zephyr -
Do you mind sending me an email on this?
jonathan@newmedio.comjohnnyb
May 5, 2012
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People should only know that virology and its history is fraught with sooo many controversies and conundrums (especially in light of new discoveries in genetics and epigenetics) that are not naturally enough in Zimmer's book. Not that 'Planet of Viruses' (which I am busy perusing) isn't interesting, just that it's typically superficial.
Orthodox publications on virology - with the occasional exception - read like Dawkins on evolution: conventional hand-waving and whitewashing. I don't want to come off as cryptic or worse - but very few folk anywhere would know what I mean and I can't explain in a comment, it would take a massive book. The real history of virology and its contemporary controversies among geneticists and virologists hasn't been written, not even close to it.. A future generation will have to sort it all out I fear.
As far as disputes in modern virology are concerned, well the best comparison I can make would be to the controversies on hominid evolution among the Darwin camp itself (never mind non-Darwinians), with Darwinian paleoanthropologists and biologists all in heated disagreements with one another. All with their pet fossils and then new findings come along, and the whole apple cart is upset and everything is rearranged, and the vicious disputes are only further intensified, conundrum piling on conundrum.. New discoveries in genetics are throwing so many assumptions and sacred cows in virology overboard, yet tell that to so many virologists who are stuck in old ways. The fact that virology is part and parcel of a tremendously corrupt industry that is Big Medicine doesn't help none (to put it mildly).
If you think neo-Darwinism and its defense is controversial, riddled through with error, careerism, wishful thinking and censorship; let me tell you virology more than holds a candle to Darwinism in these respects. The difference is that virology is very much insider knowledge, and is naturally taken on trust by other scientists working in different disciplines (especially those outside of molecular and cellular biology, yet even here there is boxed thinking), never mind the general public.
The implications to the new work being done on virology to evolution are startling btw, and problematic for neo-Darwinism to put it mildly. That's a whole other thing..zephyr