
Further to my earlier post on the interaction between science and medicine, I recently asked ChatGPT to provide a historical overview of the role and contribution of chemistry in medical development, using the discovery of antibiotics as an example.
The results were quite revealing. The history clearly shows that medicines were developed through the work of chemists, while physicians primarily provided clinical observations. This collaboration once defined true medical progress — observation by physicians and discovery, isolation, and synthesis by chemists.
The same model should have been followed in the case of viruses. Physicians observed that people were becoming sick and assumed there must be a tiny infectious particle — which they named a “virus.” At that point, they should have sought the expertise of chemists to identify, isolate, and characterize this supposed causal agent. If such a particle truly existed, chemistry would have revealed its structure and properties.
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