{"id":367,"date":"2009-01-28T21:13:40","date_gmt":"2009-01-28T21:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2009\/01\/28\/the_sword_of_sabin\/"},"modified":"2009-01-28T21:13:40","modified_gmt":"2009-01-28T21:13:40","slug":"the_sword_of_sabin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2009\/01\/28\/the_sword_of_sabin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sword of Sabin"},"content":{"rendered":"

A discussion initiated by Katherine Haxton<\/a> prompted me to check out ResearchBlogging.org<\/a> and there I discovered the Virology Blog<\/a> written by Vincent Racaniello. Vincent is a poliovirus researcher at Columbia University; I’d met him a few times while working on the same virus in Boston and it was nice to get back in touch.<\/p>\n

\tRacaniello definitely qualifies as a senior blogger<\/a>, being a Professor of Microbiology and a very eminent virologist. Astonishingly he has been running his virology blog since 2004. He even has a podcast<\/a>! Shame on me for not noticing sooner.<\/p>\n

\tOn my first perusal I came across a fascinating post on letters Vincent had received from Albert Sabin<\/a>, the pioneering developer of the oral poliovirus vaccine, a breakthrough that has spared hundreds of thousands the paralysing misery of poliomyelitis. Sabin was arguably a very great scientist<\/a>, but from what I’ve read he could be, um, difficult<\/em>. He had little regard for Jonas Salk<\/a>, a “kitchen chemist” according to Sabin, who developed the rival killed polio vaccine. In fact there was little love lost between the two scientists and their spats have become the stuff of legend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\tRacaniello corresponded with Sabin in the ’80s and ’90s following his own breakthrough, the generation of an infectious clone of poliovirus<\/a>. Some of the letters<\/a> are a bit technical but they do give a real flavour of a great but acerbic man. One from 1991, composed in the 85 year old Sabin’s elegant longhand, gives a typical taste. He begins charmingly, disarmingly:<\/p>\n

First of all, many thanks for your kind letter… (the sweet words were good medicine for an old man’s ego)…<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tBut it is soon apparent that the old man’s ego has not been sufficiently assuaged. Quick as a flash he whips out his machete and starts hacking mercilessly:<\/p>\n

It seems to me, that based on the statements in your recent publications, you have either<\/strong> read none<\/strong> of my publications having a bearing on the multiple quantitative phenotypic expressions of individual poliovirus particles… or, if you did, you didn’t learn anything from them…<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tThe emphases reflect Sabin’s angry underlining\u2014I can’t help thinking that he’d have made a wonderfully lively, if vitriolic, blogger! He continues to swipe and stab for another four closely scribed pages but\u2014fortunately\u2014Vincent was well able to defend himself. Or at least the wounds seemed to have healed! Check it out<\/a> for yourself, if you dare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A discussion initiated by Katherine Haxton prompted me to check out ResearchBlogging.org and there I discovered the Virology Blog written by Vincent Racaniello. Vincent is a poliovirus researcher at Columbia University; I’d met him a few times while working on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}