Pub Date : 2010-03-01DOI: 10.1525/ABT.2010.72.3.13.B
M. Battaglia
{"title":"EvolutionDarwin's Lost World: The Hidden History of Animal Life. By Martin Brasier . 2009. Oxford University Press, New York. (ISBN 978-0-19954897-2). 260 pages. Hardcover. $34.95.","authors":"M. Battaglia","doi":"10.1525/ABT.2010.72.3.13.B","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/ABT.2010.72.3.13.B","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50960,"journal":{"name":"American Biology Teacher","volume":"15 1","pages":"202-203"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2010-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76241153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-03-01DOI: 10.1525/ABT.2010.72.3.13.C
S. Mitchell
{"title":"EvolutionThe Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution. By Carl Zimmer . 2010. Roberts and Company, Greenwood Village, Colorado. (ISBN 978-0981519470). 385 pages. Hardback. $59.95.","authors":"S. Mitchell","doi":"10.1525/ABT.2010.72.3.13.C","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/ABT.2010.72.3.13.C","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50960,"journal":{"name":"American Biology Teacher","volume":"17 1","pages":"203-203"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2010-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81367388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-02-01DOI: 10.1525/ABT.2010.72.2.14.C
C. Hibbitt
{"title":"Animal BehaviorAnimal Migration: Remarkable Journeys in the Wild. By Ben Hoare . 2009. University of California Press. (ISBN 978-0-520-25823-5). 176 pages. Hardcover. $34.95.","authors":"C. Hibbitt","doi":"10.1525/ABT.2010.72.2.14.C","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/ABT.2010.72.2.14.C","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50960,"journal":{"name":"American Biology Teacher","volume":"23 1","pages":"128-128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2010-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83684902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1525/abt.2010.72.2.13
M. Flannery
There's a tremendous amount of evidence for evolution, but biologists are always looking for more. As with any delving into the past, this isn't easy to do. Time erases evidence. A number of wonderful sites of prehistoric cave art have been found over the years, from Altamira in the 19th century to Chauvet in the 1990s. But the experts still haven't come up with a plausible explanation for why this art was created (Curtis, 2006). Questions still remain: were these images meant to celebrate the diversity of life or to bring blessing upon a future hunt? Such questions are what make history both a frustrating and a fascinating endeavor, and no part of history is more frustrating or fascinating than investigating early life on earth. If it's hard to piece together what was going on in caves 20 or 30 thousand years ago, it's not surprising that figuring out what occurred 3 or 4 billion years ago would be much more difficult. The amazing thing is that it isn't totally impossible. Biologists, chemists, physicists, and geologists have worked together to come up with some plausible scenarios for the early years of life on earth. Sure, there's still much controversy about some of their explanations, but there has also been a lot of progress since the experiments by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in the 1950s in which they attempted to recreate the chemical environment of the early earth. In this column, I want to explore several lines of evidence that together give us at least a sketchy view of what early life was like. That's not bad, considering that many of us can't trace our ancestors back more than two or three generations. Physicists and geologists agree that the earth is about 4.5——4.6 billion years old. There is also …
{"title":"From the Beginning","authors":"M. Flannery","doi":"10.1525/abt.2010.72.2.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2010.72.2.13","url":null,"abstract":"There's a tremendous amount of evidence for evolution, but biologists are always looking for more. As with any delving into the past, this isn't easy to do. Time erases evidence. A number of wonderful sites of prehistoric cave art have been found over the years, from Altamira in the 19th century to Chauvet in the 1990s. But the experts still haven't come up with a plausible explanation for why this art was created (Curtis, 2006). Questions still remain: were these images meant to celebrate the diversity of life or to bring blessing upon a future hunt? Such questions are what make history both a frustrating and a fascinating endeavor, and no part of history is more frustrating or fascinating than investigating early life on earth. If it's hard to piece together what was going on in caves 20 or 30 thousand years ago, it's not surprising that figuring out what occurred 3 or 4 billion years ago would be much more difficult. The amazing thing is that it isn't totally impossible. Biologists, chemists, physicists, and geologists have worked together to come up with some plausible scenarios for the early years of life on earth. Sure, there's still much controversy about some of their explanations, but there has also been a lot of progress since the experiments by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in the 1950s in which they attempted to recreate the chemical environment of the early earth. In this column, I want to explore several lines of evidence that together give us at least a sketchy view of what early life was like. That's not bad, considering that many of us can't trace our ancestors back more than two or three generations. Physicists and geologists agree that the earth is about 4.5——4.6 billion years old. There is also …","PeriodicalId":50960,"journal":{"name":"American Biology Teacher","volume":"52 1","pages":"123 - 126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90975360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1525/ABT.2010.72.1.12.C
