Cancer, Viruses, and the Expanding American State 1946-1982

AbstractIn 1964, the National Cancer Institute established the multi-million dollar Special Virus Leukemia Program, which sought to apply the methods of Cold War defense planning 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.” Remarkably, 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 the history research on the link between viruses and cancer as a unique site for understanding the relationship between the biomedical sciences and the Federal government and how it was redefined in the context of broader debates concerning the role of the state in American society. While the management of cancer 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 wage a “War on Cancer” in the late 1960s. The success of this campaign resulted in the dramatic expansion of cancer virus research in the 1970s.

Yet despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars and mobilizing thousands of scientists to study cancer viruses, the National Cancer Institute failed to identify a human cancer virus. While the War on Cancer disappointed activists and administrators alike, it was a boon for academic biologists, who had been among its fiercest critics. Cancer virus research played a critical role in the expansion of molecular biology. Subsequently, the infrastructure created by the state played a critical role in the rise of biotechnology and mobilization against HIV/AIDS.
By following the arc of cancer virus research during these decades, we are able to reflect on the significance of state expansion (and contraction) in the sciences for defining specific regimes of knowledge production, citizenship, and political economy in society at large.