Frank Fenner – författare

The Orthopoxviruses presents knowledge and comprehensive and integrated picture of orthopoxviruses. The book looks into the molecular biology of this genusof viruses, particularly, the structure and chemical composition of the virion, replication, morphogenesis, pathogenesis, pathology, and immunology of this virus'' infections. It also elucidates the global spread, control, and eradication of smallpox. Additionally, the book describes a potentially important use of vaccinia virus, namely, its use as a vector for genes from other viruses, bacteria, or protozoa that specify antigens important in stimulating the production of a protective immune response. Such comprehensive account of all aspects of the biology of all known species of orthopoxviruses will be valuable to molecular biologists, virologists, immunologists, pathologists, and researchers in the veterinary sciences.

The outbreaks of myxomatosis among rabbits in Australia in 1950 and in Europe in 1952 provided scientists with opportunities of observing the course of the interaction of a very lethal virus disease with a large population of highly susceptible mammals, i.e. with a model system to study the evolution of an infectious disease, and the effects of an infectious disease on the evolution of a mammal. This scientific account of the spread of the disease in Australia and Europe, of its effects upon rabbit numbers, and of the genetic changes that occurred in parasite and host, is of great interest to ecologists, virologists, parasitologists, mammalian zoologists, geneticists, agriculturists, and public health workers, as well as to those directly concerned with rabbit raising or control.

The book describes the natural history of myxoma virus in American rabbits and the history of its introduction into European rabbits at length. The changes in rabbit and virus over the last forty years provide the classical example of coevolution of a virus and its vertebrate host and a paradigmatic model for the understanding of an emerging infectious disease. Rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus has been spreading in Australia for only three years, but in some areas has been very effective. Written by leading world experts in animal virology and the history of medicine.