Renato Dulbecco and the New Animal Virology: Medicine, Methods, and Molecules

Abstract

Animal virology -- the study of viruses that prey on animals and human beings -- deserves historical treatment if only because since the 1950s it has become one of the most important fields in the biomedical sciences. Nowadays, it is central to the understanding of many infectious diseases, including AIDS, and the non-infectious scourge of cancer. Yet the development of the new animal virology -- "new" because it was a biological science as distinct from an arm of clinical practice in medicine -- is richly suggestive not only because of its salient importance to medicine but also historiographically. It provides an opportunity to examine the role of several important issues in the development of modern biology, not least the interplay between medical goals and the practice of basic science, the influence of patronage on scientific development, and the role of methods, techniques, and research schools in the advancement of a field.