Article ID: CBB001421647

Managing the Future: The Special Virus Leukemia Program and the Acceleration of Biomedical Research (2014)

unapi

Scheffler, Robin Wolfe (Author)


Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 48
Pages: 231-249


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Article in a special section, “100 Years of Cancer and Viruses”
Language: English

After the end of the Second World War, cancer virus research experienced a remarkable revival, culminating in the creation in 1964 of the United States National Cancer Institute's Special Virus Leukemia Program (SVLP), an ambitious program of directed biomedical research to accelerate the development of a leukemia vaccine. Studies of cancer viruses soon became the second most highly funded area of research at the Institute, and by far the most generously funded area of biological research. Remarkably, this vast infrastructure for cancer vaccine production came into being before a human leukemia virus was shown to exist. The origins of the SVLP were rooted in as much as shifts in American society as laboratory science. The revival of cancer virus studies was a function of the success advocates and administrators achieved in associating cancer viruses with campaigns against childhood diseases such as polio and leukemia. To address the urgency borne of this new association, the SVLP's architects sought to lessen the power of peer review in favor of centralized Cold War management methods, fashioning viruses as “administrative objects” in order to accelerate the tempo of biomedical research and discovery.

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Article Scheffler, Robin Wolfe (2014) Following Cancer Viruses through the Laboratory, Clinic, and Society. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 185-188). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001421647/

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Authors & Contributors
Scheffler, Robin Wolfe
Gaudillière, Jean-Paul
Offit, Paul A.
Natalie Brooke Aviles
Aviles, Natalie B.
Seeman, Philip
Concepts
Cancer; tumors
Vaccines; vaccination
Virology
Disease and diseases
Laboratories
Medicine
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
21st century
Places
United States
Shenzhen (China)
Valencia (Spain)
Americas
Hungary
Egypt
Institutions
National Cancer Institute (U.S.)
华大基因 (Beijing Institute of Genomics)
Jackson Memorial Laboratory
Cutter Laboratories
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
Institut Pasteur, Paris
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