Rachel Washburn is with the Department of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA.
Am J Public Health. 2019 Nov;109(11):1548-1556. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2019.305260.
This article examines the rise of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) small but influential program on the human toxicology of synthetic pesticides after World War II. For nearly 20 years, scientists working in the CDC's Toxicology Section conducted a range of laboratory, field, and clinical studies to assess whether pesticides, such as DDT), caused harm to humans. Applying an industrial hygiene approach to study pesticide toxicity, the team used the symptoms of poisoning as their criteria for harm and consistently found that, when used as intended, pesticides were generally safe for humans. In the post- era, these findings were increasingly challenged as the field of toxicology developed and different ways of understanding pesticide toxicity gained greater acceptance. While it is easy to dismiss the CDC's findings as excessively narrow, examining how the team arrived at their conclusions provides an instructive lesson about the powerful ways conceptual frameworks shape scientific inquiry and the unexpected ways data can be reinterpreted in different problem contexts. (. 2019;109:1548-1556. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2019.305260).
本文探讨了二战后疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）在合成农药人体毒理学方面的一个虽小但有影响力的项目的兴起。近 20 年来，CDC 毒理学科的科学家们进行了一系列实验室、现场和临床研究，以评估农药（如滴滴涕）是否会对人类造成伤害。该团队采用工业卫生方法研究农药毒性，将中毒症状作为判断危害的标准，并一致发现，只要按照预期使用，农药对人类通常是安全的。在后滴滴涕时代，随着毒理学领域的发展和人们对农药毒性的不同理解方式越来越被接受，这些发现越来越受到质疑。虽然很容易将疾病预防控制中心的发现视为过于狭隘，但仔细研究该团队得出结论的过程，可以为我们提供一个有益的教训，了解概念框架是如何以强大的方式塑造科学探究的，以及数据在不同的问题背景下是如何被重新解释的。（doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2019.305260）。
