The Social Construction of Disease: From

A historical exploration of scientific disputes on the causation of so-called 'prion diseases', this fascinating book covers diseases including Scrapie, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).Firstly tracing the twentieth-century history of disease research and biomedicine, the text then focuses on the relations between scientific practice and wider social transformations, before finally building upon the sociologically informed methodological framework.Incisive and thought-provoking, The Social Construction of Disease provides a valuable contribution to that well-established tradition of social history of science, which refers primarily to the theoretical works of the sociology of scientific knowledge.

List of illustrations	p. xii
Preface	p. xiv
Acknowledgements	p. xv
List of abbreviations	p. xviii
Introduction	p. 1
Prion and scrapie	p. 1
Social construction of disease	p. 4
Scrapie in Britain, 1730-1960: a brief overview	p. 11
Introduction	p. 11
The first prevalence of scrapie in Britain, 1730-1820	p. 12
The first veterinarian investigation into scrapie	p. 17
Institutionalisation of scrapie research	p. 20
The USDA research project in Edinburgh and Compton	p. 24
Is scrapie genetic or infectious?	p. 27
Summary	p. 29
Genetic research in Edinburgh, 1964-1979	p. 31
Introduction	p. 31
Developing a standardised experimental system	p. 32
Demonstrating strain variation in scrapie	p. 34
Identifying a gene, Sinc	p. 37
The gene action with different strains of scrapie agent	p. 39
Eliminating involvement of other genes	p. 42
The replication site theory	p. 44
Summary	p. 49
Radiobiological research at Compton, 1964-1978	p. 50
Introduction	p. 50
Tikvah Alper and radiobiology	p. 51
Alper's radiobiological experiments with scrapie (1964-1969)	p. 53
Building hypotheses to explain results: the 1967 gold rush	p. 59
Radiobiological evidence in support of the membrane theory	p. 61
Summary	p. 63
How controversy ends: disputes on the nature of scrapie, 1967-1980	p. 65
Introduction	p. 65
Scrapie research and the wider biological community	p. 66
Institutional culture	p. 70
Cultural divergence and scientific disagreement	p. 77
Closure of the controversy: administrative intervention	p. 79
How controversy ends	p. 83
Conclusion	p. 87
American research trends: unconventional slow viruses, 1957-1980	p. 89
Introduction	p. 89
American pathway of research into scrapie-like diseases	p. 90
Slow-virus research laboratories in America	p. 92
Research trends in the 1970s	p. 100
Conclusion	p. 105
Formulating the prion hypothesis: Stanley Prusiner's work, 1972-1982	p. 107
Introduction	p. 107
Setting up a collaboration with the RML	p. 108
Isolating the agent: sedimentation profile	p. 111
The hydrophobic character of the scrapie agent	p. 113
The end of the RML collaboration and methodological innovation	p. 115
Biochemical investigations	p. 121
Summary	p. 126
Prion controversy, 1982-1997	p. 127
Years of upheaval	p. 127
Dispute between the prion-group and prion-sceptics	p. 130
Winner takes all	p. 147
Molecularisation of prion disease	p. 155
Introduction	p. 155
Divergent styles of research programme	p. 156
Material circumstances	p. 162
The social order of research	p. 164
Different strategies for persuasion	p. 171
Prusiner joins the molecular biological bandwagon	p. 177
Linkage of prion to social networks	p. 181
Conclusion	p. 183
Conclusions	p. 185
How scientists defined and redefined the nature of scrapie	p. 185
How social circumstances played a role in defining the nature of scrapie	p. 187
Epilogue	p. 189
Notes	p. 192
Bibliography	p. 202
Index	p. 249
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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The Social Construction of Disease: From Scrapie to Prion

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