Country United Kingdom ISBN 978-0060119379 Originally published 1979 | Language English LC Class RC1137 Genre Space medicine | |
Fred Hoyle books Evolution from Space, The Black Cloud, The theory of cosmic grains, The Molecule Men and | ||
Diseases from Space is a book published in 1979. The book develops the hypothesis that many of the most common diseases which afflict mankind, such as influenza, the common cold and whooping cough, have their origins in extraterrestrial sources. The two authors argue the case for outer space being the main source for these pathogens- or at least their causative agents.
Contents
Overview
Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe spent over 20 years investigating the nature and composition of interstellar dust. Though many theories regarding this dust had been postulated by various astronomers since the middle of the 19th century, all were found to be wanting as and when new data on the gas and dust clouds became available. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's research led them to the conclusion that, as the spectroscopic data of the gas clouds matched those for desiccated bacteria, the core component of interstellar dust was indeed just that - desiccated bacteria. This led them to conclude that diseases such as influenza and the common cold are incident from space and fall upon the Earth in what they term "pathogenic patches." Hoyle and Wickramasinghe found themselves compelled to view the process of evolution in a manner at variance with the standard Darwinian model. They averred that genetic material in the form of incoming pathogens from the cosmos provided the mechanism for driving the evolutionary engine.
Publication history
First published in 1979 by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Published in 1980 by Harper & Row. Published in 1981 by Sphere Books Ltd.