News and Notes

Jeremy Bernstein's profile on Dr. Lewis Thomas, Biology Watcher (New Yorker: Jan. 2, 1978), provides some unexpected connections between biomedical research and current psychoanalytic theory. Readers of Thomas' book, Lives of a Cell, may recall his assertion that it takes prolonged intimacy before one kind of creature can cause illness in another. He now proposes that infectious disease is caused by a misreading of signals between invader and host. Familiarity comes first: “For signals to be misread they must first be read. If a signal is too strange, it will simply be ignored.” Dr. Thomas felt that the precautions taken against infection from the moon were unnecessary. His views suggest something like a narcissistic transference as the basis for any kind of influence from the outside. In terms that sound familiar to a psychoanalyst, Thomas says: “Disease usually results from inconclusive negotiations for symbiosis … a biological misinterpretation of borders.” Furthermore, it appears that the “defense reactions of the cells” release the very poisons that are most dangerous to their survival. Thomas describes the mobilization of such defenses as being “something like a panic.” He says there are few diseases in which the invading bacteria do as much cell damage as overreaction on the part of the host. The