Pub Date : 2020-02-28DOI: 10.7765/9781526146472.00021
S. Giordano, John Harris, L. Piccirillo
{"title":"Introduction to Part II","authors":"S. Giordano, John Harris, L. Piccirillo","doi":"10.7765/9781526146472.00021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526146472.00021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":368881,"journal":{"name":"The freedom of scientific research","volume":"153 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126596780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-28DOI: 10.7765/9781526146472.00004
{"title":"List of figures","authors":"","doi":"10.7765/9781526146472.00004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526146472.00004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":368881,"journal":{"name":"The freedom of scientific research","volume":"126 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122290161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-05DOI: 10.7765/9781526146472.00012
P. Lachmann
The main theme of this chapter is the enduring and extensive influence that combating infection has had on human life and society. This is a topic much neglected in accounts of human history. Moreover, the influence of infection is not restricted to humans but can be seen throughout the living world from bacteria and fungi to plants and animals. The bacteriophages that infect bacteria have been invaluable tools to study molecular biology though their promise as antibacterial agents in medicine has not so far been fulfilled. The devastating effect of infection on the tree population in this country has been demonstrated by Dutch elm disease, and more recently by ash dieback, which have had a large effect on the overall tree population. In animals, there is a very interesting review by Hamilton et al. (1990) who analysed why it was that primitive animals always adopt sexual reproduction as opposed to vegetative reproduction as used in many plants. They came to the conclusion that the advantage of sexual reproduction is that it provides a mechanism to reassort the genes that are concerned with resistance to infection at each generation. In other words, the reason we have sex is to combat infection. Here, however, I will restrict myself to discussing infectious disease and its effects on human societies. It is likely that humans became significantly more susceptible to infectious disease as a result of the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago. This is less than 10 per cent of the period in which modern humans, Homo sapiens, have existed. For the first 90 per cent of human existence the communities were small, they tended to move about and not occupy the same site for long, and they had no domestic animals. Although evidence on the incidence of infection before the agricultural revolution is sparse, it is highly plausible that it was less. The coming of larger communities living at fixed sites led to their contaminating their water supplies with their own faeces and promoted orofaecal spread of infection. The fact that they lived in larger communities will itself have helped to spread infections by the respiratory route but perhaps the most important feature was the
{"title":"The influence of infection on society","authors":"P. Lachmann","doi":"10.7765/9781526146472.00012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526146472.00012","url":null,"abstract":"The main theme of this chapter is the enduring and extensive influence that combating infection has had on human life and society. This is a topic much neglected in accounts of human history. Moreover, the influence of infection is not restricted to humans but can be seen throughout the living world from bacteria and fungi to plants and animals. The bacteriophages that infect bacteria have been invaluable tools to study molecular biology though their promise as antibacterial agents in medicine has not so far been fulfilled. The devastating effect of infection on the tree population in this country has been demonstrated by Dutch elm disease, and more recently by ash dieback, which have had a large effect on the overall tree population. In animals, there is a very interesting review by Hamilton et al. (1990) who analysed why it was that primitive animals always adopt sexual reproduction as opposed to vegetative reproduction as used in many plants. They came to the conclusion that the advantage of sexual reproduction is that it provides a mechanism to reassort the genes that are concerned with resistance to infection at each generation. In other words, the reason we have sex is to combat infection. Here, however, I will restrict myself to discussing infectious disease and its effects on human societies. It is likely that humans became significantly more susceptible to infectious disease as a result of the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago. This is less than 10 per cent of the period in which modern humans, Homo sapiens, have existed. For the first 90 per cent of human existence the communities were small, they tended to move about and not occupy the same site for long, and they had no domestic animals. Although evidence on the incidence of infection before the agricultural revolution is sparse, it is highly plausible that it was less. The coming of larger communities living at fixed sites led to their contaminating their water supplies with their own faeces and promoted orofaecal spread of infection. The fact that they lived in larger communities will itself have helped to spread infections by the respiratory route but perhaps the most important feature was the","PeriodicalId":368881,"journal":{"name":"The freedom of scientific research","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126672348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-05DOI: 10.7765/9781526127686.00028
M. Woolley
{"title":"Let freedom ring for science","authors":"M. Woolley","doi":"10.7765/9781526127686.00028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526127686.00028","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":368881,"journal":{"name":"The freedom of scientific research","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122969953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}