Abstract
According to many, the genetic technology used in cancer is a promising test case of twenty-first century ‘genomic medicine’. However, it is important to realize that accounting for the genetic or hereditary factors in cancer medicine is not new. Since at least the eighteenth century, medical doctors and patients have tried to establish links between heredity and cancer. Following the excitement over the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s theory of hereditary transmission (1900), there was renewed interest in the question of a linkage between heredity and cancer. Researchers began to pay attention to the statistical use of family studies as a means to calculate Mendelian ratios of disease inheritance. In 1913, the Michigan University pathologist Aldred Scott Warthin (1866–1931) published his first study of a pedigree with a so-called inherited susceptibility for cancer. Family G’s susceptibility was associated with the risk of creating an ‘inferior stock’. Given the number of studies on heredity and disease and the vogue for eugenics at the beginning of the twentieth century, one would have expected strong support for Warthin’s study. Family G (one of the longest systematically studied cancer genealogies in the world and currently associated with Lynch syndrome) might have been accepted (if not for purely scientific reasons) as part of the eugenics gospel as an exemplary case of a degenerative stock. After all, Warthin was a rising star within the American medical establishment and had become part of John Kellogg’s eugenic priesthood in Michigan. Ultimately, none of these likely scenarios materialized. I will show in this chapter how the cancer idiom of heredity that was associated with shame, fatalism and stigmatization came to be regarded as counterproductive in the fight against cancer and was suppressed at the time by the powerful American Society for the Control of Cancer.
Keywords
Earlier versions of this paper were presented under the same title at the Third International Workshop on Genetics, History and Public Understanding, European Society for Human Genetics Annual Conference, Barcelona, 30–31 May 2008; at the Izmir conference ‘Breeding the Nation: Eugenics, Culture and Science in the United States, 1900–1940’, 26–29 March 2012; and at the 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Manchester, 26 July 2013.
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Lindee 2005.
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Gausemeier 2005.
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Snelders et al. 2007, 226.
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This impressionistic account of Warthin’s early research work on medical hereditarianism is based on
Warthin 1914; Stone 1927; Simpson 1931; Lynch 1985; Bentley historical library, University of Michigan; Aldred Scott Warthin papers, 1893–1931; Box 1: ‘Dear friend’ letters from Vienna (1893/1894); and Sir William Osler correspondence (1899–1919).
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Warthin 1913.
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Lynch 1985.
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Rushton 1994, 59–84.
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Williams 1908, 374.
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Levin 1912.
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Mc Coy 1977.
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Eugenics can be seen as a biological theory of human improvement that was informed and vitalized by revolutionary developments in biology and medicine at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. These scientific insights seemed to promise a new cure not only for a wide range of diseases but also for social problems. The social applications of the biological sciences have initiated debates about social differentiation, scientific responsibility, medical ethics, reproductive autonomy and human rights that resonate until the present day. Eugenics can equally be regarded as a social and cultural philosophy of individual and collective identity within the context of modernity; Kevles 1985.
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Snow 1885.
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Patterson 1987, 38.
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Aronowitz 2001, 356.
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Ewing 1928, 109–114.
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Proctor 1995, 221.
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Warthin 1925.
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Kevles 1985.
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Warthin 1926; George A. Soper to Aldred Scott Warthin, letter dated 7 December 1926, Bentley Historical Archives, Warthin Papers Box 1.
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Warthin 1930.
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Warthin 1931.
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Warthin 1931, 696.
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Burnham 2015.
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Stern 2005.
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Hauser 1936; Lynch 1971; Douglas 2005.
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See for more information on Ami McKay’s ongoing activities as public gatekeeper and Family G reporter: http://www.mutantme.com/daughter-of-family-g/.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank late Elizabeth Anne Jennings Krush (1914–2007), Dr. Henry T. Lynch (haematologist and oncologist in Omaha, NE, 1928), Prof. Hans Vasen (LUMC) and the Michigan branch of Family G for their invaluable help in finding primary archival sources for my research.
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Epilogue
Epilogue
Following the early scientific paper trail of Family G does not do justice to the pain, hardship, sorrow and stigma the family members had to endure throughout the twentieth century right into genomic age in coping with their genealogical disease burden and their role as objects of research. The long-term process of collecting family history data has involved intensive and emotional discussions with researchers and relatives about health, disease, death and other related aspects of personal biographies. The major question for the expanding Family G continues to be: How might the ‘new’ knowledge that is generated by participating in medical research benefit them?
For more than a century, scientific ideas circulated within the family about the aetiology of their disease burden from a recessive familial susceptibility (1930s), a cancer-susceptible genotype with a possible underlying viral oncogene mechanism (1970s), hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) or Lynch syndrome associated with a possible genetic mechanism (1980s) to germline mutations in DNA mismatch repair (MMR) genes (1990s).Footnote 35 The understanding of those ideas within Family G circles was always associated with the hope for a cure, but, at the same time, the knowledge that their close cooperation with scientists had not yielded major therapeutic benefits or a dramatic change in the family’s biography.
Following a frantic race, the headline news in 1994 that researchers had cloned the specific disease genes associated with Lynch syndrome and development of a genetic test was imminent was hailed as a victory within Family G. Predictive genetic medicine was believed to succeed where other medical approaches had failed, and the promise for an all-in-one cure for their genealogical misfortunes seemed more tangible than ever. President Bill Clinton exemplified this optimism when he announced the ‘first draft’ of the human genome in June 2000. Clinton claimed that for our children’s children, cancer would only be known as a constellation of stars.Footnote 36
However, in approximately 2001, the first results of the genetic tests were shared among Family G members, and their optimism quickly dwindled due to the development of disruptive family disputes over the issue of testing status. Those family members who had tested positive were confronted with complex preventive monitoring (e.g. colonoscopy) and surgical trajectories. They felt excluded by those family members who had tested negative and had no immediate medical obligation and the other way around. The professional writer Ami Mckay and Family G member, who lives in Canada, wrote and produced a most insightful radio documentary for CBC Radio ‘Daughter of Family G’ concerning the rather difficult decision to undergo genetic testing, what it meant to be tested and how she and other family members tried to cope with their test results. I would like to encourage all readers to learn more about this penetrating radio documentary. You will find a direct link to it here: http://www.mutantme.com/daughter-of-family-g/.Footnote 37
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Pieters, T. (2017). Aldred Scott Warthin’s Family ‘G’: The American Plot Against Cancer and Heredity (1895–1940). In: Petermann, H., Harper, P., Doetz, S. (eds) History of Human Genetics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51783-4_6
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