J. Váázquez
Study and Communication Skills for the Biosciences . By Stuart Johnson and Jon Scott . 2009. Oxford University Press. (ISBN 978-0-19-921983-4). 235 pp. Paperback. $39.95. Johnson and Scott, professors at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, have developed a guide that addresses study and presentation strategies for college students in the biological sciences. The book is composed of 14 chapters that cover general topics from note-taking skills up to poster preparation and study skills for exams. The beginning chapters are very general and struck me as common-sense knowledge for any dedicated student, regardless of the subject area. The narrative picks up when the authors discuss specific topics, using biology as …
生物科学的学习和沟通技巧。斯图尔特·约翰逊和乔恩·斯科特著。2009. 牛津大学出版社。(ISBN 978-0-19-921983-4)。235页，平装本。39.95美元。英国莱斯特大学(University of Leicester)的Johnson和Scott教授为生物科学专业的大学生制定了一份关于学习和演讲策略的指南。这本书由14章组成，涵盖了从笔记技巧到海报准备和考试学习技巧的一般主题。开头的章节非常笼统，给我的印象是，对于任何一个有献身精神的学生来说，这都是常识性的知识，无论这个学科是什么领域。当作者讨论特定的话题时，故事就开始了，用生物学作为……
{"title":"Learning About Biology","authors":"J. Váázquez","doi":"10.1525/ABT.2010.72.1.12.C","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/ABT.2010.72.1.12.C","url":null,"abstract":"Study and Communication Skills for the Biosciences . By Stuart Johnson and Jon Scott . 2009. Oxford University Press. (ISBN 978-0-19-921983-4). 235 pp. Paperback. $39.95. Johnson and Scott, professors at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, have developed a guide that addresses study and presentation strategies for college students in the biological sciences. The book is composed of 14 chapters that cover general topics from note-taking skills up to poster preparation and study skills for exams. The beginning chapters are very general and struck me as common-sense knowledge for any dedicated student, regardless of the subject area. The narrative picks up when the authors discuss specific topics, using biology as …","PeriodicalId":50960,"journal":{"name":"American Biology Teacher","volume":"10 4 1","pages":"49-49"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77137010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Here is a brief discussion of the kinds of new manuscripts I would like to encourage. The American Biology Teacher needs articles in the critical areas of biology education listed below, all of which tend to be underrepresented in K——16 biology classroom curricula and instruction. •• Inquiry Biology Learning Activities in General This means authentic inquiry, not just attempts at inquiry or overly directed inquiry. Authentic inquiry means that students are engaged actively and meaningfully in all aspects of the inquiry process. These include (a) making interesting observations that will lead to puzzling questions; (b) formulating questions that have high potential to be addressed through classroom (or extended classroom) research; (c) crafting researchable hypotheses that predict the relationship between independent and dependent variables; (d) identifying assumptions and limitations of a specific research study; (e) determining an experimental plan with procedures that address the hypotheses; (f) listing materials, equipment, and resources needed, including space and time; (g) crafting a plan for data collection and the type of data intended; (h) stating a proposed …
{"title":"Encouraging New Manuscripts in Critical Areas of Biology Education","authors":"Bill Leonard","doi":"10.1525/ABT.2010.72.1.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/ABT.2010.72.1.3","url":null,"abstract":"Here is a brief discussion of the kinds of new manuscripts I would like to encourage. The American Biology Teacher needs articles in the critical areas of biology education listed below, all of which tend to be underrepresented in K——16 biology classroom curricula and instruction. •• Inquiry Biology Learning Activities in General This means authentic inquiry, not just attempts at inquiry or overly directed inquiry. Authentic inquiry means that students are engaged actively and meaningfully in all aspects of the inquiry process. These include (a) making interesting observations that will lead to puzzling questions; (b) formulating questions that have high potential to be addressed through classroom (or extended classroom) research; (c) crafting researchable hypotheses that predict the relationship between independent and dependent variables; (d) identifying assumptions and limitations of a specific research study; (e) determining