- 1Center
for Medicine, Health and Society, Vanderbilt University, PMB #351665,
2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN 37235-1665, USA. Electronic
address: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu.
- 2Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 West 8th Street, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
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.
Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
KEYWORDS:
Cancer; Historiography; Intentional infection; National Institutes of Health; Prisoner; Virus
