Fujimura J H
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, California 94305-2145, USA.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 1996;18(1):3-54.
This paper presents a narrative history of technologies in cancer research circa 1920-1978 and a theoretical perspective on the complex, intertwined relationships between scientific problems, material practices and technologies, concepts and theories, and other historical circumstances. The history presents several active lines of research and technology development in the genetics of cancer in the United States which were constitutive of proto-oncogene work in its current form. I write this history from the perspective of technology development. Scientists participating in cancer research created tools with which to study their problems of interest, but the development of the tools also influenced the questions asked and answered in the form of concepts and theories developed. These tools included genetic ideas of the 1920s, inbred mouse colonies, chemicals and antibiotics developed during World War Two, tissue cultures and their technical procedures, and viruses. I examine these tools as standardized experimental systems that standardized materials as well as practices in laboratories. Inbred animals, tissue culture materials and methods, and tumor viruses as experimental systems gave materiality to "genes' and "cancer'. They are technical-natural objects that stand-in for nature in the laboratory.
本文呈现了一段约1920年至1978年癌症研究技术的叙事史，并从理论角度探讨了科学问题、物质实践与技术、概念与理论以及其他历史背景之间复杂的、相互交织的关系。这段历史展示了美国癌症遗传学研究和技术发展的几条活跃脉络，它们构成了当前形式的原癌基因研究。我从技术发展的角度撰写这段历史。参与癌症研究的科学家创造了用于研究他们感兴趣问题的工具，但这些工具的发展也以所形成的概念和理论的形式影响了所提出和解答的问题。这些工具包括20世纪20年代的遗传学思想、近交系小鼠群体、二战期间研发的化学物质和抗生素、组织培养及其技术程序，以及病毒。我将这些工具视为标准化的实验系统，它们对实验室中的材料和实践都进行了标准化。近交动物、组织培养材料和方法以及肿瘤病毒作为实验系统赋予了“基因”和“癌症”物质性。它们是在实验室中代表自然的技术自然对象。
