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EXPLOSIVE DIVERSITY. “The world of viruses and selfish elements is enormously diverse, even when one considers only viruses with a certain type of genomic nucleic acid (dsDNA) that infect hosts from only one domain of cellular life (eukaryotes).” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

GROWING POPULARITY. “In London, vaccination became popular through the activities of others, particularly the surgeon Henry Cline, to whom Jenner had given some of the inoculant. Later in 1799, Drs. George Pearson and William Woodville began to support vaccination among their patients.” https://lnkd.in/eQfnZZv View in LinkedIn

FOURTH DOMAIN PROBLEMS. “This effect of nonuniform evolutionary rates is a pervasive problem in the analysis of deep phylogenies. Indeed, a subsequent reanalysis of the phylogenies of several universal genes present in giant viruses has failed to find support for the fourth-domain hypothesis.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

JENNER’S SON BECOMES ILL, following his father’s experimental innoculation. “Unfortunately, however, in the years following these experiments, young Edward "became a sickly child and exhibited signs of mild mental retardation," likely due to neurological damage.” His son later had repeated boosters with one severe reaction. https://lnkd.in/d2v-Dvh View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this history of medicine portrait of the heuristic approach to problem solving. Society faced a severe public health threat from smallpox that killed millions. Physicians had little to go on but educated guesses, without the benefit of theory. The germ theory was only accepted in 1880; viruses were not isolated until 1892. Animal studies of diseases were not fully established until the later work of Koch and Pasteur, and preclinical vaccine testing was not required until the 20th century. While the ethics of these early studies has been severely criticized, today the world is free of the scourge of smallpox. View in LinkedIn

EMPTY HANDED. “Jenner went to London in search of volunteers for vaccination. However, after 3 months he had found none.” https://lnkd.in/eQfnZZv View in LinkedIn

MEMORIAL. “The discovery and promotion of vaccination enabled the eradication of smallpox: this is Edward Jenner's ultimate vindication and memorial.” https://lnkd.in/eQfnZZv View in LinkedIn

GREATEST PUBLIC HEALTH SUCCESS. “Arguably one of the greatest successes in disease biology, and indeed in the whole of public health, was the elimination of smallpox from the face of the earth in 1979.” https://lnkd.in/des8sHN View in LinkedIn

COMMON THREADS. “Running counter to this natural balkanization are the handful of organizing principles that span across all of biology such as natural selection and the central dogma of molecular biology. Why would anyone look for an alternative to reductionist biology after one hundred fifty years of unrelenting success?” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

CONSEQUENCES OF INFORMATION OVERLOAD. “Whether intended or not, this specialization usually involves reducing the scope of the problem to focus research and ease the burden of tracking too many variables and concepts. This reductionist approach is widespread to all sciences and no biologist or other biomedical scientist can claim deep knowledge of the state-of-the-art in more than a few of the hundreds subfields of biology.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn