Volume 48, Part B, December 2014, Pages 218–230
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Highlights
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- Introduces the concept of the “stowaway” to describe a kind of ontological emergence.
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- Refines understandings of the relationship between science and ethics.
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- Documents cancer virus research on federal prisoners at the NIH.
Abstract
In
1960, J. Anthony Morris, a molecular biologist at the US National
Institutes of Health conducted one of the only non-therapeutic clinical
studies of the cancer virus SV40. Morris and his research team aimed to
determine whether SV40 was a serious harm to human health, since many
scientists at the time suspected that SV40 caused cancer in humans based
on evidence from in vivo animal studies and experiments with
human tissue. Morris found that SV40 had no significant effect but his
claim has remained controversial among scientists and policymakers
through the present day—both on scientific and ethical grounds. Why did
Morris only conduct one clinical study on the cancer-causing potential
of SV40 in healthy humans? We use the case to explain how empirical
evidence and ethical imperatives are, paradoxically, often dependent on
each other and mutually exclusive in clinical research, which leaves
answers to scientific and ethical questions unsettled. This paper serves
two goals: first, it documents a unique—and uniquely important—study of
clinical research on SV40. Second, it introduces the concept of “the
stowaway,” which is a special type of contaminant that changes the past
in the present moment. In the history of science, stowaways are
misfortunes that nonetheless afford research that otherwise would have
been impossible specifically by creating new pasts. This case (Morris'
study) and concept (the stowaway) bring together history of science and
philosophy of history for productive dialog.
Keywords
- Cancer;
- Virus;
- National Institutes of Health;
- Historiography;
- Intentional infection;
- Prisoner
