Description
Book SynopsisNatalie B. Aviles examines seventy years of federally funded scientific breakthroughs in the laboratories of the U.S. National Cancer Institute to shed new light on how bureaucratic organizations nurture innovation.
Trade ReviewThe U.S. government's long-term investment in cancer research and treatment has had profound effects on cancer, but also on the relationships among health, science, industry, and democracy. Spanning an extraordinary seventy-year period,
An Ungovernable Foe traces the ways the National Cancer Institute's dual missions, scientific developments, and organizational imperatives have shaped both politics and health. If you want to understand the ways science and democracy shape one another, you can't afford to miss this book. -- Andrew J. Perrin, SNF-Agora Professor of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University
An Ungovernable Foe is essential reading for scholars studying translational research and public-private partnerships. Aviles makes a compelling case that we should not be too quick to label these organizational forms as neoliberal or to dismiss government scientists as unimaginative. Through her meticulous study of the National Cancer Institute, she shows that federal agencies are an underappreciated site of both scientific and bureaucratic innovation. -- Nicole C. Nelson, coeditor of
Social Studies of Science and author of
Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric DisordersIn this comprehensive book, Natalie Aviles takes us deep inside the National Cancer Institute, tracing how a federal agency has orchestrated the evolving mission to treat a much-feared disease over seven decades. Sure to become a classic in the study of government-sponsored science,
An Ungovernable Foe tells the surprising story of how scientific innovation as well as failure emerge from the inner workings of the federal bureaucratic machine. -- Steven Epstein, author of
The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday LifeHow can we inspire innovation in the public interest?
An Ungovernable Foe offers a thorough history of the NCI’s virus program, which played a crucial history in shaping HIV treatment and developing the HPV vaccine. At a moment of growing concern about the social impacts of the biomedical research enterprise as it is currently constituted, this book is both timely and important. -- Shobita Parthasarathy, author of
Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and EuropeTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. Medicine, Meliorism, and the Making of a Modern NCI
2. Cancer Viruses and the Promise of a Vaccine, 1958–1968
3. Moving Targets in the War on Cancer, 1969–1979
4. Back to Basics: Human Cancer Retrovirus Research, 1980–1984
5. HIV Research and Drug Development, 1985–1989
6. Lost in Translation, 1990–2001
7. From Roadmap to Moonshot, 2002–2016
Conclusion
Methodological Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
