‘Promoted by Hong Tao, the Chlamydia Hypothesis Had Become Well Established...': Understanding the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Epedemic - But Which One?

Abstract

Purpose – The aims of this chapter are twofold – first, to develop an understanding of the ways in which primary historical data come to be transformed across generations of popular science histories of emerging epidemics; and second, to develop an understanding of the ways in which those transformations impact on our ability to know what really happened during those epidemics. Approach – The chapter begins with a rhetorical analysis of one particularly influential account of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak. Therein, we learn that the race to discover the outbreak's aetiology was tainted by scientific malpractice; that an esteemed Chinese microbiologist, Dr. Hong, apparently promoted his own, patently false, aetiological discovery, stifled debate on the matter and, in doing so, held the international response to the outbreak back by a number of weeks. But how was this account rhetorically constructed? And how did it engage with Dr. Hong's own research work? Findings – Does Hong deserve to be remembered as an inept scientist? Subsequent accounts have been quick to repeat this one, founding text's account, suggesting that ‘yes, he does’. This chapter, however, returns to the primary data, examines the ways in which the original account troped those data and moves to suggest that ‘no, he does not’. Contributions to the field – Teasing out the more general implications of this particular case study, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the analytical gains that might accrue if other popular scientific histories of emerging epidemics were approached as ‘topics’ rather than ‘resources’.