thanks dan quixote! and that’s an enthusiastic thank you too.
First thanks for reading the post on viruses and their ability to kill cancer– that was the first I had come across that type of information. And now you bring a bit more interesting info to the table, so to speak.
I would expect, based on my knowledge gained through life experience (reading too much) that the reason this field, though promising, met it’s demise is because another path was chosen, the path of every bit of virus and bacteria being bad (non beneficial) and needing to be killed off- which happened to be a profitable path as well, very profitable.

“However, a closer look reveals that most of the projects funded by NIH in 1972 involved research in which plaques were generated every week in the natural course of experimentation.”
So, if I’m understanding this sentence correctly as experimentation was conducted these plaques generated themselves as a natural response?
Interesting- bacteriophage-? I’ll keep an eye out for any information of this type

Bacteriophages are viruses that, as the names implies, eat bacteria. they have potential medical benefits as they are specific to particular bacteria, thus naturally only targeting the “pathogen.”

Make of it what you will, conspiracy or not, but let me present some very interesting excerpts from the Forward to “The Bacteriophages (2nd edition)” (Oxford University Press, 2006):

“In a real sense, the field of bacteriophage biology died, was buried and plowed under, but is now arising again as vigorous fresh green shoots from the soil so thoroughly enriched. The evidence of its death is indisputable. If you do a search of the NIH CRISP database for grants with bacteriophage in the title in the years of 1972 and 2002, the numbers come up approximately the same, above 200. However, a closer look reveals that most of the projects funded by NIH in 1972 involved research in which plaques were generated every week in the natural course of experimentation.”

This paragraph in particular I found EXTREMELY interesting:

“It should be a topic of some interest for science historians to explain how a field with so much momentum and so many talented practitioners suddenly turned its own lights off and just walked out the door. It was an exodus of talent and leadership of a scale, breadth, and suddenness never seen before in any field of biology, and perhaps in any field of modern science.”

“It also turns out, mirabile dictu, that phage are involved in many aspects of bacterial evolution and pathogenesis. Indeed, many diseases and most dissemination of virulence factors are basically phage phenomena, despite the decades-long aversion of funding agencies to consider phage as relevant to human disease.”

“Moreover, phage are now being found to be sources of genetic information useful in combating drug-resistant pathogens, which should have been obvious long ago.”

Let me emphasize that last bit, “should have been obvious long ago.”

“In fact, much of this volume is written by members of the new wave. And, not least, phage are now being tamed and harnessed themselves as therapeutic agents, more than half a century after d’Herelle’s lonely, ostracized demise.”

“Which brings us back to this book. Have you ever tried to find an up-to-date, comprehensive compendium of phage biology? Well, until now, you had very few choices, and most of them were out of print. As you will see, many of the chapters of this book are written by recognizable veterans of the classical phage years, but also many are written by new practitioners, some of whom didn’t arrive at this juncture intentionally. They simply followed the science, and the science of microbiology is now coming back, full circle, to bacteriophage.”