Re-imagining the virus

ABSTRACT

This article tracks new conceptualizations of viruses both as a scientific object of study and a cultural object of fear and fascination. After World War II, the scientific study of viruses took on greater significance. The discovery of viral DNA and RNA revolutionized the understanding of microbial and human evolution. Technological innovations (electron microscopy, x-ray crystallography) and improvements in vaccine development gave scientists greater confidence in managing diseases such as polio and influenza. But in the 1980s, the emergence of HIV-AIDS, a deadly new virus that provoked intense stigma and discrimination, undercut that confidence. Scientific understandings of HIV led to more evolutionary, ecological views of disease origins; widely disseminated through the news and entertainment industries, those views inspired a newer, darker era of viral imaginaries. The identity of viruses as objects of scientific study, national security planning and popular culture have become difficult to disentangle as a result.

KEYWORDS:

• Virus
• virality
• virology
• DNA
• computers
• polio
• influenza
• HIV/AIDs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 There were significant problems in the early years of developing the polio vaccine, including the defective vaccine produced by the Cutter Laboratories in 1955. See Oshinsky (2005).

2 There is a huge literature on the AIDS pandemic in the United States. Of this literature, Treichler (1999) represents an excellent one volume starting point. For a recent review of that literature, see ‘Interchange,’ 2017.

3 The CDC eventually adopted the ‘if-you-can’t-beat-them, join them’ mentality with its 2011 graphic pamphlet ‘Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic’, a playful response to the hit TV show ‘The Walking Dead’. See CDC (2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nancy Tomes

Nancy Tomes is SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at Stony Brook University. She is the author of four books on the history of medicine and health, including the prize winning Gospel of Germs: Men, Women and the Microbe in American Life (Harvard, 1998) and Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and American Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers (University of North Carolina Press, 2016). She recently published (with Manon Parry) WHO Health Evidence Network Synthesis Report 77, ‘What are the historical roots of the COVID-19 infodemic? Lessons from the past’.