Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/87083
Title: Constructing Failure: Leonard Hayflick, Biomedicine, and the Problems with Tissue Culture
Authors: Park, Hyung Wook
Keywords: Failure
Tissue Culture
Issue Date: 2015
Source: Park. H.W. (2016). Constructing Failure: Leonard Hayflick, Biomedicine, and the Problems with Tissue Culture. Annals of Science, 73(3), 303-327.
Series/Report no.: Annals of Science
Abstract: By examining the use of tissue culture in post-war American biomedicine, this paper investigates how scientists experience and manage failure. I study how Leonard Hayflick forged his new definition of failure and ways of managing it by refuting Alexis Carrel's definition of failure alongside his theory of the immortality of cultured cells. Unlike Carrel, Hayflick claimed that every vertebrate somatic cell should eventually die, unless it transformed into a tumour cell. This claim defined cell death, which had been a problem leading to a laboratory failure, as a normal phenomenon. On the other hand, permanent life, which had been considered a normal cellular characteristic, became a major factor causing scientific failure, since it implied malignant transformation that scientists hoped to control. Hayflick then asserted that his cell strains and method would partly enable scientists to manage this factor—especially that occurred through viral infection—alongside other causes of failure in routine tasks, including bacterial contamination. I argue that the growing biomedical enterprise fostered this work of Hayflick's, which had repercussions in both his career and the uses of cells in diverse investigations. His redefinition of failure in the age of biomedicine resulted in the broad dissemination of his cells, medium, and method as well as his long struggle with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which caused his temporarily failed career.
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/87083
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/44266
ISSN: 0003-3790
DOI: 10.1080/00033790.2015.1057764
Schools: School of Humanities and Social Sciences 
Rights: © 2015 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is the author created version of a work that has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication by Annals of Science, Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. It incorporates referee’s comments but changes resulting from the publishing process, such as copyediting, structural formatting, may not be reflected in this document. The published version is available at: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2015.1057764].
Fulltext Permission: open
Fulltext Availability: With Fulltext
Appears in Collections:HSS Journal Articles

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
Constructing Failure_ Leonard Hayflick, Biomedicine, and the Problems with Tissue Culture.pdf286.11 kBAdobe PDFThumbnail
View/Open

SCOPUSTM   
Citations 50

1
Updated on Mar 28, 2024

Web of ScienceTM
Citations 50

2
Updated on Oct 30, 2023

Page view(s) 20

621
Updated on Mar 28, 2024

Download(s) 50

168
Updated on Mar 28, 2024

Google ScholarTM

Check

Altmetric


Plumx

Items in DR-NTU are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.