Article ID: CBB001421657

When Viruses Were Not in Style: Parallels in the Histories of Chicken Sarcoma Viruses and Bacteriophages (2014)

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Sankaran, Neeraja (Author)


Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 48
Pages: 189-199


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Article in a special section, “100 Years of Cancer and Viruses”
Language: English

The discovery that cancer may be caused by viruses occurred in the early twentieth century, a time when the very concept of viruses as we understand it today was in a considerable state of flux. Although certain features were agreed upon, viruses, more commonly referred to as `filterable viruses' were not considered much different from other microbes such as bacteria except for their extremely small size, which rendered them ultramicroscopic and filterable. For a long time, in fact, viruses were defined rather by what they were not and what they could not do, rather than any known properties that set them apart from other microbes. Consequently when Peyton Rous suggested in 1912 that the causative agent of a transmissible sarcoma tumor of chickens was a virus, the medical research community was reluctant to accept his assessment on the grounds that cancer was not infectious and was caused by a physiological change within the cells. This difference in the bacteriological and physiological styles of thinking appears to have been prevalent in the wider research community, for when in 1917 Felix d'Herelle suggested that a transmissible lysis in bacteria, which he called bacteriophagy, was caused by a virus, his ideas were also opposed on similar grounds. It was not until the 1950s when when André Lwoff explained the phenomenon of lysogeny through his prophage hypothesis that the viral identities of the sarcoma-inducing agent and the bacteriophages were accepted. This paper examines the trajectories of the curiously parallel histories of the cancer viruses and highlights the similarities and differences between the ways in which prevailing ideas about the nature of viruses, heredity and infection drove researchers from disparate disciplines and geographic locations to develop their ideas and achieve some consensus about the nature of cancer viruses and bacteriophages.

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Article Scheffler, Robin Wolfe (2014) Following Cancer Viruses through the Laboratory, Clinic, and Society. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 185-188). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001421657/

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Authors & Contributors
Sankaran, Neeraja
Morgan, Gregory J.
Becsei Kilborn, Eva
Toljan, Karlo
Neumeyer, Sybille
Kirchhelle, Claas
Concepts
Virology
Cancer; tumors
Microbiology
Medicine
Bacteriology
Oncology
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, late
Places
United States
Georgia (Republic)
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
Ukraine
New York City (New York, U.S.)
Germany
Institutions
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research
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