by Nikolai Krementsov The University of Chicago Press, 2002. US$26 (280 pages) ISBN 0226452840 Many are the byways of discovery and non-discovery in the history of science and medicine. For every great discovery that attracts popular attention there have been many thousands of unsung research projects, whose undertaking, achievements and failures make up the daily stuff of scientific endeavour. By and large, the details of such projects are lost once they have ended and their outcomes written up. For many years, historical attention focused largely on the big achievements – on the work of Pasteur and Koch, for example, or the discovery of insulin or the antibiotics – but in recent years, attention has begun to turn towards the wider contexts of scientific discovery. This new approach is less an exercise in debunking popular myths than an attempt to explore the ways in which knowledge is acquired and the various factors that might influence how that acquisition is made and, once made, put to use. There is, perhaps, a subconscious debunking going on. If so, it is directed at the general assumption that scientific research is a 'pure' and disinterested proceeding, rather than at specific popular misconceptions, such as Fleming's 'discovery' of penicillin. In the 20th century, the laboratory became the central icon of modern science and medicine. For many, it remains symbolic of a focused, rigorous search for knowledge that will further human progress and benefit humankind. Laboratories are not, however, unsullied intellectual spaces. Money, competition, ambition, culture, politics and ideology all shape what happens in and around those crucial locations of research. All these factors can be seen at play in Nikolai Krementsov's The Cure, which is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the history of the laboratory. It is, essentially, a case study – a coda to Krementsov's earlier Stalinist Science (1997). The political context of Russian science between about 1930 and 1950, which was the focus of that study, also provides the background and a principal theme of The Cure, but this book is written with a more popular touch. It eschews historiographical debates and concentrates on the human story of Nina Kliueva and Grigorii Roskin and their putative cure for cancer, 'KR'. On one level, it could be construed as a story of heroes and villains in Russian science (indeed, it appears that a book with just that name was published in 1997), except that Krementsov avoids obvious bias and manages to temper his sympathy for Kliueva and Roskin with objectivity. This is the story of the rise and fall of a promising research project with the potential to offer a valuable treatment for cancer. Whilst the political context contributes the 'envelope' within which the story is told, other factors also influenced the eventual fate of the preparation 'KR'. Krementsov's story therefore has two threads. The first is a Russian one, of how Stalinist ideology affected the scientific community and one research project in particular. The second is more general: the teasing out of factors that may influence the destinies of researchers and their research. Kliueva and Roskin provide the pivot for both themes. Roskin was a medical protistologist who developed the idea that trypanosome infection might be a therapy for cancer, in the way that malarial infection had been shown to affect tertiary syphilis. Kliueva was a vaccine specialist, whose expertise permitted the development of a viable drug. The early stages of their work took place before and during World War II, when the Soviet regime was anxious to encourage international cooperation. But in a scenario reminiscent of the classic spy movie, the transfer of technical knowledge about 'KR' to the Americans occurred at the exact moment when Soviet policy went into sharp reverse. Kliueva and Roskin found themselves plunged into a web of political and ideological intrigue, which culminated in their appearance before a Soviet honour court to answer the charge of antipatriotic behaviour. The account of the build up to the trial and of the trial itself offers a chilling picture of the dawning realization and stumbling adjustment of the scientific community to the fact that the ideological context in which they worked had suddenly changed. Kliueva and Roskin saved themselves, but their lives and research were thereafter inextricably bound up with the politics of the Soviet system. Bizarrely, they acquired Stalin's patronage as a result of the trial, but at the expense of the support of the Russian oncology community, which viewed them as unqualified interlopers. It was the politics of science rather than that of ideology that eventually led to the demotion of their project and the disappearance of their preparation. There is much more to this story than the two main themes outlined here, and Krementsov ably draws out the significant points for the reader both in the text, and in his concluding chapter. So, for example, we are made aware of the importance of the 'highly centralised, bureaucratic structure of the Soviet science system and its total dependence on a sole patron' (p. 209), which forced Kliueva and Roskin to deal directly with the ruling elite in order to forward their research. We also see other scientists and scientific administrators trying to muscle in on the project, or to divert its assets for their own ends. The struggle and competition for scarce research materials and laboratory space may have been peculiarly characteristic of the economic circumstances of Soviet Russia, but it carries uncomfortable echoes for 21st-century science in an era of retrenchment in public spending and prioritized research funding. Despite the Soviet Russian context and its character as a case study, the story of The Cure neatly opens up a range of issues that are relevant to the general history of the laboratory. In this sense, it can be read as a contribution to the wider history of scientific and medical research in the 20th century, and to our understanding of the pressures and pitfalls associated with work in the laboratory. |
