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Interesting plot twist regarding the former Soviet Union: "D’Herelle was a restless researcher who seems to have felt undervalued despite being awarded jobs in

Interesting plot twist regarding the former Soviet Union: "D’Herelle was a restless researcher who seems to have felt undervalued despite being awarded jobs in Paris and Vietnam and at Yale. That insecurity made him vulnerable to an offer he received in 1933 to relocate to Tbilisi in Georgia, home territory of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. With a protégé, Georgi Eliava, d’Herelle co-founded the Eliava Institute of Bacteriophages, Microbiology and Virology. Stalin showered the institute with attention and money because it offered something he badly wanted: a scientific achievement that he could portray as a pure product of communism. Antibiotics became the basis of infectious-disease medicine in the West, but behind the Iron Curtain, phages took their place." "Eliava was murdered in a political purge in 1937, and d’Herelle died in 1949. Their institute dwindled, but it survived the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the Georgian civil war the following year. When the former USSR opened up to the West, physicians in the United States and Europe learned the Eliava Institute was one of the few places in the world where researchers were still studying and administering phages. That was fortunate timing, because antibiotics in the West were losing their power under the onslaught of antibiotic resistance." It's interesting to consider how ideology (capitalist vs communist) contributes to different approaches to problem solving. Is there anything about bacteriophages--including their manufacture and use--that actually makes them more "communist"?

emilga 8y ago
> Is there anything about bacteriophages--including their manufacture and use--that actually makes them more "communist"? I guess the bacteriophage RNA "seizes" the host cell's means of production (ribosomes). ;)
myth_drannon 8y ago
In general patents and making money from them was not a concern in Soviet Union so the science took some different paths over there. Meaning simpler and less expensive treatments for example in medicine. Phages is one example, cold laser treatments is another one. Norman Doidge talks about them in the "Brains's way of healing"
Nasrudith 8y ago
Lack of value of doctor labor and efficent labor in general perhaps? Since phages need a culture first to be sure the right one is selected. You can't just give broad spectrum phages. Which isn't just "laziness" or cutting corners on expensive labor but helpful for patient results so they don't get worse while waiting for results. If I recall some accounts correctly Soviet doctors often depended upon grey market bribes to afford supplies if they weren't party favored. Phages were self replicating and needed fewer doses per patient if selected properly. However they are highly specific, and the phage banks need updated with every mutation which may happen mid-treatment. They are second in line for a good reason.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  I remember reading a semi-biography of an old school doctor that went to med school in the 1930's. Mentioned being a lowly resident late at night sitting next to a deathly ill patient with pneumonia trying to match antiserum to whatever bug the poor sap had. Nothing, nothing nothing, and then a match. Injecting the patent with the correct antiserum felt like magic. Or the they would die anyways. Rarely they would go into shock and die. Can imagine early antibiotics was so much easier. (big hammer)
stevenwoo 8y ago
From the article it appears phages were championed in the former Soviet Union purely because it was an approach that was not used by the West. Antibiotics apparently were easier to commercialize and phage research dwindled but did not completely die off as the solution phages discussed in the article were found in two separate US facilities (combining the work of others worldwide), at the Navy and Texas A&M.

emilga 8y ago

> Is there anything about bacteriophages--including their manufacture and use--that actually makes them more "communist"? I guess the bacteriophage RNA "seizes" the host cell's means of production (ribosomes). ;)

myth_drannon 8y ago

In general patents and making money from them was not a concern in Soviet Union so the science took some different paths over there. Meaning simpler and less expensive treatments for example in medicine. Phages is one example, cold laser treatments is another one. Norman Doidge talks about them in the "Brains's way of healing"

Nasrudith 8y ago

Lack of value of doctor labor and efficent labor in general perhaps? Since phages need a culture first to be sure the right one is selected. You can't just give broad spectrum phages. Which isn't just "laziness" or cutting corners on expensive labor but helpful for patient results so they don't get worse while waiting for results. If I recall some accounts correctly Soviet doctors often depended upon grey market bribes to afford supplies if they weren't party favored. Phages were self replicating and needed fewer doses per patient if selected properly. However they are highly specific, and the phage banks need updated with every mutation which may happen mid-treatment. They are second in line for a good reason.

Gibbon1 8y ago
I remember reading a semi-biography of an old school doctor that went to med school in the 1930's. Mentioned being a lowly resident late at night sitting next to a deathly ill patient with pneumonia trying to match antiserum to whatever bug the poor sap had. Nothing, nothing nothing, and then a match. Injecting the patent with the correct antiserum felt like magic. Or the they would die anyways. Rarely they would go into shock and die. Can imagine early antibiotics was so much easier. (big hammer)

stevenwoo 8y ago

From the article it appears phages were championed in the former Soviet Union purely because it was an approach that was not used by the West. Antibiotics apparently were easier to commercialize and phage research dwindled but did not completely die off as the solution phages discussed in the article were found in two separate US facilities (combining the work of others worldwide), at the Navy and Texas A&M.