Biomedical subjects

T van Helvoort

Publications and source records attributed to T van Helvoort.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Scalpel or rays? Radiotherapy and the struggle for the cancer patient in pre-second world war Germany.

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Cancer Care Facilities↗

PubMed1999

A century of research into the cause of cancer: is the new oncogene paradigm revolutionary?

Contemporary oncological research is predominantly characterised by genetic explanations, a situation which may be briefly denoted as the oncogene paradigm. This essay discusses why the new paradigm was perceived so attractive that it could take over the whole field of oncology within a time-span of less than two decades. It is argued that the revolutionary character of the oncogene paradigm stems from the fact that it transcends a dichotomy which has kept experimental cancer research divided for more than three quarters of a century. This concerns the dichotomy between so-called exogenous and endogenous explanations of cancer causation. This essay mainly focuses on the role of the exogenous/endogenous dichotomy in the reception of research on oncogenic viruses, especially discussing the work of Nobel laureate Peyton Rous on cancer viruses at the Rockefeller Institute. Rous was severely criticised by James Ewing, director of the Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases in New York, who held the idea that the origin of cancer was based in the cell. The twentieth century controversy over oncogenic viruses is placed in the context of the intense discussion over causality in medicine during the first decades of the twentieth century in Germany. It is argued that the oncogene paradigm may be seen as revolutionary because it succeeded in uniting the exogenous and endogenous explanations of cancer in a single paradigm.

History, 20th Century↗

PubMed1994

The construction of bacteriophage as bacterial virus: linking endogenous and exogenous thought styles.

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History, 20th Century↗

PubMed1994

History of virus research in the twentieth century: the problem of conceptual continuity.

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History, 20th Century↗

PubMed1993

A bacteriological paradigm in influenza research in the first half of the twentieth century.

Scholars have argued that the beginning of virology can be dated from the end of the 19th century: the discovery that some infectious agents could pass through ultrafilters produced a criterium to distinguish ultrafilterable viruses from infectious agents that are not filterable, e.g. bacteria. A filterable agent, claimed to be the cause of human influenza, was isolated in 1933. It will be argued in this paper, however, that the influence of a bacteriological paradigm on influenza research in the first half of the twentieth century was very powerful. Until the late 1940s influenza viruses were studied as infectious entities which, although filterable, were conceived of as analogous to bacteria. It was assumed that filterable viruses which infected animals were a kind of ultrabacteria. According to the bacteriological paradigm the assumed dependence of the filterable viruses on living cells was easy to account for. The second half of the 1940s saw the 'modern concept of virus' begin to be applied to the influenza viruses. Influenza vaccinations in 1946 did not appear to provide protection, from which it was concluded that the influenza virus is very variable. Furthermore, in 1946 and 1947 experimental studies were published, which indicated that the influenza virus may go through an eclipse during its multiplication: it disappears as an infectious agent. Viewed from this perspective, it was only by the second half of the 1940s that research on the influenza virus became emancipated from the bacteriological paradigm.

Bacteriology↗

PubMed1992