an experimental plan with procedures that address the hypotheses; (f) listing materials, equipment, and resources needed, including space and time; (g) crafting a plan for data collection and the type of data intended; (h) stating a proposed …","PeriodicalId":50960,"journal":{"name":"American Biology Teacher","volume":"13 1","pages":"6-6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89524843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is a cornerstone concept in biology (White, 2007). Natural selection is the mechanism of evolution caused by the environmental selection of organisms most fit to reproduce, sometimes explained as "survival of the fittest" (Mader, 2004). An example of evolution by natural selection is the development of bacteria that are resistant to antimicrobial agents as a result of exposure to these agents (Yazdankhah et al., 2006). Antimicrobials kill off susceptible members of a population, hut cells that have some resistance from the start or that acquire it later through mutation or gene exchange may survive. These survivors are "best fit" in that particular environment where they proliferate (Levy, 2007). While acquisition of knowledge of evolution by natural selection is a seminal goal of science education (NABT, 2008), it is difficult for students to observe this phenomenon directly in their own lives. Perhaps the reason for this is that humans have a generation time of about 25 years. It takes 100 years--a period of time beyond the life expectancy of most people--for four generations of progeny to be traced from the original parents (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2008). This sharply contrasts with bacteria that have shorter generation times, in some cases as little as 20 minutes (Tortora, Funke & Case, 2010). Theoretically, that means that over 100 years, about 2,500,000 generations of bacterial descendents could be produced from an original cell. This huge reproductive potential makes bacteria especially well-suited for use in the study of natural selection and, as genetic differences accumulate to produce major transformations, to clearly illustrate evolution. This article describes research on the resistance of wild clonal populations of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus to triclosan and the subsequent reversion of these resistant bacteria back to wild-type when triclosan is removed from their environment. These experiments can serve as apractical, timely, and engaging model for the study of natural selection in the biology classroom and can be performed either as a long-term open inquiry (Welden & Hossler, 2003) or as a teacher-guided inquiry. * Background Information Triclosan (2, 2, 4'-trichloro-2'-hydroxydiphenyl ether) is a broad-spectrum antimicrobial agent that is effective against bacteria (Perencevich et al., 2001), fungi (McMurry et al., 1998), and viruses (Schweizer, 2001). See Figure 1 for a diagram of triclosan. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Invented at Ciba, triclosan is the generic name of the chemical that Ciba sells as Irgasan[R] (Ciba.com, 2008). Triclosan is also used in plastics and clothing by other manufacturers under the name Microban[R], and used in acrylic fibers as Biofresh[R] (Glaser, 2004). It was introduced as a surgical scrub in 1972, typically at 0.3% bactericidal concentrations, and used primarily to limit the spread of i
{"title":"Microbial Resistance to Triclosan: A Case Study in Natural Selection","authors":"A. Serafini, D. Matthews","doi":"10.2307/20565376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/20565376","url":null,"abstract":"[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is a cornerstone concept in biology (White, 2007). Natural selection is the mechanism of evolution caused by the environmental selection of organisms most fit to reproduce, sometimes explained as \"survival of the fittest\" (Mader, 2004). An example of evolution by natural selection is the development of bacteria that are resistant to antimicrobial agents as a result of exposure to these agents (Yazdankhah et al., 2006). Antimicrobials kill off susceptible members of a population, hut cells that have some resistance from the start or that acquire it later through mutation or gene exchange may survive. These survivors are \"best fit\" in that particular environment where they proliferate (Levy, 2007). While acquisition of knowledge of evolution by natural selection is a seminal goal of science education (NABT, 2008), it is difficult for students to observe this phenomenon directly in their own lives. Perhaps the reason for this is that humans have a generation time of about 25 years. It takes 100 years--a period of time beyond the life expectancy of most people--for four generations of progeny to be traced from the original parents (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2008). This sharply contrasts with bacteria that have shorter generation times, in some cases as little as 20 minutes (Tortora, Funke & Case, 2010). Theoretically, that means that over 100 years, about 2,500,000 generations of bacterial descendents could be produced from an original cell. This huge reproductive potential makes bacteria especially well-suited for use in the study