A brief history of viruses

Sunil attends a talk by Robert Gallo and gives us the highlights – a quick history of viruses and short memories…

Gallo pointed out how people (scientists included) have such short memories. Humans seem to have only a 30 year memory of history. Around 1919, there was a huge influenza pandemic worldwide that killed millions. Yet around 1950, people were saying microbiology (including the study of viruses) was an old field. We “knew� all that we needed to about microbes. People said that again in the late seventies/early eighties, when they said that the new frontier was degenerative diseases. I’ve always thought such statements were terrible and expressed a rare ignorance as well as arrogance. I mean, over 99% of all living organisms (in terms of number of species or total biomass) are microbiological in origin!