MIT PROGRAM IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY SPECIAL SEMINAR Cancer, Viruses, and Managing Biomedical Futures in the United States 1946-1982 ROBIN SCHEFFLER YALE UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT In 1964, the National Cancer Institute unveiled the Special
Virus Leukemia Program, an ambitious application of Cold War defense planning
methods to the production of a cancer vaccine. It would, as Life magazine enthused, “do more than
hand out money and wait for results…it would plan research and make
results.” Unlike other causes of cancer, the possibility of a cancer virus made
the elimination of cancer in its entirety a thinkable goal. However, when the
Program was established, no human cancer virus was known to exist! Indeed, from the 1950s through the early
1980s, few areas of biomedical research generated more excitement—or
controversy—than the search for a human cancer virus. In this talk, I examine research into the link between
viruses and cancer as a unique site for understanding the role that
anticipatory moments of hope and crisis have played in biomedical knowledge
production. Scholars in the anthropology and history of science have identified
the significance of promissory or future-oriented regimes for entrepreneurial
biomedical enterprises such as genomics or synthetic biology. I reveal the
important role that these regimes also played in state support for the
emergence of biomedicine. While the management of cancer virus research began
as the cause of administrators within the National Cancer Institute, it soon provided
a focus for a grassroots campaign demanding that the government plan and wage a
“War on Cancer” in the late 1960s. Yet despite spending hundreds of millions of
dollars and mobilizing thousands of scientists, the National Cancer Institute did
not manage to develop a cancer vaccine. While the War on Cancer disappointed activists and administrators alike, it was a boon for the academic molecular biologists that had been among its fiercest critics. The search for cancer viruses, enemies from without, had the ironic effect of revealing cellular oncogenes: enemies within. Subsequently, the infrastructure created by the War on Cancer and virus research played a critical role in the rise of biotechnology and mobilization against HIV/AIDS. In following the arc of cancer virus research during these decades, we are able to reflect on the importance of cycles of scientific anticipation and frustration—boom and bust—in defining particular regimes of knowledge production, citizenship, identity, and political economy. 4 PM WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2014 E51-095 MIT CAMPUS | 2 AMHERST STREET |
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