Conference by Angela Creager,Thomas M. Siebel Professor in the History of Science at Princeton University and 2024-2025 research-fellow at the Paris IAS (FIAS program), as part of the "Production and regulation of health knowledge: problematisations, innovations and contestations" series (« Production et régulation des savoirs sur la santé : problématisations, innovations et contestations ») organized by Cermes3.

Open to the public, subject to availability of seats. Registration needed, please contact Luc Berlivet (luc.berlivet@cnrs.fr).
Onsite event, in English only.

Presentation

This talk analyzes how regulatory attention to environmental mutagens in the 1970a US gave way in the 1980s to a focus on inherited mutations, which was reinforced after 1987 by the Human Genome Project. Accordingly, cancer prevention strategies highlighted individual susceptibility and lifestyle, often at the expense of attention to involuntary environmental exposures. Physicians and public health officials spoke of cancer in terms of risk factors. This paper, which is last chapter of Angela Creager's book project on the Ames test, sheds light on a dimension of Ulrich Beck’s “risk society,” while showing how these trends in cancer policy were intercalated with economic neoliberalism.

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