophage.
- Felix d’Herelle, while working with how to control locusts with bacteria discovered what we now call plaques in the bacterial lawn of the locust killing bacteria he was investigating. Dysentery was what led d’Herelle to find the importance of these, at that point, unknown phages, as he observed patients rapidly cured of dysentery as a result of phage presence in their body. Subsequently because of the war dysentery was rampant amongst troops as were other diseases prompting governments to pump money and effort into researching the use of phages in fighting disease. Especially in the USSR were a significant effort was made in this regard, allowing Eliava to further study and research bacteriophages.
- 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?
- Felix d’Herelle was a successful scientist as a result of his curiosity, passion, hard work, and his unwillingness to conform to the accepted thought of the day. All of these things allowed d’Herelle to succeed in making discoveries and promising developments about bacteriophages. Eliava was similar in regards to the characteristics of d’Herelle which made him just as an impactful scientist in the USSR as well as a leader in the bringing of medical treatments to Georgia. Unfortunately, Eliava and his wife were executed as a result of the Great Purge.
- Discuss the influence war and politics had on the spread of phage therapy.
- With war, it encouraged the spread and development of phage therapy, as war and the many diseases it brought made governments desperate enough to look into and support any potentially promising treatment method, including phages. Politics, on the other hand, had both positive and negative impacts on the spread of phage therapy, as in Russia under Eliava he used political means to secure funding for his phage institute but it was also politics that got him killed in the purges.
- What are some of the reasons that the spread of phage therapy failed?
- The advent of antibiotics was a major reason phages failed to pick up as they were easily seen as successful far more often than phages, as well as more effective in the types of bacteria they could kill. This coupled with the fact that phages were hyped up to an extensive amount yet never amounted to the expectations set forth also led to scientists, governments, and the general public to all but abandon phages in favor of antibiotics.
- 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?
- They ended up as a part of Phage Group as a result of their work in x-ray crystallography which subsequently led them to become interested in phages. They ended up discovering the replication mechanism and genetic structure of bacteriophages along with Hershey, which the three of them received the Nobel prize for. However, the group’s members were ultimately more concerned with how higher organisms reproduced, resulting in the work on phages to die out.