University of Cambridge > Talks.cam > Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science > Controversy, mistrust, even witchcraft: the failure of cancer therapy with neutrons

  Browse A-Z

Log in

Cambridge users (raven)details Other usersdetails No account?details

Information on

Subscribing to talksdetails Finding a talkdetails Adding a talkdetails Disseminating talksdetails Help and Documentationdetails

Controversy, mistrust, even witchcraft: the failure of cancer therapy with neutrons

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Helen Curry.

Shortly following World War II, the Medical Research Council funded a cyclotron for the Hammersmith Hospital in London, which by the late 1960s was committed primarily to neutron therapy. The leader of the project, Mary Catterall, reported outstanding clinical outcomes, which greatly influenced worldwide support for neutron machines. Nevertheless, within a few years, William Duncan who headed a second MRC cyclotron in Edinburgh reported no improvement in tumour control and severe complications. The ensuing controversy between Duncan and Catterall spread into the broader public community when Catterall attempted to fund a new cyclotron in London with the support of the office of Prime Minister Thatcher. The controversy which was marked by highly personal attacks against Catterall so badly discredited neutron therapy that within a few years programs were closed down on both sides of the Atlantic. The neutron story is more than a tale of operatic proportions, for it reveals the crucial role trust plays in medical research and how in spite of formal clinical trials the reception of a new therapy can be damaged by the perceived character of an investigator.

This talk is part of the Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science series.

Tell a friend about this talk:

This talk is included in these lists:

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.

Other lists

Statistical Software Training EMBL-EBI Science and Society Programme Business Briefings: International Seminar Series 2015-16 Hispanic Research Seminars CMS Seminars from business and industry MRC Human Nutrition Research

Other talks

A new proposal for the mechanism of protein translocation Why does cardiac function deteriorate in heart failure and how does phosphodiesterase 5 inhibition help? Climate change, species' abundance changes and protected areas Uncertainty Quantification with Multi-Level and Multi-Index methods CGHR Practitioner Series: Sharath Srinivasan, Africa's Voices Cosmological Probes of Light Relics Coatable photovoltaics (Title t o be confirmed) The Productivity Paradox: are we too busy to get anything done? Single Cell Seminars (August) 'Ways of Reading, Looking, and Imagining: Contemporary Fiction and Its Optics' Singularities of Hermitian-Yang-Mills connections and the Harder-Narasimhan-Seshadri filtration CANCELLED DUE TO STRIKE ACTION Concentrated, “pulsed” axial glacier flow: structural glaciological evidence from Kvíárjökull in SE Iceland
 

© 2006-2024 Talks.cam, University of Cambridge. Contact Us | Help and Documentation | Privacy and Publicity