Frank Ryan - Darwin’s Blind Spot: The Role of Living Interactions in Evolution

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Virus X: Understanding the Real Threat of the New Pandemic Plagues

Tuberculosis: The Greatest Story Never Told (published as The Forgotten Plague in the US)

Metamorphosis: Unmasking the Mystery of How Life Transforms

(published as The Mystery of Metamorphosis in the US)

Virolution

The Mysterious World of the Human Genome

First published by Thomson/Texere 2003.

This Swift e-book book edition published in 2015.

Swift Publishers is a division of FPR-Books Limited, Sheffield, UK

The right of Frank Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the right holders, application for which must be made to the publisher.

No responsibility can be accepted by the publisher for action taken as a result of information contained in this publication. Readers should take specific advice when dealing with specific situations.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-874082-75-0

The beautiful cover photograph of the purple throated Carib hummingbird feeding was kindly provided by Charles J. Sharp see
http://www.sharpphotography.co.uk

For my sister Mary and my brother Tony

CONTENTS

Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each supposed to have been separately created for its proper place in nature, be so invariably linked together by graduated steps? Why should not Nature have taken a leap from structure to structure? On the theory of natural selection, we can clearly understand why she should not; for natural selection can act only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a leap, but must advance by the shortest and slowest steps.

CHARLES DARWIN: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to Susan Canavan and David Wilson, who commissioned this book for the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively. Without their enthusiastic support it never would have seen the light of day. My special thanks to my editor, Laura van Dam; my manuscript editor, Peg Anderson, and David Wilsons assistant, Jenna Lambie; and my agent, Bill Hamilton, whose encouragement over the long years has been critical to my writing books of this nature. Many scientists were unbelievably courteous and generous with their time and assistance, not only sharing the joys and labours of lifetimes but also allowing me access to manuscripts of papers and books not yet published. I have listed the names of many new and distinguished friends and a few equally distinguished of long standing in alphabetical order, for their respective contributions will be abundantly obvious from the text and references: Peter Atsatt, Redouan Bshary, Michael A. Crawford, Angela E. Douglas, Michael W. Gray, Daniel H. Janzen, Richard Law, Joshua Lederberg, James Lovelock, John McCoy, Lynn Margulis, Trevor A. Norton, Kris A. Pirozynski, David J. Read, Werner Reisser, Jan Sapp, Ruth Shady, F. Willem Vas Dias, Luis P. Villarreal, Donald I. Williamson, and Terry Yates. Finally, my special thanks go to Mike McEntegart and Chris Potter, who taught me microbiology and virology, respectively, a long time ago and to Brian Jones, who oversaw my humble researches into the immune response of mammals, including myself, to the introduction of a virus known as X174 into their bloodstream.

PRAISE FOR FRANK RYANS PREVIOUS BOOKS

Tuberculosis: The Greatest Story Never Told

Dr Ryan is superlatively good at explaining matters with which the reader may have no previous acquaintance. he makes the story as exciting as a good detective novel. His book should be compulsory reading for those who ignorantly or dishonestly deny the power of science to contribute to human welfare.

The Sunday Telegraph

[Frank Ryan] tells the story of the discovery of the first antituberculosis drugs, and he tells it well, making a potentially dry subject fascinating with an upbeat, fast-moving detective story approach. Will the book appeal to the readership of New Scientist? Yes, it is clearly a popularist book, meant to appeal to a wider circle than scientific literati alone. All power to Ryan.

New Scientist

a superbly documented, dramatic and alarming history of the ancient plague.

Publishers Weekly

This is a story of heroic science performed by all-too-human scientists. Dr Ryan has done an admirable job of tracking down survivors, reconstructing a very complicated theory with newly available material and even-handedly assessing the versions already on record. [This] is an important book.

The New York Times Book Review

[Dr Ryans] book is written at the pace of a mystery thriller and styled as a psychodrama, yet remarkably accurate in scientific detail.

Wall Street Journal

The story is indeed a triumph, or series of triumphs, of modern chemical, biological and medical methods of research, and Ryan tells it well.

The Washington Post

Ryans book makes excellent reading because he combines accounts of his characters achievements with their personal histories, gleaned from diaries, documents, and interviews with their contemporaries.

The New York Review of Books

Virus X: Understanding the Real Threat of the New Pandemic Plagues

Extremely well written Frank Ryan has the page-turning and spine-chilling ability of a good novelist.

Matt Ridley, author of Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, writing in The Sunday Telegraph

Spellbinding intellectually adventurous. Difficult to put down.

Valerius Geist, writing in Nature

Ryan takes us through the drama of discovery and challenges the notion that certain questions are too appalling to contemplate.

New Scientist

Compelling and frightening the plot could not be bettered.

The Scotsman

Ryan is very good at making technical matters comprehensible to the lay reader but more impressive still is the way he conveys the intellectual excitement and elation of scientific discovery.

Literary Review

Dr Ryan writes well in a difficult technical field, weaving the technicalities of scientific history, medicine, molecular biology and evolution into the human narratives of a sequence of epidemics, with victims, heroes (the medical teams) and villains (the politicians, more or less). Very readable and disturbing.

New York Times

Meticulously researched with bracing ideas about coevolution, symbiosis and lifes global web. Virus X comes alive when Ryan delves into the science.

Washington Post Book World

INTRODUCTION

A Mystery Of Nature

Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all.