of natural selection and, as genetic differences accumulate to produce major transformations, to clearly illustrate evolution. This article describes research on the resistance of wild clonal populations of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus to triclosan and the subsequent reversion of these resistant bacteria back to wild-type when triclosan is removed from their environment. These experiments can serve as apractical, timely, and engaging model for the study of natural selection in the biology classroom and can be performed either as a long-term open inquiry (Welden & Hossler, 2003) or as a teacher-guided inquiry. * Background Information Triclosan (2, 2, 4'-trichloro-2'-hydroxydiphenyl ether) is a broad-spectrum antimicrobial agent that is effective against bacteria (Perencevich et al., 2001), fungi (McMurry et al., 1998), and viruses (Schweizer, 2001). See Figure 1 for a diagram of triclosan. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Invented at Ciba, triclosan is the generic name of the chemical that Ciba sells as Irgasan[R] (Ciba.com, 2008). Triclosan is also used in plastics and clothing by other manufacturers under the name Microban[R], and used in acrylic fibers as Biofresh[R] (Glaser, 2004). It was introduced as a surgical scrub in 1972, typically at 0.3% bactericidal concentrations, and used primarily to limit the spread of i","PeriodicalId":50960,"journal":{"name":"American Biology Teacher","volume":"71 1","pages":"536-540"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2009-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77209787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I am writing this column in late August, so it's difficult to predict what the H1N1 flu situation will be by like the time it is published towards the end of the year. Since there is already a pandemic, the spread of the virus will likely have picked up more steam by that time, but how much steam it is difficult to forecast So I'm not even going to try. Instead, I will make a prognostication that is a safer bet: there will continue to be health issues of some kind at the end of this year, at the end of this century, and on to the end of this millennium. I am using as my crystal ball a book by Rene Dubos (1901-1982) called Mirage of Health (1959). It seems appropriate to examine this book on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication, because it is at least as relevant today as it was at the time it came out. Also, since this issue of ABT is devoted to health and medicine, this work is a great reminder of the limits of the latter to ensure the former. The book's main argument is that, as the title suggests, the quest for perfect health is an unending one, just as walking towards a mirage is a fruitless task. Dubos contends that the idea that better days are coming, that if we get rid of the latest scourge to health, life will be wonderful and we will to a ripe old age in good health, just isn't going to happen. In other words, finding the "cure" for cancer or HIV infections or ... isn't going to make life wonderful. He cites as support for his view the fact that finding a cure for tuberculosis (TB), the scourge of the 19th century, did not lead to a health utopia. In fact, thanks to life style changes rather than medical advances, the incidence of TB had already decreased significantly even before an antibiotic treatment for this bacterial infection became available in the 1950s. I have been reminded of Dubos's book frequently over the years since I first read it in the 1970s. Most particularly, it came to mind in the 1980s when HIV and then Ebola virus entered our consciousness. For those who don't remember these times, both infections came as rather a shock to the American public who had become accustomed to the idea that infectious disease was no longer fatal. To put it very simply, bacterial infections could be treated with antibiotics and viral diseases prevented with vaccines. Then AIDS arrived, an infectious, incurable and in those early years, almost inevitably fatal, disease. This was not something we were prepared for because many of us, the baby boomers who had swelled the population, had never experienced the years when bacterial pneumonia was dangerously common and a bad cut could lead to an uncontrollable infection. Microbiology How could Dubos have been so prescient when most Americans were shocked by this onslaught and the others to follow? First of all, he was a microbiologist. He was already aware, more than most people of the time, that bacteria were developing resistance to antibiotics, that the reign of these drugs was likely
我是在八月底写这篇专栏的，所以很难预测H1N1流感的情况会是什么样子，就像它在年底发布的时候一样。由于已经有了大流行，到那时病毒的传播可能会加速，但很难预测有多快，所以我甚至不会去尝试。相反，我将做出一个更安全的预测:在今年年底，在本世纪末，直到本世纪末，将继续存在某种健康问题。我用Rene Dubos(1901-1982)的书《健康的幻影》(Mirage of Health, 1959)作为我的预言球。在这本书出版五十周年之际审视它似乎是恰当的，因为它在今天至少与它出版时一样具有现实意义。此外，由于这一期ABT致力于健康和医学，这项工作是一个很好的提醒，后者的限制，以确保前者。这本书的主要论点是，正如书名所示，对完美健康的追求是永无止境的，就像走向海市蜃楼是一项徒劳的任务一样。杜博斯认为，美好的日子即将到来，如果我们摆脱了对健康的最新祸害，生活将会很美好，我们将健康地进入老年，这种想法是不会发生的。换句话说，找到癌症或艾滋病毒感染的“治疗方法”或……不会让生活变得美好。他引用了一个事实来支持他的观点，即找到治疗结核病的方法(结核病是19世纪的祸害)并没有导致健康乌托邦。事实上，由于生活方式的改变而不是医学的进步，结核病的发病率在20世纪50年代出现抗生素治疗这种细菌感染之前就已经显著下降了。自上世纪70年代第一次读到杜博斯的书以来，多年来我经常想起这本书。尤其是在20世纪80年代，当艾滋病毒和埃博拉病毒进入我们的意识时，它出现在我们的脑海中。对于那些不记得那段时间的人来说，这两种传染病对美国公众来说都是相当震惊的，因为他们已经习惯了传染病不再致命的想法。简单地说，细菌感染可以用抗生素治疗，病毒性疾病可以用疫苗预防。后来，艾滋病来了，这是一种传染性疾病，无法治愈，在早期，几乎不可避免地会致命。这是我们没有准备好的，因为我们中的许多人，婴儿潮一代的人口膨胀，从来没有经历过细菌性肺炎是危险的常见，一个严重的伤口可能导致无法控制的感染。【微生物学】当大多数美国人都对这次袭击和随后的袭击感到震惊时，杜博斯怎么能如此有先见之明呢?首先，他是个微生物学家。他比当时的大多数人都更清楚地意识到，细菌正在对抗生素产生耐药性，这些药物的统治很可能是短暂的，只有人类聪明地努力，才能领先微生物一步，才能延续下去。杜博斯于20世纪初在法国出生并接受教育，当时法国的微生物学仍然深受路易·巴斯德的知识遗产的影响。他来到美国，职业生涯的大部分时间都在纽约的洛克菲勒大学(Rockefeller University)担任研究员。在那里，他发现了革兰西丁，这是第一种临床测试的抗生素。虽然它没有被证明是一种有效的药物，但杜博斯的研究确实提供了关于培养物和活生物体中抗生素动力学的有用信息。当盘尼西林被发现并被开发成一种药物时，他参与了在美国完成的早期工作。他还研究了肺结核和肺炎。正是杜博斯对细菌如何对抗生素产生耐药性的研究，使他认为健康的主题是海市蜃楼。…
