An interesting article at the Gray Lady. If they go under, this is the sort of thing I’ll miss.
3 thoughts on “Viruses”
Comments are closed.
An interesting article at the Gray Lady. If they go under, this is the sort of thing I’ll miss.
Comments are closed.
Here’s another interesting fact, which you’ll find in Barry’s excellent book on the 1918 epidemic: the curative ability of modern medicine with respect to influenza is just about the same as 1918 medicine. But we do it differently. Now, we use antibiotics to counter secondary infections, and various fancy supportive therapies. Then they used sera, various therapes for stimulating the immune system.
One of the unanticipated side-effects of the revolution that was antibiotics in the 40s and 50s is that it short-circuited the excellent work that was going on in the early part of the 20th century in immunology. It’s a bit of a shame, because long-term, arguably we are better off learning how to manipulate and stimulate the immune system than in what amounts to ingesting pesticides.
Fortunately for us, the hysteria over AIDS in the 80s led to a giant infusion of funding to study viruses, and we have learned enough over the past 20 years that we need not be embarassed in front of our 1920s ancestors (who would, in 1975, be appalled at how much we’d forgotten).
I mention this hear partly because it’s a funny parallel with the space program of the 60s and its sequelae. We thought in 1969 we’d just got started, that by 2009 (say), we’d have warp drives and stuff. Someone from that era would be astonished to find we’re revisiting Apollo instead. Similarly, someone from 1919 would be astonished to find in 2009 that we knew little more about using the immune system to fight our ailments than he did.
Hopefully that will change, with the huge bump in basic science we’ve now accumulated through all those billions on AIDS research.
Of course, that assumes Team Obama’s plan to make health care “affordable” goes down in flames, so the money to do that work still exists, and the motivation in biotech industry — to get rich at age 45 — still operates. If not…well, we can always wait for the next century to rediscover what we were too short-sighted to use, just like the Renaissance had to rediscover Aristotle 1500 years later.
Well the problem is that social conservatives don’t believe in Evolution, so, how do you educate them on Viruses?
Well the problem is that social conservatives don’t believe in Evolution, so, how do you educate them on Viruses?
Well, you don’t believe in sanity in general, so how do we educate you on anything?