Word: brito
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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June Goodfield, a historian of science, steps inside this process of scientific discovery, inside the struggle known as basic research. She moves into the laboratory of an immunologist. Anna Brito (her real name is not given) for five years, taking notes, recording conversations, and asking questions. She partakes in the late night seances that pass for discussions in labs around the world. She charts the double dialectic of the scientist:the external one between subject and object. and the internal one between ideas and hypotheses. She is, in effect, our tourguide--herding us past centrifuges, culture rooms, refrigerators, through...
Goodfield chooses for her example. Anna Brito an immunologist studying lymphocytes the white corpuscles of the blood. Lymphocytes are the body's soldiers patrolling the blood on the lookout for invaders. They are microsopic warriers: cells that defend us from the bacteria viruses and parasites that constantly attack...
Every scientist has a series of questions they try to answer, and Brito's involves patients with Hodgkin's disease a cancer where these lymphocytic soldiers, are nowhere to be found. They simply disappear from the blood circulation. But no one knows why. Are they destroyed or are they hiding? Are they trapped in some part of the body where they don't belong? If they are hiding, what causes this strange behaviour and is it the reason for the occurrence of Hodgkin...