I had the misfortune today to follow a link to my page on History of Discovery of Viruses, which is included in Cann’s Principles of Molecular Virology that I revised in 2023 for a 7th Edition. This landed me here, which I thought was a serious page on the history of Virology – but I was very wrong.
Very, very wrong.
Instead, it is a densely-written, pseudoscientific collection of incorrect assumptions, applications of hopelessly dated definitions, and bold statements of “fact” that are entirely horseshit. I have commented there, but I doubt my comment will survive. Instead, I reproduce it here for your delectation. Or amusement. Don’t bother to be outraged and accuse me of anything that proves to me that you are a virus denialist, because I shall simply delete it.
“Given that you refer to me, I feel at liberty to comment on your entire piece of “work” that you have laid out here.
That is, that it is a complete and unmitigated crock of shit. The seemingly blind insistence that early workers with viruses did not isolate an “organism” or satisfy Koch’s Postulates – which were, by the way, just that and not rules – presumes that their observations were invalid and that, by extension, all modern virology is based on falsehoods.
Which, as a virologist of nearly fifty years standing, I can categorically state is a complete and utter crock of shit, as I stated previously.
Don’t you think science has advanced since Beijerinck, Mayer and Ivanovsky? Don’t you think that the invention of the electron microscope and discovery of both DNA AND RNA as genetic materials (the latter only for viruses and viroids) has shown us that, yes indeed, there ARE “sub-microscopic” pathogens that are acellular and which have to use cellular ribosomes to complete their life cycles – unlike any other form of life.
I have used the discovery of TMV – which text you apparently refer to (https://rybicki.blog/2012/02/07/a-short-history-of-the-discovery-of-viruses-part-2/) – and various other discoveries about TMV to tie together the scientific discoveries about viruses, over an 80+ year period. That is, the demonstration that an “acellular” fluid could cause plant disease, through to the precise localisation of every atom in the structure of TMV virions by X-ray crystallography. I have included this in a textbook that you should obviously read (https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128227848/canns-principles-of-molecular-virology), in that it would illuminate some gaping voids in your knowledge and in your understanding.
Moreover, people working in my lab have, as others have done elsewhere, recreated infectious virus genomes by synthesis of DNA oligonucleotides and subsequent use of them to infect plants – and mammalian cells. Viruses are real, therefore, and any amount of hand-waving on your behalf will not alter that fact.”
ViroBlogy 