Feminism in Twentieth-Century Cancer Research

At the suggestion of George Snell at the R. B. Jackson Memorial Lab in Bar Harbor, Maine, I attended the 1950 Cancer Gordon Research Conference. I was working on an American Cancer Society grant to show definitively that tumors could (or could not) evoke an autologous immune response. The conference was the start of a lifelong affection and admiration for GRC.

After serving as the first full-time program director for the extramural immunology area at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1970 to 1974, I chaired the first Tumor Immunology Gordon Conference in 1973. This conference was enthusiastically received by the scientific community and continued until 1979, when it ended because a chairman failed to send GRC headquarters the conference program. All was not lost, however, since various other Gordon Conferences–Cancer, Chemotherapy of Experimental and Clinical Cancer, Angiogenesis, and Proteins–address important aspects of tumor immunology.

My experiences in cancer research have been both joyful and miserable. After marrying my husband (now of fifty-two years), I left Bar Harbor to take a position in the bacteriology department of the University of Colorado Medical School. I was hired at almost the same time as two men whose salaries were greater than mine but who lacked my experience in research and publication. I was, in fact, one of only two scientists at the medical school who held research grants. Although the medical students thought I was a good teacher, the department head thought my research interfered with my teaching. In spite of this I pursued confirmation that inbred mice could mount an immune response to their own tumors (as demanded by a reviewer of a paper submitted for publication while I was working at Jackson Labs), as evidenced by both the failure of a second transplant to grow and by an anaphylactic hypersensitivity reaction to a tumor extract. The reaction was exhibited in vivo and by the in vitro Schultz-Dale reaction. In preparing for the use of both techniques, I did a comparative study on various strains of inbred mice using egg albumin as the antigen. I found that histamine was not involved in the immune response but that serotonin very likely was. Years later, when I was no longer at the university, a paper was published by the microbiology department on mouse anaphylaxis without ever referring to our several previous publications on the subject.

After seven years I left the University of Colorado to work at NCI. My work there over twenty-five years was primarily on immune responses to leukemia and tumor viruses like Rous sarcoma and Epstein-Barr in mice, humans, and cats. These years were exciting and productive; the sometimes fourteen-hour days were like play. However, after being repeatedly rejected for promotion while male colleagues with far less scientific stature and experience were favored, I accepted the position of program director for immunology in the NCI extramural area.

Immunology was an underdeveloped area at NCI, and my boss, the director for all cancer therapy research, had little time to devote to it. After developing a successful program in a few years, I became the associate director of biological research programs through a competitive selection process. The rewards of the job were few, however: two colleagues, one envious of my apparent popularity with grantees, the other jealous of my selection over him, overtly and covertly bad-mouthed me to a superior. My title was changed to “acting” associate director for three years until the position was permanently withdrawn with the official explanation that it never existed.

I spent my last few years at NCI as the special assistant to the director. Among the job’s most interesting and rewarding aspects was serving as executive secretary to the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB) Subcommittee on Special Actions and the Agenda Subcommittee. “Special actions” are requests for board approval of innovative grants for work deemed not sufficiently meritorious by reviewers: the research of Baruch Blumberg, who won a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on hepatitis, and the flourishing work of Judah Folkman on angiogenesis were once funded this way. When I retired from NCI after exactly twenty-five years, it was reassuring to be told that it took five staff members to replace me.

My experiences with GRC have always been enjoyable. After serving for six years as a member of the Selection and Scheduling (S&S) Committee, I served on the council for three. As I neared retirement, Alex Cruickshank invited me to run for the board of trustees. I became the first female trustee and represented the biological sciences for two terms. Not only did this experience compensate for the hateful discriminatory treatment I received at NCI, but it also wonderfully bridged my transition into retirement. Now eighty-five years old, I have so many wonderful moments to remember. I developed true admiration for chemists and physicists on the S&S committee and on the board. I learned a lot while monitoring conferences in various diverse biological subjects, and my husband, who is a psychologist, participated by revising the conference grading sheet and monitoring conferences of appropriate topics. Alex Cruickshank displayed extraordinary enthusiasm and generosity at Gordon Conferences and trustee meetings. The Gordon Research Conferences as they were then would not have existed but for Alex and Irene Cruickshank.

By providing as much time for discussion as for presentation, often about the unpublished results of ongoing research, the conference format created an air of pure scientific inquiry that is sadly lacking in many scientific conferences today. Sessions scheduled in the mornings and evenings left the afternoons free for play or individual discussions–an aspect of GRC that has since been copied by many groups.

I am cheered by the contrast in appreciation of female scientists today compared with that of the mid-twentieth century. This is especially visible in the makeup of the present GRC board. I was privileged to associate in my work with outstanding women (several of whom experienced similar negative treatment in their careers), including Sarah Stewart, discoverer of the polyoma virus; Yvonne Barr Balding (the “Barr” in Epstein-Barr virus); Ingegard Hellstrom, who pioneered studies in tumor immunology; Thelma Dunn, expert cancer pathologist; Virginia Evans and Kathryn Sanford, cell biologists and pioneers in tissue culture methodology; and members of NCAB such as biologist Janet Rowley and epidemiologist Maureen Henderson.

To an old cancer researcher it is heartening to learn that today aberrant stem cells may indeed be responsible for the etiology and metastasis in malignant disease. Perhaps the secrets of this scourge are at last being revealed and may lead to its being conquered.