February 18

The Forgotten Cure 1

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The Forgotten Cure 1 2/18/19

In the first 4 chapters of The Forgotten Cure we learn about the early discoveries of phage, phage therapy, and phage biology.  Blog about which ideas or observations presented in the first 4 chapters surprised or shocked you concerning the process of scientific discovery? You may use these examples or comment on your own ideas.

  1. Describe the role that locusts, dysentery and war had in the discovery of bacteriophage.
    • d’Herelle was very interested in infectious disease but he was poorly educated. As he began his research career one of his first few tasks was pest management and fermentation. As part of these tasks, d’Herelle experimented on locusts by infecting them with bacteria. From these experiments, d’Herelle made bacteria cultures, and it was there that he noticed that some cultures had clear circles in them. While d’Herelle did not investigate this phenomenon right away, it was one of the first recorded instances of bacteriophage plaques, and he would later return to continue his research. During the war research into how to control disease became more important because many soldiers were dying of disease, this meant d’Herelle had more support for his research and there was a greater sense of urgency.
    • Dysentery and war played a role in the discovery of bacteriophages because together they created a situation in which d’Herelle began to actually consider the plaques he had noticed before. During the war research into how to control disease became more important because many soldiers were dying of disease, this meant d’Herelle had more support for his research and there was a greater sense of urgency. When he was sent to study dysentery during the war, d’Herelle noticed the same clear areas as he had noticed when he studied locust. He then found that patients who were recovering seemed to show signs of these plaques while the ones who died did not. This led him to purify and research bacteriophage.
  2. 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 became a successful scientist because he was stubborn and had a genuine passion for what he did. While he was abrasive and argumentative, his being in the right place and the right time and being willing to really study his observations meant he was able to advance his scientific cause. Eliava, by contrast, was far more personable, while he was equally dedicated to scientific research, he was better educated and less abrasive, which allowed him to be successful in a different way.
    • However, because of Eliava’s connections to wealth and foreigners he and his wife faced trouble under communist rule. There were some ill feelings between Eliava and Beria and this eventually led to the Eliava’s being arrested by the Soviet secret police. They were shot at some point during the communist purge of intellectuals, wealthy people, and all other foreign interests. Meaning that d’Herelle outlived his student.
  3. Discuss the influence war and politics had on the spread of phage therapy.
    • War, helped spread phage therapy because it made new disease treatment methods a necessity. World War one in part helped spur on the discovery of bacteriophages, and their therapeutic uses made phage therapy research highly valuable, which allowed it to spread. Phages meant that soldiers could survive what they might not have otherwise, and because world wars one and two had massive body counts, ways to save lives became a huge priority.
    • In addition, political competition such as that, that existed between the USSR and the capitalist world meant that a large emphasis was placed on scientific advancement as a way to compete or catch up to other nations. For phage therapy, the soviet union was choosing to compete in many areas including phage research and d’Herelle was able to visit and continue his research there, after he left Yale.
  4. What are some of the reasons that the spread of phage therapy failed?
    • Phage therapy failed for a variety of reasons, but the first is that after Eliava dies, d’Herelle stopped promoting his work and stopped doing new research. He instead chose to live a more comfortable life and without his enthusiasm phage research lost a valuable advocate. In addition, there was a lot of conflicting information about phages in scientific research. Doctors weren’t doing double-blind trials or following other necessary scientific procedures so results from experiments with phage were often inconclusive or contradictory. Also, phage were a lot more temperamental and so it was harder to reproduce even positive results. This led to JAMA publishing increasingly less favorable reviews of phage therapy that began to dissuade physicians from using them. Finally, with the introduction of medicines like sulfa drugs, phage therapy became less popular as researchers began to focus on developing new antibiotics with less severe side effects. This research led to the discovering of penicillin which eventually became widely used. While there was still some phage research going on, it began to fizzle out and was eventually widely abandoned as a medical treatment.
  5. 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?
    • Both Delbruck and Luria ended up as part of the Phage Group by trying to find ways to combine physics and biology.  Luria was inspired by a paper Delbruck had coauthored, so he began to research bacteriophages. Delbruck also became interested in phages and when both of them chose to flee to America to escape Nazism they met and began to work together. They laid the foundation for Phage Group as a collection of researches using phage to study genes and their contributions grew from there. Phage group discovered that phage had complex structures including the phage tails that typify phage shape today. In addition, they proved that DNA was the genetic material when they showed that it was phage DNA and not proteins that entered the bacteria cell. Phage Group made the study of bacteriophage legitimate and cleared the way for many more scientific discoveries.
    • However, phage biology began to die out. In the 70s phage biology died out because many scientists were intrested in understanding functions and once the phage was understtod they felt there was little else to do. Also phage group had chosen to only research 7 phage species limitng the scope of research that could actually be done.


Posted February 18, 2019 by Lucy in category Lucy FIsher

About the Author

Hi, my name is Lucy Fisher and I'm a freshman in Baylor's BEARS in the SEA program.

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