virology blog

About viruses and viral disease

The Stupidity of Humans

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“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

–Albert Einstein

During the holiday season, you might think it insensitive to post such a quotation. But as the end of the year approaches, I cannot help but remember all the stupid things my fellow species has done, and will continue to do in the next year.

Or, to put it another way:

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

2. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time on a hill. In the fog.

3. When you go into court, you are putting yourself into the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

And so on.

Happy Holidays.

The Moral Code of Science

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I just started reading The Drug Trial, about Canada’s biggest science scandal. In the first few pages, the author, Miriam Shuchman, talks about the moral code of science. She lists three examples:

Don’t lie about your work.

Don’t steal someone else’s work and claim it’s your own.

Report your findings, don’t bury them.

Then she writes: “The rules should be easy to follow, but in the fiercely competitive world of modern medical science, they’re not.”

I only wish my colleagues would follow this code. In the interest of their own advancement, they often break the rules.

In the end, science is about answering questions. It’s not about the careers of scientists and satisfying their egoes. Unfortunately the latter often prevails.

When Theory Becomes Law

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Usually I hate to dignify the views of proponents of creationism and intelligent design by discussing them. Their views are so off-base, that they are not worth time. But as their influence grows, we do need to ensure that they don’t gain ground. With this in mind, Clive Thompson has written a wonderful piece in issue 15.11 of Wired: “Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law“.

When creationists don’t like what’s inside a book, they put a sticker on it which reads “Evolution is a theory, not a fact”. Mr. Thompson believes scientists are too careful; there is plenty of evidence which shows that evolution of living (and non-living things such as viruses) clearly occurs. His idea is to call evolution a law, not a theory. That way, it’s harder for people to discount it.

I think it’s a great idea. But implementing it is the problem – it will be hard to change decades of scientific habit.

MRSA is NOT a virus

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The other night, I was in a restaurant with my family, and my kids’ golf coach asked me what I did. I told him I was a Professor of Microbiology. Then he asked me, ‘What is that virus that kills athletes….mersa…?’ He was referring to multiple drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which I reminded him was a bacterium, not a virus.

This incident reinforces the fact that science education is not what it should be in the U.S.

My son’s seventh grade science textbook does have a chapter on viruses, and it’s not all that bad. But the other day he told me they were having a debate in class on whether or not viruses are alive. He was the only one who said that viruses are not living. Apparently the teacher didn’t take one view or the other. Which to me means that the teacher probably doesn’t know enough about viruses to teach kids about them.

Polio in Nigeria

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Recently there has been an outbreak of polio in Nigeria caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus, VDPV. This outbreak is not unusual except that it is the largest so far caused by VDPV. The first outbreak caused by VDPV was in the Dominican Republic/Haiti in 2001. But the Nigeria outbreak is of interest because it is a continuation of problems begun when the government decided to stop immunization in 2003. Although immunization has since been resumed, coverage has been low. This fact, coupled with the circulation of VDPVs in the region, led to selection of strains of VDPV that could transmit polio among hosts.

The NY Times reported on the Nigeria outbreak on 11 October 2007. Unfortunately the author of the article, Donald McNeil Jr., made two errors in the article. Here is the egregious text:

“But in rare cases it (poliovaccine) can mutate into something resembling wild poliovirus…such mutations are presumably extremely unusual”.

I wrote a letter to the Times Editor to correct these errors, but my words fell upon deaf ears. For the public record, here are my objections:

Dear Editor:

Your article of 11 October, “Polio in Nigeria” contains two errors. The vaccine does not mutate into ‘something resembling wild polio virus’; these mutated viruses are clearly vaccine-derived, not wild poliovirus. Furthermore, such mutations are not ‘extremely unusual’; they occur in nearly every recipient of the live polio vaccine. What is true is that vaccine-associated polio is extremely rare, for which we have no explanation.

Unless the public is provided with correct scientific facts, it cannot be expected to understand the ramifications of outbreaks such as those in Nigeria.

Polio and Nobel Prizes

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I often lecture about polioviruses and poliovirus vaccines, and I am frequently asked why Salk or Sabin did not receive the Nobel Prize. I usually tell students because Salk did not discover anything new, but simply put together existing technologies in a productive way. Sabin once said that Salk didn’t invent anything, what he did was pure kitchen chemistry. An article in the Annals of Neurology, “Polio and Nobel Prizes: Looking Back 50 Years”, by Erling Norrby and Stanley Prusiner, directly addresses this question.

The authors took advantage of the fact that the Nobel Archives are open to scholarly investigation 50 years after the Prize is awarded. They looked into the written record surrounding the 1954 Nobel Prize, which was awarded to John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins for their discovery of the ability of poliovirus to grow in cultures of various types of tissue. This discovery was a milestone in virology because it not only lead to the production of both killed and live poliovirus vaccines, but it allowed the growth of many other viruses.

Examination of the Nobel Archives reveals that Dr. Sven Gard, Professor of Virology at the Karolinska Institute, convinced the Nobel Committee to name Enders and his colleagues recipients of the 1954 Prize. He wrote that ‘the discovery by Enders’ group is the most important in the whole history of virology…The discovery has had a revolutionary effect on the discipline of virology’. Salk was nominated for the Prize in 1955 and in 1956. The first time, it was decided to wait for the results of the clinical trial of Salk’s killed poliovaccine, which was in progress. In 1956, Gard wrote an 8-page analysis of Salk’s work, in which he concluded that “Salk has not in the development of his methods introduced anything that is principally new, but only exploited discoveries made by others.” He concluded that “Salk’s publications on the poliomyelitis vaccine cannot be considered as Prize worthy”.

In the late 1960s, Salk, Sabin, Koprowski, and Gard were nominated for the Nobel Prize for poliovirus vaccines. Gard refused to be nominated, saying that the work was not primary but depended on accomplishments of those who had already received the Prize; this effectively killed the nomination. The developers of the poliovaccine were never again seriously considered for a Nobel Prize.

From now on, when asked why Salk did not receive the Nobel Prize, I will have the right answer.