{"title":"The Mirage of Health","authors":"M. Flannery","doi":"10.2307/20565381","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/20565381","url":null,"abstract":"I am writing this column in late August, so it's difficult to predict what the H1N1 flu situation will be by like the time it is published towards the end of the year. Since there is already a pandemic, the spread of the virus will likely have picked up more steam by that time, but how much steam it is difficult to forecast So I'm not even going to try. Instead, I will make a prognostication that is a safer bet: there will continue to be health issues of some kind at the end of this year, at the end of this century, and on to the end of this millennium. I am using as my crystal ball a book by Rene Dubos (1901-1982) called Mirage of Health (1959). It seems appropriate to examine this book on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication, because it is at least as relevant today as it was at the time it came out. Also, since this issue of ABT is devoted to health and medicine, this work is a great reminder of the limits of the latter to ensure the former. The book's main argument is that, as the title suggests, the quest for perfect health is an unending one, just as walking towards a mirage is a fruitless task. Dubos contends that the idea that better days are coming, that if we get rid of the latest scourge to health, life will be wonderful and we will to a ripe old age in good health, just isn't going to happen. In other words, finding the \"cure\" for cancer or HIV infections or ... isn't going to make life wonderful. He cites as support for his view the fact that finding a cure for tuberculosis (TB), the scourge of the 19th century, did not lead to a health utopia. In fact, thanks to life style changes rather than medical advances, the incidence of TB had already decreased significantly even before an antibiotic treatment for this bacterial infection became available in the 1950s. I have been reminded of Dubos's book frequently over the years since I first read it in the 1970s. Most particularly, it came to mind in the 1980s when HIV and then Ebola virus entered our consciousness. For those who don't remember these times, both infections came as rather a shock to the American public who had become accustomed to the idea that infectious disease was no longer fatal. To put it very simply, bacterial infections could be treated with antibiotics and viral diseases prevented with vaccines. Then AIDS arrived, an infectious, incurable and in those early years, almost inevitably fatal, disease. This was not something we were prepared for because many of us, the baby boomers who had swelled the population, had never experienced the years when bacterial pneumonia was dangerously common and a bad cut could lead to an uncontrollable infection. Microbiology How could Dubos have been so prescient when most Americans were shocked by this onslaught and the others to follow? First of all, he was a microbiologist. He was already aware, more than most people of the time, that bacteria were developing resistance to antibiotics, that the reign of these drugs was likely","PeriodicalId":50960,"journal":{"name":"American Biology Teacher","volume":"35 6 1","pages":"558-561"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2009-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85089933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It is my last letter to write this year as President of NABT. This issue of The American Biology Teacher is on Health and Medicine. What a teachable moment we are living in right now. Let me ask a question. What do the years 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009 have in common? Many of you know that those dates are the years for the most pandemics in the U.S. and the world. In 2006, Dr. Gregory Poland, Director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, spoke to my non-majors biology class (in which his daughter was a student) on the avian flu. Dr. Poland is a leading expert in vaccinology and clinical research, and in the field of biodefense. He and his talk were mesmerizing. Why shouldn't they be? As Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics; Associate Chair for Research, Department of Medicine; Director of the Immunization Clinic and the Program in Translational Immunovirology and Biodefense at the Mayo Clinic (whew, what a long title), he carries a lot of authority whenever he talks on anything relating to viruses. It was interesting that the local news media rushed to take video and questions after he spoke to the class. Dr. Poland lectured on the avian flu