Ilana Löwy – författare

Industrial methods, and industrially produced instruments, reagents and living organisms are central to research activities today. They play a key role in the homogenization and the diffusion of laboratory practices, thus in their transformation into a stable and unproblematic knowledge about the natural world. This book displays the - frequently invisible - role of industry in the construction of fundamental scientific knowledge through the examination of case studies taken from the history of nineteenth and the twentieth century physics, chemistry and biomedical sciences.

Ideas about the transmission of disease have long formed the core of modern biology and medicine. Heredity and Infection examines their development over the last century. Two scientific revolutions - the bacteriological revolution of the 1890s and the genetic revolution at the start of the twentieth century - acted as the catalysts of major change in our understanding of the causes of illness. As well as being great scientific achievements, these were social and political watersheds that reconfigured the medical and administrative means of intervention. By establishing a clear distinction between transmission by infection and genetic transmission, this shift was instrumental in separating hygiene from eugenism.The authors argue that the popular perception of such a sharp divide stabilized only after 1945 when the use of antibiotics to end epidemics became commonplace. For health professionals the separation has never become an absolute one, and the book examines the various blends of heredity and infection that have preoccupied biology, medicine and the social sciences. Heredity and Infection recontructs the changing epidemiology of such historically important pathologies as tuberculosis , cancer and AIDS. In doing so, it demonstrates the role of experimental models, medical practices and cultural images in the making of contemporary biochemical knowledge.

In 1985 the media announced a new therapy for cancer. It was expensive, labor-intensive, and toxic--but, they said, it worked. How it worked is the story Ilana Löwy tells in Between Bench and Bedside, a compelling account of the clinical trials of interleukin-2 at a major French cancer hospital. Her book offers a remarkable insider's view of the culture of clinical experimentation in oncology--and of how this culture affects the development of new treatments for cancer.Löwy, a historian of science who trained as an immunologist, makes the life of the laboratory and the hospital comprehensible and immediate. Before immersing us in the clinical drama, she fills in the history behind the action--a background of chemotherapy and radiation, controlled clinical trials, and the long line of immunological approaches that finally led to interleukin-2. The story then shifts to the introduction of interleukin-2 in a cancer ward. Löwy conveys the clinical investigation as a complex, multilayered phenomenon that defies the stereotypes of modern biomedicine. In this picture, the miracle-makers and arrogant, self-centered professionals of myth give way to moving images of real people negotiating the tensions between institutional and professional constraints, the search for a scientific breakthrough, and the obligation to alleviate the suffering of a patient. The result is a rare firsthand look at the multiple factors that shape real-life clinical experiments and the institutional tangle and emotional muddle that surround such trials--an invaluable view at a time when medicine is undergoing such great and confusing changes.

My 'discovery' of the Polish School of philosophy of medicine stemmed from my studies in the genesis of Ludwik Fleck's epistemology. These studies, and my interest in the scientific roots of Fleck's epistemology were a nearly 'natural' result of my own biography: like Fleck I had been trained, an had worked as an immunologist, and had later switched to studies in the social history of medicine and biology. Moreover, it so happened that Fleck's book, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact -the description of a science as it is, not as it should be -was the first epistemological study in which I found echos of my experience in the laboratory. My interest in Fleck was also highlightened by the fact that in his works, and, as I discovered later, in the works of his predecessors of the Polish School of philosophy of medicine, was formulated the problem that had stimulated my interest in the history of medicine and biology, and is still central to my present investigations: the relationships between biological knowledge and clinical practice. The writing of the book was made possible through to the help of many colleagues and friends. The unfailing support for my research, whatever its subject might be, from my colleagues from Unit 158 of INSERM and in particular from its head Patrice Pinell, has made my study of the Polish School possible.

Ideas about the transmission of disease have long formed the core of modern biology and medicine. Heredity and Infection examines their development over the last century. Two scientific revolutions - the bacteriological revolution of the 1890s and the genetic revolution at the start of the twentieth century - acted as the catalysts of major change in our understanding of the causes of illness. As well as being great scientific achievements, these were social and political watersheds that reconfigured the medical and administrative means of intervention. By establishing a clear distinction between transmission by infection and genetic transmission, this shift was instrumental in separating hygiene from eugenism.The authors argue that the popular perception of such a sharp divide stabilized only after 1945 when the use of antibiotics to end epidemics became commonplace. For health professionals the separation has never become an absolute one, and the book examines the various blends of heredity and infection that have preoccupied biology, medicine and the social sciences. Heredity and Infection recontructs the changing epidemiology of such historically important pathologies as tuberculosis , cancer and AIDS. In doing so, it demonstrates the role of experimental models, medical practices and cultural images in the making of contemporary biochemical knowledge.