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Frank Fenner and Bernardino Fantini, Biological control of vertebrate pests: the history of myxomatosis, an experiment in evolution, Wallingford, CABI Publishing, 1999, pp. xii, 339, illus., L60.00 (0-85199-- 323-0).
In 1983 Frank Fenner delivered the Royal Society's Florey Lecture in London. Its title: `Biological control as exemplified by smallpox eradication and myxomatosis' defined two lasting interests and major achievements in Fenner's scientific career, and also the scope of his involvement in historical research on virus diseases and virology of recent years. He was awarded the Japan Prize for his part in the WHO's worldwide smallpox eradication campaign, successfully concluded in 1979; and he worked on myxomatosis in his native Australia from 1951 to 1965 when he published, with F N Ratcliffe, Myxomatosis, a standard text on the disease. The current volume may be seen as a sublimation of the latter interest, and is a happy outcome of collaboration with Bernardino Fantini, the Italian Director of the Louis Jeantet Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Geneva.
In a lucid text, the authors use myxomatosis and its virus in rabbits as a model in a comprehensive examination of historical aspects of the development of biological control of...