and kept the students on the edge of their seats as he weaved the current information about the "bird flu" (an H5N1 virus) and counseled the class that another pandemic would come. No! He did not say the avian flu was a pandemic. That would be in error. No! He wasn't saying the bird flu was going to be the next pandemic. That would be creating fear. What Dr. Poland was able to accomplish very well was to make the non-major biology students aware of what efforts would have to be in place to combat the next pandemic. As he laid the groundwork for what could and would happen m the future, and the efforts that were needed to prepare the world for the next pandemic (whenever it came), he challenged the class with this question: "Is it irrational fear or irrational complacency that our country is in?" He described some of the steps necessary for the government, industry, medical community and the population to work together to be prepared. Dr. Poland was working with the U.S. government and World Health Organization to help influence a worldwide mechanism for dealing with pandemics; to move us out of what he called "irrational complacency." His passion was evident in his talk that the world needed to coordinate its efforts to combat the next viral pandemic, whenever it came. The class was honored to be exposed to that level of information and to such a brilliant scientist and educator who provided the answers to their questions. We are now in the midst of the latest pandemic and we do not know how it will fully play out in our country and the world. His words could not have been more prophetic as it was only two years later that the H1N1 virus emerged out of a town in Mexico and, within a five-month period, reached pandemic
{"title":"From the President: Irrational Fear or Irrational Complacency: The Need for Science and Health","authors":"John C. Moore","doi":"10.2307/20565371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/20565371","url":null,"abstract":"[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It is my last letter to write this year as President of NABT. This issue of The American Biology Teacher is on Health and Medicine. What a teachable moment we are living in right now. Let me ask a question. What do the years 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009 have in common? Many of you know that those dates are the years for the most pandemics in the U.S. and the world. In 2006, Dr. Gregory Poland, Director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, spoke to my non-majors biology class (in which his daughter was a student) on the avian flu. Dr. Poland is a leading expert in vaccinology and clinical research, and in the field of biodefense. He and his talk were mesmerizing. Why shouldn't they be? As Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics; Associate Chair for Research, Department of Medicine; Director of the Immunization Clinic and the Program in Translational Immunovirology and Biodefense at the Mayo Clinic (whew, what a long title), he carries a lot of authority whenever he talks on anything relating to viruses. It was interesting that the local news media rushed to take video and questions after he spoke to the class. Dr. Poland lectured on the avian flu and kept the students on the edge of their seats as he weaved the current information about the \"bird flu\" (an H5N1 virus) and counseled the class that another pandemic would come. No! He did not say the avian flu was a pandemic. That would be in error. No! He wasn't saying the bird flu was going to be the next pandemic. That would be creating fear. What Dr. Poland was able to accomplish very well was to make the non-major biology students aware of what efforts would have to be in place to combat the next pandemic. As he laid the groundwork for what could and would happen m the future, and the efforts that were needed to prepare the world for the next pandemic (whenever it came), he challenged the class with this question: \"Is it irrational fear or irrational complacency that our country is in?\" He described some of the steps necessary for the government, industry, medical community and the population to work together to be prepared. Dr. Poland was working with the U.S. government and World Health Organization to help influence a worldwide mechanism for dealing with pandemics; to move us out of what he called \"irrational complacency.\" His passion was evident in his talk that the world needed to coordinate its efforts to combat the next viral pandemic, whenever it came. The class was honored to be exposed to that level of information and to such a brilliant scientist and educator who provided the answers to their questions. We are now in the midst of the latest pandemic and we do not know how it will fully play out in our country and the world. His words could not have been more prophetic as it was only two years later that the H1N1 virus emerged out of a town in Mexico and, within a five-month period, reached pandemic","PeriodicalId":50960,"journal":{"name":"American Biology Teacher","volume":"1 1","pages":"516-517"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2009-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76021822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：