Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945–1980 PDF
Preview Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945–1980
Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945–1980 Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945–1980 Edited by Patrick Manning & Mat Savelli University of Pittsburgh Press Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260 Copyright © 2018, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4527-7 Jacket art: Ethiopian poster illustrating the activities of the Smallpox Eradication Programme © World Health Organization/Ato Tesfaye, 1975 Jacket design by Alex Wolfe CONTENTS Foreword by Joanna Radin vii Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. Life Sciences in the Era of Decolonization, Social Welfare, and Cold War Patrick Manning 1 Chapter 1. India Abroad: The Transnational Network of Indian-Trained Physicians after Partition David Wright, Sasha Mullally, and Renée Saucier 15 Chapter 2. The Postcolonial Context of Daniel Bovet’s Research on Curare Daniele Cozzoli 31 Chapter 3. The Disappointment of Smallpox Eradication and Economic Development Bob H. Reinhardt 47 Chapter 4. “Dermatoglyphics” and Race after the Second World War: The View from East Asia Daniel Asen 61 Chapter 5. Global Epidemiology, Local Message: Sino-American Collaboration on Cancer Research, 1969–1990 Lijing Jiang 78 vi CONTENTS Chapter 6. From Sovietization to Global Soviet Engagement? Doubravka Olšáková 99 Chapter 7. Sexological Spring? The 1968 International Gathering of Sexologists in Prague as a Turning Point Kateřina Lišková 114 Chapter 8. The “Brain Gain Thesis” Revisited: German-Speaking Émigré Neuroscientists and Psychiatrists in North America Frank W. Stahnisch 128 Chapter 9. What’s in a Zone? Biological Order versus National Identity in the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study Audra J. Wolfe 146 Chapter 10. For the Benefit of Humankind: Urgent Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, 1965–1968 Adrianna Link 160 Chapter 11. What Counts as Threatened? Science and the Sixth Extinction Jon Agar 180 Notes 195 Bibliography 259 List of Contributors 303 Index 309 FOREWORD Long before anyone was talking about “the Anthropocene,” thoughtful observers of the post-1945 world saw the life sciences as central to imagining the human future on a planet that they had already irrevoca- bly transformed. René Dubos, for example, in his 1966 book, Man Adapt- ing, remarked of the species, “The more human he is, the more intensely do his anticipations of the future affect the character of his responses to the forces of the present.”1 Though Dubos may not have been thinking of the rise of feminism or even a broader upending of a gendered system of life, he was keenly aware that any consideration of human survival, let alone potential, was going to be intimately entangled with transformations in the fields of biology and ecology. Dubos was born in France but spent his career as a microbiologist, environmentalist, and public intellectual in the United States, where he popularized the maxim “Think globally, act locally.” The present volume makes clear that an expansive history of life science and world history are, together, uniquely suited to the task of interpreting how scientists deployed their expertise in the service of geopolitics as well as interventions into the lives of specific people. The contributors have taken a global approach that, in each chapter, plunges into deeply rooted and local histories of life. Even as it brings new attention to the role of humans and social welfare in the vii viii JOANNA RADIN postwar life sciences, this volume interrogates the anthropocentric aims promoted by Dubos in its consideration of new postwar agendas of conser- vation and environmental stewardship. Moreover, for these authors, life science includes but also goes far beyond the important molecular and genetic work that has been the overwhelming focus of scholarship on postwar history of biology. Today, many—from heads of state to businesspeople to citizens—are still struggling to make sense of the factors that Dubos’s generation faced. Think, for instance, of the ways Silicon Valley entrepreneurs promote innovation without ques- tioning whose lives are most likely to be transformed and at what costs. Indeed, the rise of “global health” has been made possible in large part by the philanthrocapitalism of America’s digital age. It has involved vaccines and pharmaceuticals, international organizations that focus on both hu- man health and environmental conservation, and the politics of decoloni- zation, which has reproduced race-based forms of exclusion and violence. What is global health, then, if not the effort to harness the promises of the sciences of life—in particular biomedicine, anthropology, and ecology—in the name of future social welfare, biosecurity, and diplomacy? The history of global health is the history of life science since the Second World War. The health of the globe and its inhabitants is on the minds of countless who are experiencing the reemergence of old tensions once thought to be history. While Cold War standoffs between the United States and the Sovi- et Union have not played an outsize role in histories of postwar life science, the advent of nuclear technologies, the rise of biomedicine, fossil fuel– induced climate change, as well as neoimperialist projects of modernization and economic development have deeply shaped the conditions of possibil- ity for the present. The complex and detailed contributions to this volume are an invaluable resource for understanding the past and reimagining it in a way that creates futures in which science can be used to support the flourishing of many kinds of life. Joanna Radin Section for the History of Medicine, Yale University PREFACE This collective work expands into the late twentieth century an inquiry into the global patterns and global implications of scientific inves- tigation, pursuing history of science in the light of the expanding fields of world and global history. The interest of world historians in history of sci- ence can hardly be surprising. Especially in the past twenty years, the over- lapping fields of world history and global history have developed rapidly, addressing the whole of human history, but with particular focus on global interconnections of the early modern and modern eras. Key contributions in this era of expanding publication have focused on environmental and migration history, supplementing earlier world historical concentration on civilizational, imperial, and political history. Additional contributions emerged in economic history at the turn of the twenty-first century, es- pecially through comparison of European and Asian centers of economic life. World historians showed interest in technological change though not much in global scientific connections. Social, cultural, and intellectual issues, while they advanced in many fields of historical study during the late twentieth century, did not develop vigorously in the world historical context. Thus, world historical thinking and research unfolded in uneven fashion, especially because of the widely ranging topics of interest. Never- ix
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