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• Winner of Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2024

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9780231196680

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The U.S. government's long-term investment in cancer research and treatment has had profound effects on cancer, but also on the relationships among health, science, industry, and democracy. Spanning an extraordinary seventy-year period, An Ungovernable Foe traces the ways the National Cancer Institute's dual missions, scientific developments, and organizational imperatives have shaped both politics and health. If you want to understand the ways science and democracy shape one another, you can't afford to miss this book. -- Andrew J. Perrin, SNF-Agora Professor of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University An Ungovernable Foe is essential reading for scholars studying translational research and public-private partnerships. Aviles makes a compelling case that we should not be too quick to label these organizational forms as neoliberal or to dismiss government scientists as unimaginative. Through her meticulous study of the National Cancer Institute, she shows that federal agencies are an underappreciated site of both scientific and bureaucratic innovation. -- Nicole C. Nelson, coeditor of <i>Social Studies of Science</i> and author of <i>Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders</i> In this comprehensive book, Natalie Aviles takes us deep inside the National Cancer Institute, tracing how a federal agency has orchestrated the evolving mission to treat a much-feared disease over seven decades. Sure to become a classic in the study of government-sponsored science, An Ungovernable Foe tells the surprising story of how scientific innovation as well as failure emerge from the inner workings of the federal bureaucratic machine. -- Steven Epstein, author of <i>The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life</i> How can we inspire innovation in the public interest? An Ungovernable Foe offers a thorough history of the NCI’s virus program, which played a crucial history in shaping HIV treatment and developing the HPV vaccine. At a moment of growing concern about the social impacts of the biomedical research enterprise as it is currently constituted, this book is both timely and important. -- Shobita Parthasarathy, author of <i>Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe</i> An important addition to understanding the complex history of the U.S. National Cancer Institute...Highly recommended. * Choice * A textured, lucid, and cogent study of how the single largest biomedical research organization of the twentieth century adapted to the intellectual and political challenges of translational research. * H-Sci-Med-Tech * Breaks new ground in the sociological understanding of how scientists working in the public interest, manage, shape, and govern the complexities of the social, political, and economic environments, to meet their mandate to improve the nation’s health and well-being. * Social Forces *

In this comprehensive history, Natalie Aviles takes us deep inside the National Cancer Institute, tracing how a federal agency has orchestrated the evolving mission to treat a much-feared disease over seven decades. Sure to become a classic in the study of government-sponsored science, An Ungovernable Foe tells the surprising story of how scientific innovation as well as failure emerge from the inner workings of the federal bureaucratic machine. -- Steven Epstein, author of <i>The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life</i> How can we inspire innovation in the public interest? An Ungovernable Foe offers a thorough history of the NCI’s virus program, which played a crucial history in shaping HIV treatment and developing the HPV vaccine. At a moment of growing concern about the social impacts of the biomedical research enterprise as it is currently constituted, this book is both timely and important. -- Shobita Parthasarathy, author of <i>Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe</i>

How can we inspire innovation in the public interest? An Ungovernable Foe offers a thorough history of the NCI’s virus program, which played a crucial history in shaping HIV treatment and developing the HPV vaccine. At a moment of growing concern about the social impacts of the biomedical research enterprise as it is currently constituted, this book is both timely and important. -- Shobita Parthasarathy, author of <i>Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe</i>

The U.S. government's long-term investment in cancer research and treatment has had profound effects on cancer, but also on the relationships among health, science, industry, and democracy. Spanning an extraordinary seventy-year period, An Ungovernable Foe traces the ways the National Cancer Institute's dual missions, scientific developments, and organizational imperatives have shaped both politics and health. If you want to understand the ways science and democracy shape one another, you can't afford to miss this book. -- Andrew J. Perrin, SNF-Agora Professor of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University An Ungovernable Foe is essential reading for scholars studying translational research and public-private partnerships. Aviles makes a compelling case that we should not be too quick to label these organizational forms as neoliberal or to dismiss government scientists as unimaginative. Through her meticulous study of the National Cancer Institute, she shows that federal agencies are an underappreciated site of both scientific and bureaucratic innovation. -- Nicole C. Nelson, coeditor of <i>Social Studies of Science</i> and author of <i>Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders</i> In this comprehensive book, Natalie Aviles takes us deep inside the National Cancer Institute, tracing how a federal agency has orchestrated the evolving mission to treat a much-feared disease over seven decades. Sure to become a classic in the study of government-sponsored science, An Ungovernable Foe tells the surprising story of how scientific innovation as well as failure emerge from the inner workings of the federal bureaucratic machine. -- Steven Epstein, author of <i>The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life</i> How can we inspire innovation in the public interest? An Ungovernable Foe offers a thorough history of the NCI’s virus program, which played a crucial history in shaping HIV treatment and developing the HPV vaccine. At a moment of growing concern about the social impacts of the biomedical research enterprise as it is currently constituted, this book is both timely and important. -- Shobita Parthasarathy, author of <i>Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe</i>

Author Information

Natalie B. Aviles is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.

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